The creation of the Scality ATLAS Partner Programme underpins the company’s continuing focus on partnerships with leading industry organisations such as Cisco, Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and with channel partners and system integrators such as AXEZ, BroadBand Tower, Comport, Computacenter, FusionStorm, and NetOne Systems.
“Software-defined storage is an important market for Computacenter, and a real need for customers,” said Claire Palassin, Group Partner Management Director at Computacenter. “Offering the Scality RING allows us to offer our customers a more complete enterprise IT strategy. Further, becoming a member of the ATLAS Partner Programme allows us to stay up-to-date on best practices for our sales and marketing teams, and we’re able to work collaboratively through the deal desk to close sales deals in more effective and efficient manner. We’ve already had joint customer wins through this alliance, and have a healthy pipeline planned ahead.”
Computacenter is a UK-based, pan-European IT service provider and has been a Scality RING reseller since 2016. Since joining the ATLAS Partner Programme, Computacenter’s team members have had access learning materials and have already been trained and certified through the ATLAS Partner Programme Portal. Scality certifications have allowed Computacenter to expand the Scality services offered, and create a new and continued source of revenue. Together, Scality and Computacenter have inked deals with customers like SNCF and Ministry Of Defense and have collectively sold upwards of 10 petabytes.
“In order to thrive companies typically need to be part of a balanced and complete ecosystem; if this is not the case they most likely fail. Therefore, a company’s success is highly dependent on its technology and channel partners and the relationships it builds with both. In the European market, Scality’s channel makes up nearly 100% of our sales, and we rely on the most strategic and effective resellers in the market to take solutions to our end-users. Because of this, it is important that we properly enable our partners, provide them with all pre-sales and support tools, give them access to our trainings and protect their business,” said Emilio Roman, Vice President of Sales EMEA. “The ATLAS Partner Programme was something that developed organically because of this need, and is now an invaluable asset in continuing our goal to provide the best IT infrastructure to the enterprise. The programme is the latest step towards making our ecosystem the strongest in the storage industry.”
Scality worked collaboratively with ATLAS Partners FusionStorm and Dell to meet the storage needs of a video workflow management and turnkey content-supply solution provider. Based on sizing and cost, their incumbent solution was less than optimal and were looking for an alternative. FusionStorm had a longstanding relationship, and brought Dell and Scality in to propose something different. Because of their shared knowledge-base, the three companies were able to together propose a solution that would yield exactly what the customer needed.”
Dan Serpico, CEO of FusionStorm: “The Scality team has done an amazing job supporting and enabling our sales team to learn about the Scality RING, helping us to quickly identify opportunities and notably secure a substantial sales win with an entertainment industry service provider. We were already impressed with the amount and quality of support we were getting from Scality; the ATLAS Partner Programme will make this even better.”
The Scality ATLAS Partner Programme and includes access to the ATLAS Partner Programme Training and Self-Certification Portal and allows partners to become certified so that they can perform the full sales cycle of the Scality RING; from pre-sales through to installation. By taking control of the sales cycle, partners are able to maximise revenues. Further, certification for maintenance allows partners to have a new, and continued, source of revenue. The four different certification types currently include; Scality Ambassador Certification, Scality Pre-Sales Champion, Scality Certified Engineer, and Scality Certified Support Engineer.
“The new Scality ATLAS Partner and Certification Programme strengthens our partnership by allowing our teams to stay up-to-date on Scality’s latest products, and enabling them to identify and close opportunities faster,” said Khurram Tahir, Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Programmes & Strategy at HPE. “Through the programme we are also able to access other partner solutions within the ATLAS ecosystem, creating the opportunity for larger deals and entry into new markets.”
ATLAS Partner members with Scality-Certified employees include AXEZ, Broadband Tower, Comport, Computacenter, Dell, HPE, and Seagate, among others. Certification graduates are already putting into practice what they learned through the Certification Program; from implementation to ongoing support.
"In order to grow and succeed in the long term, any company needs partners that share its outlook and values. When you have a strong product the attraction is mutual and great partnerships are forged. While we are keen to expand our alliance and channel reach, the quality of our partners remains of paramount importance. We will continue to align ourselves with resellers that invest time and money in training their teams and making this training as easy and effective as possible will benefit all parties. Our sales engineers do an amazing job at helping our partners in the field and the Scality ATLAS Partner Programme will help our combined teams to be even more effective,” said Erwan Menard, COO of Scality.
