Nasuni: Storage Hardware Margins Are 'Dwindling'

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Boston-based Nasuni is moving storage out of the world of hardware and into the cloud, and it wants to take more partners with it.

’Most companies in storage are still focused on a hardware-based model,’ said Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez. ’Nasuni is in the annuity business; we leverage the cloud as a back end and we bring our partners into the annuity business with us.’

Nasuni provides Storage-as-a-Service to global organizations -- including storage protection and synchronization. Rodriguez said Nasuni offers various levels of performance with affordable connectivity on a global scale.

Nasuni’s annuity model is based on growing accounts through storage upgrades and renewal business. Rodriguez said the margins for partners are through the roof, especially compared with hardware’s ’dwindling margins.’

Rodriguez was blunt about the sort of partners Nasuni is seeking, saying the company is looking for "partners that are not too loyal to any one storage vendor.’

Those partners are typically DMRs, national solution providers and larger regional solution providers. Nasuni targets the mid-enterprise and global organizations, so partners need to be big enough to have national and global reach.

Nasuni has raised $53 million, and expects to raise $40 million to $50 million more, and to hold and IPO in the next two years, he said.

Rodriguez stressed that with that growth, however, Nasuni will still be 100 percent channel. ’We’ve never done a deal direct. It’s always been a partner-driven model, and it’s because it’s the only way for a storage company today to have reach.’

PUBLISHED OCT. 28, 2014