Stealthy startup DataGravity still isn’t talking (much) about its upcoming product but that’s not stopping it from trying to sign up partners to sell it. The company hopes to recruit channel partners for the product this week at the VMware Partner Exchange conference in San Francisco, to recruit appropriate channel partners for its early access program, said DataGravity co-founder John Joseph.
Data Gravity co-founder John Joseph.
Asked why street-savvy resellers and integrators would sign up for a mystery product, Joseph laughed: “Hey that’s the dance.” And presumably for partners who make the cut, all will be revealed. Thus far all that company execs have said publicly about the product is it will uncover intelligence in a company’s stored data.
Pressed for detail — any detail — Joseph said the Nashua, N.H.-based company is working on a smart storage system that “offers insight into the data you’ve stored on it — the insight is the creative license part the part we’re trailblazing and the focus is on unstructured data,” he said.
Given DataGravity’s DNA, many partners will want to give it a look: The company’s other co-founder is Paula Long who helped launch EqualLogic, the partner-friendly iSCI storage company in 2001. Dell bought EqualLogic 6 years later for $ 1.4 billion in cash.
What DataGravity wants in partners is, well obviously VMware expertise, and the ability to sell into companies with 200 to 2000 people. If you sell storage, servers, networking equipment and virtualization, you’re a candidate, Joseph said. The DataGravity product, due out this year, will support VMware ESX and will bring other hypervisors into the fold later, he said.
DataGravity has about 60 employees now, up from 30 last year and has netted about $ 42 million in venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures and General Catalyst Partners.
It’s fair to say that this is one of the most anticipated unveilings of the coming year and — lucky us — Long will be on hand at the Structure show in June and hopefully have more to say.
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