Storage Q&A: BEarena

Which storage solutions do you deploy?

The competitive edge is now delivered by software features running on these flash-based platforms. Nutanix embraces this approach, and we lead for the majority of our requirements. Where compute is not required, we work with Pure Storage and Tintri.

When did your company first get involved in storage?

BEarena was founded in 2007, heavily focused on virtualisation and, therefore, storage was key from day one.

Which are your company’s storage credentials?

We have the largest number of Nutanix Platform Professionals in the ANZ partner community. All our consultants are also Tintri and Pure Storage certified, but we also carry certifications for the traditional vendors such as EMC, HP and IBM.

Tell us about your distributors and distribution strategy?

Due to our status with our vendors, BEarena tends to purchase direct, however, we also have relationships with Ingram Micro and Avnet.

What cool or interesting recent storage technology is occupying your thoughts?

Our vendors continually innovate, it’s how they are succeeding and beating the larger players in the market. Some of the features they have coming are groundbreaking. Outside of that, it’s a time of huge disruption in our industry, and that is something BEarena very much thrives on. We have a pedigree
of bringing products to the ANZ market and were the first partner for Veeam, Nutanix, Tintri, and PernixData. 

Can you tell us about a recent storage deployment you have done?

We recently replaced three iSCSI arrays with eight nodes of Nutanix storage heavy nodes

What is driving customers’ storage projects?

We see a number of IOPS constraints with traditional storage arrays, and this will drive the customer to evaluate options. BEarena also has a large focus on virtual desktops (VDI), and over the past 18 months we implemented storage platforms for customers wishing to separate their VDI from server storage.

Storage is ...?

A resource for applications. It needs to meet the needs of the applications, and the business delivering them.