Kaminario flings pay-as-you-go storage software suite at cloudy providers

First output since sealing hardware deal with Tech Data

Kaminario is selling its composable flash array storage software to cloud service providers.

It's calling the software Cloud Fabric and this includes the K2 array's VisionOS and Clarity analytics suite. Cloud service providers would buy hardware on which to run Cloud Fabric from Tech Data, with whom Kaminario has recently agreed a hardware supply deal.

Cloud Fabric customers pay for an enterprise-wide usage licence; a pay-as-you-go scheme. Centralised support for all Cloud Fabric systems will come from Kaminario.

Dani Golan, Kaminario founder and CEO, said: "We see software-defined, composable infrastructure becoming the dominant storage paradigm for modern data centres. Fixed storage array architectures no longer make sense in the era of the cloud."

The pricing

We asked Kaminario if customers would pay more or less for Kaminario array storage this way than by buying their own K2 array from Kaminario's channel.

A spokesperson said: "The simplest answer is that in an apples-to-apples comparison, the Cloud Fabric approach delivers roughly 40 per cent improvement over our array approach in the economics of acquiring a PB of storage (measured over a three-year term since Cloud Fabric is a monthly usage based charge).

"Just to re-emphasise, Cloud Fabric is focused on multi-PB, multi-data centre customers (i.e. cloud service providers) and does not have the same economic advantage at smaller environments where the appliance model still makes sense."

There were two extra points made: "Cloud Fabric software pricing is purely usage based. Customers only pay for effective capacity consumed – and can scale down or off.

"Customers purchase hardware as they need it – there is economic benefit from the fact that Kaminario has a flexible scale up and out approach, and the raw hardware is far less expensive. So, the cost of the buffer capacity to cover growth requirements is far lower than the array approach."

Service provider customers can purchase Cloud Fabric immediately from Kaminario with certified hardware resources available through Tech Data. ®