NetApp’s Australian arm has started to bulk up its channel enablement team, and focus them on the imminent local arrival of its Azure NetApp Files Service.
NetApp Files lets the storage vendor’s OnTap data management platform stretch from on-prem arrays to the public cloud. It runs as a native service on Azure and Google, but hasn’t yet been made available in either cloud’s Australian data centres. As the service is rather latency-sensitive, NetApp Australia hasn’t promoted it.
NetApp’s Australian director of channel and alliances Neville James yesterday told CRN that will change within weeks: he predicted see Azure NetApp Files on Azure Australia will come online in four or five weeks, with the same service on Google's Cloud (with appropriate branding) to follow a month or so later.
The company has therefore started to grow and focus its channel team to push the new service.
A new technical partner manager has been hired and will focus on channel enablement and promotion of the new service. Another member of the channel team will work with NetApp’s top dozen or so local service provider partners to help them understand how to build solutions on the service. James explained that a NetApp partner with a Splunk practice, for example, could be assisted to use Cloud Volumes as the storage service behind future projects.
James added that NetApp partners report that the hardest roles to fill are solution architects. NetApp will therefore hire a pair of them, to make sure that partners can get the resources they need to satisfy end-customers.
NetApp partners will also notice a refresh to its partner program.
“Rebates will be as good if not a little better,” James said, with bonuses on offer for competitive wins and migrations. Incentives targeting hyperconverged infrastructure will also feature, James explained, adding his desire for MSPs to consider NetApp’s HCI for its ability to handle multi-tenancy and therefore serve as the foundation for projects that use Cloud Volumes.
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