CRN Exclusive: Cohesity's First Worldwide Sales VP To Help Partners Profit From Hyper-converged Secondary Storage

Cohesity, a developer of hyper-converged infrastructure with a secondary storage focus, has hired a former NetApp and Nimble Storage executive to run its sales and expand its channels.

Mark Parrinello, Cohesity's new vice president of worldwide sales, told CRN that he is looking to work with a wider range of partners than the company has worked with in the past.

"We are looking at building relationships with larger partners, even as we invest more in our regional partners," Parrinello said.

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Parrinello, who reports directly to Cohesity CEO Mohit Aron, is the first Cohesity executive to take the role of vice president of worldwide sales. The sales teams previously reported to Aron, a Cohesity spokesperson told CRN via email.

Cohesity develops a hyper-converged secondary storage platform partners can use to consolidate data protection, test-dev, file services, and analytic data onto an infinitely scalable platform spanning on-premises and cloud infrastructures.

The company's technology, combined with its channel-only sales model, is very appealing to Mark Guerrero, director of partner investment at Trace3, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and Cohesity partner.

Trace3 values its vendor partners based on how well its products perform and on how well it partners with the channel in their go-to-market operations, Guerrero told CRN.

"Cohesity has a very compelling secondary storage proposition with hyper-converged infrastructure," he said. "Secondary storage is not a sexy market, but it's a necessary one."

As Parrinello settles into his new role, Guerrero said he hopes to see the company continue to build its sales and channel teams in line with the value proposition partners bring the company.

"We're looking to Mark to elevate the level of Cohesity's partnerships and to provide more resources to continue its work," he said. "Cohesity has a good go-to-market strategy, and I think Cohesity' sales could see double the growth of our other top-ten partners."

Cohesity currently has 20-plus sales reps, and is looking to work with that team to better segment the market, Parrinello said. He also hopes to work with channel partners to help customers better understand the total solution Cohesity brings them.

"We have to articulate more our value to the customers," he said. "If they see us as just another hyper-converged infrastructure technology vendor, that's one thing. But it's another to talk about using the cloud for backups. Our software is aimed at taking data to the cloud. We're not just a hyper-converged infrastructure vendor, or a storage vendor, or a cloud vendor. We're all three."

Cohesity's solution integrates with Amazon, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud for data protection, and cloud storage is a part of nearly every deal, Parrinello said.

"We help customer move data in and out of the cloud," he said. "We move data to the cloud, or back internally, or from cloud to cloud."

Parrinello officially joined Cohesity on Monday. Keegan Riley, a five-year Nimble Storage veteran, took over as vice president of North American sales after Parrinello moved to Cohesity.