ZADARA PARTNERSHIP MAKES THE DIFFERENCE FOR GROWING CLOUD PROVIDER QUADRANET
Co-branded cloud storage and compute services powered by Zadara solve key customer challenges like HIPAA compliance
Summary
Managed service providers (MSPs) face a difficult balancing act. Often, the most effective way to solve customer problems like disaster recovery and automation is to leverage recognized, largescale cloud platforms. At the same time, MSPs need to differentiate themselves in the market to create a competitive advantage and grow. And while public cloud platforms offer financial flexibility, cost efficiencies can shrink over time as fees mount up for things like memory use and data access.
For QuadraNet, a full-stack service provider operating 10 data centers across the United States and Europe, the goal of creating a differentiated, efficient software-defined storage offering led the company to partner with Zadara. The partnership has enabled QuadraNet to create in-house services known as QNStor and QNOutpost – powered by Zadara zStorage and zCompute – and meet key customer challenges its competitors cannot solve. The zStorage and zCompute platforms provide enterprise-class infrastructure, deployed at QuadraNet sites for ultra-low-latency interaction with customers’ colocated systems, in a fully-managed service with a 100%-OpEx pricing model.
QNStor and QNOutpost are helping to drive growth at the MSP, making the difference in customer wins including a medical imaging company that required HIPAA-compliant data storage. “Zadara’s single-tenant experience on a multi-tenant SAN enabled us to win the deal,” says Tony DeLuce, Senior Cloud Solutions Engineer, QuadraNet. “The organization needed dedicated drives with data encryption to meet HIPAA regulations, but they really didn’t want a dedicated SAN. By positioning QNStor, powered by Zadara storage, we were able to give them the best of both worlds.”
Industry
Data Center Provider
Solutions
Cloud Services, Cloud Security, Monitoring
Location
United States
Zadara’s single-tenant experience on a multi-tenant SAN enabled us to win.”
Partner Power
Zadara technologies and the zPartner program have helped QuadraNet to meet a wider range of customer needs, deliver solutions sooner with greater cost-efficiency, and shorten time to value.
INCREASED CREDIBILITY
Branding its QNStor and QNOutpost services as “Powered by Zadara” has helped QuadraNet to establish greater credibility with new customers. “It’s in our interest to state that we have these great, successful partners like Zadara,” explains Tony. “Our value add is that we have capable, highly skilled people. But if I’m a customer, I am more comfortable that a smaller provider is using Zadara than trying to build something this sophisticated and maintain it ourselves. So, the Zadara partnership helps us.”
SUPPORT THAT SPEEDS VALUE
Customer support is a key differentiator for QuadraNet, and Zadara has proved to be a helpful partner in getting new customer solutions up and running quickly. Zadara technologies are provided to MSPs as fully-managed services including 24/7 support. “If we had a partner that was slow, that just wouldn’t work for our cloud services,” says Tony, “as we have a reputation of being very nimble both for provisioning and support.” “The Zadara team is the absolute best support I’ve seen from a vendor. As far as provisioning, setting it up, installing zStorage at our data center, there’s no better. Zadara has held our hand every step of the way, and that has shortened our time to value.”
NEW OPPORTUNITIES WITH OPEX PRICING
Cloud services with OpEx-based pricing are useful for some MSPs, because they enable delivery of solutions for new customers without making a capital investment in hardware. Zadara’s 100%-OpEx pricing, including for hardware installed at QuadraNet sites, opened up more opportunities for the company. “What Zadara permits us to do is not procure capital equipment upfront,” explains Tony. “We can turn all of our CapEx into OpEx, and in many cases have a purely operational cost environment for many customer deployments.” An important benefit of this model is that it enables QuadraNet to support smaller customers, which grow over time. “A customer came to us last summer with a need for a small amount of storage, and that’s grown to 50 times the original amount in a year,” recalls Tony. “Zadara brought us that opportunity. Customers tend to grow as long as you’re supporting them and taking care of them, and Zadara helps us do that. Fundamentally, it’s now more cost-effective for us to support smaller requirements that turn into larger revenue.”
ZPARTNER GROWTH SUPPORT
As a member of the Zadara zPartner program, QuadraNet has received a wide range of support to help the company create a healthy pipeline of opportunities and grow its monthly recurring revenue. As well as being able to build its own “as-a-service” QNStore and QNOutpost services on top of Zadara technologies, the company has received sales, technical, and marketing support, including co-funded joint marketing campaigns.
STRONG LATENCY PLAY
Zadara technologies are also helping QuadraNet to solve customer challenges around public cloud, such as the latency introduced when connecting to remote cloud services, and cost escalation over time. With QNOutpost powered by Zadara zCompute, QuadraNet can provide AWS-compatible services that run on zCompute hardware installed at the customer’s colocation site – within the same four walls as its other equipment. Latency is reduced to less than a millisecond, providing an advantage over even high-speed Direct Connect solutions. QNOutpost solutions also allow customers to start small and grow as required. “One of the largest problems we can solve with zCompute for our customers is offering effectively zero latency between their environment and public zCompute cloud services.” Tony DeLuce “A large concern of customers with AWS is how their applications will behave when latency is introduced between the cloud and their private environment,” explains Tony. “That’s an important problem we are solving with zCompute for us and our customers. We can offer almost zero latency between their bare metal and cloud environments, and their public cloud services, and at the same time cut costs for them.”
PUBLIC CLOUD IN THE DATA CENTER
Having achieved a number of wins with zStorage-based solutions, QuadraNet is next looking to grow its zCompute-based solutions to help customers improve performance and reduce the costs of cloud computing. “zCompute brings a number of services in one platform, like Kubernetes as a service, that we’re excited to start offering,” says Tony. “For customers currently spending thousands per month with AWS, we can offer equivalent zCompute services for a lower price and with improved performance.” “We’re bringing the power and flexibility of the public cloud inside the data center. Zadara is key to us enabling that, and we’re excited about expanding our relationship to more sites.”