The beginning

When Vast Data started working with Avnet Integrated Solutions, they were a relatively small innovative company looking to reshape the storage industry. Their mission was to bring an end to decades of complexity and application  bottlenecks when dealing with big data – how to enable near-instant access to key information located in an ocean of information. The Vast team knew that today’s data workloads were different, with applications like AI and deep learning requiring huge amounts of data to be crunched quickly. They developed innovative flash data storage solutions that could manage these workloads which has led to them becoming the fastest growing storage company in history and recognized by IDC as providing “the storage architecture of the future.”* 

In the early days, Vast needed to be able to provide their customers with solutions that could improve analytics, content ingress and egress, AI and other compute-intensive workloads where their current infrastructure was slow and failure-prone due to hard drives and complex storage tiering. To do this, as well as develop their innovative software, they had to buy off-the-shelf hardware, install and integrate the software and ship out complete solutions to their customers. This meant time and effort were being spent on aspects of their business that were not core to their value – hardware integration and supply chain management. More importantly, cash was being tied up in the management of it all. To focus on growth, something needed to change.

Start up meets 100 year old Avnet

So why did an agile start-up choose to partner with a company that’s over 100 years old? In the words of Avery Pham, Vice President of Operations, “Vast needed a mix of nimbleness and flexibility but also a partner with the structure, processes and deep-rooted experience to help us scale up, fast. We absolutely needed to focus on being innovative and creative. With a limited time to gain market share, we needed to develop the best products while partnering with someone who could handle seamlessly getting them to our customers as quickly as possible.” It was what their customers demanded. And to do this, they needed to get to market quickly. 

A true partnership

Vast was planning for growth, and hoping for success, but the speed and the scale of that growth has taken both Vast and Avnet along an accelerated journey that neither was expecting. 

Pham explains, “It was a leap of faith. We were placing bets on ourselves, and bets on Avnet – we’ve won on both those bets.” 

A software IP company at its core, the hardware side of the business was a distraction for Vast, and one that slowed them down. They wanted to transition to a software-only business. This would help them show a better margin and also realize a higher market valuation. It would also free up their cash flow and help them build demand and focus on product development and design.

Avnet understood the business need and partnership required by Vast. To make the partnership seamless, Avnet began growing their San Jose integration facility and dedicated portions of it to the Vast business. With Vast headquarters nearby, the engineers and product teams could stay fully engaged and meet on a regular cadence to ensure seamless execution for the long term. Nicole Enright, President of Avnet Integrated Solutions says, “At Avnet, we’re committed to investing in meeting the needs of our customers’ exponential growth. In the case of Vast, we are thrilled that our core capabilities allow them to be even more successful at what they do best, while we are a true value-added partner.” 

Streamlining the process

In the original process flow, Vast would have a series of steps to get their product through their Value Added Reseller (VAR) network and ultimately to the end customer. It took time, money and resources that they did not want to waste. Additionally, they had to manage and work with multiple vendors to accomplish this – which involved hand-offs, delays and errors. Avnet could provide all of this support for Vast as a single partner.

Now, instead of buying off-the-shelf hardware, Vast has been able to develop optimized SKUs to sell through their VAR network. As part of the program design, Avnet and the Vast team worked with Dell to identify the optimal hardware for the Vast family of products. Avnet then manages the purchase and transformation of the hardware ultimately selling finished solutions to Vast’s resellers and customers.

The benefit to Vast in terms of capital utilization and the lack of credit exposure is tremendous. Avnet executes everything on the hardware side including the supply chain management, systems integration, validation, financial transaction and transportation of the product. On the customer side, Avnet uses Direct Connect to set up a financial relationship with 100s of VARs. VARs submit purchase orders and can drop ship products to their end customers allowing Vast to focus on extending their market leadership and driving demand. 

Benefits of being a software only business

Success came quickly and Avnet’s scale meant that Vast could rely on them without worrying about managing the financial side and also providing an  unparalleled service to their VARs. In changing to a software-only business, Avnet was able to help Vast realize their potential.