New Hybrid Cloud Vendor Velostrata More an ‘Enabler’ Than Disruptor

Velostrata, a startup that came out of stealth mode Wednesday and claims to be the first vendor to decouple compute from storage, has been described as a help to established vendors rather than a disruptor.

This week, Velostrata announced what it says is the industry's "first real-type hybrid cloud solution that streams production workloads to and from the cloud in minutes." David Iannacconi, principal cloud architect and senior director at New York-based International Integrated Solutions (IIS), noted his company's partnerships with HP, VMware and Red Hat and its role as an AWS consulting partner and determined Velostrata is in a "unique niche" to solve a business problem that has long been without resolution.

As a result, Iannacconi doesn't consider Velostrata a "threat" to other vendors, but rather a company that can help solve problems.

"I don't look at it necessarily as disruptive to a vendor," he told Channelnomics.

"It's just an incredible enabler and problem solver for organizations that are just trying to keep data in what they feel is a more private environment than putting it out onto AWS, but [while] still providing them with the best of both worlds."

"If anything, it's more a problem solver then a disruptor because it helps VMware, HP - or storage companies with a legacy footprint - and customers. It also earns AWS access to customers who ordinarily wouldn't go to them because they're not comfortable moving that data but can now leverage compute resources out on AWS. So it doesn't really hurt anybody, it just helps a lot of different players in this space."

Issy Ben-Shaul, CEO at Velostrata, has his own ideas of which organizations could view Velostrata as disruptive.

"Who are we disrupting? Maybe those who provide the hardware and infrastructure - the on-premise business," he told Channelnomics.

"At the same time, folks like VMware, for instance, are continuing to enjoy the fact that the on-premise infrastructure will stay there from a management perspective but allows them to extend and grow with the cloud," he said.

VMware did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

Ben-Shaul noted that the channel is "very important" for Velostrata to capture enterprise customers. He said it's hard to predict what percentage of sales will go through partners but claimed the "focus" is sales via VARs, systems integrators and other types of partner.

"[The channel] gives customers a sense of working with someone they know to implement this kind of transformational approach to hybrid cloud strategy," he added.

Interestingly, the CEO has founded two other companies, which were both eventually purchased by big-name vendors - WAN optimization company Actona, which was acquired by Cisco in 2004, and Wanova, a desktop virtualization company that VMware acquired in 2012.

Velostrata's end goal is not acquisition, according to Ben-Shaul, who said his Velostrata plans are "long-term."

"I worked for Cisco, I worked for VMware and my dream is the next big company I'm going to work for is going to be Velostrata. That's what we're hoping and fighting for," he said.

This blog was originally posted on Channelnomics.