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Springpath to focus on Cisco OEM development

Go-to-market machine is in gear

Springpath is becoming a Cisco-only development shop, we hear. It’s going to concentrate on its Cisco OEM deal for the hyper-converged Data Platform product and we’re hearing it will defocus from other marketing and selling activities.

The hyper-converged infrastructure area is a high-growth one. EMC converged systems president Chad Sakac has said sales of its product in this area, VxRail, are on fire with a $200 million annual run rate after one quarter of sales. It’s aiming for a $2 billion run rate by the end of next year, a fantastically aggressive growth rate.

Nutanix is growing fast, as is SimpliVity. HDS has entered the market and HPE has a strong offering. There are over 30 vendors in the hyper-converged market and with major players having strong product lines and broad channels then its landgrab time for every hyper-converged player, with a need to focus their resources and go balls out for growth.

Cisco launched its HyperFlex product, a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance using Springpath software running on its UCS servers in March. We understand that sales have exceeded expectations and Cisco would like more Springpath-powered products to sell.

It is encouraging Springpath to create additional product lines. We might imagine ones focused on Hadoop-style work cases, extended scale-out file storage, extended hypervisor support and also object storage. Nutanix, with its expanding product range and Dell’s OEM’ing of its SW, might be in Cisco’s sights here, as well as EMC’s VxRail and HPE.

Such development by Springpath would require substantial development engineering resources, more coders for example, and it may be that Springpath’s board has decided to make cuts in other areas.

The board members are:

  • CEO Terry Cunningham
  • Co-founder and CTO Mallik Mahalingam
  • Co-founder Krishna Yadappanavar
  • Jim Goetz - partner at Sequoia Capital
  • Krishna Kolluri - general partner at NEA (a VC firm)
  • Satish Dharmsaraj - partner with Redpoint Ventures
  • Michael Klayko - CEO of MKA Capital and ex-Brocade CEO

We understand decision has been made to focus entirely on the Cisco OEM channel and withdraw from other sales and marketing activities. Marketing VP Ashish Gupta said: “The obvious benefit of the OEM model is to leverage the breadth and depth of the go to market machine of a company like Cisco. In the near term we are aligning our sales and marketing resources to support that go to market machine.”

So it seems it's Cisco or bust for Springpath, and jettisoning some non-Cisco sales and marketing resources is a price the Springpath board considers worth paying. ®

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