Customer Success, Awards, and New Solutions throughout 2023, an Exceptional Year for Infinidat

Infinidat had a big, bold year: 30 awards and recognitions; 5 new solutions; double-digit growth in bookings; expanded 5-star channel partner program; positive ROI delivery for enterprise customers in only 11 months, and top scores from large enterprise customers for innovation and white glove service in customer reviews on the Gartner Peer Insights site. How sweet it is!

And away we go on this journey of a look back at the past 12 months as the leader in enterprise storage. 2023 was a year of innovation that is easy to integrate into enterprise infrastructure and hybrid cloud deployments; customer success that is contagious; significant enhancements that made Infinidat’s channel partner program even more beneficial to partners; and positive ROI for enterprise storage for economic certainty in uncertain macroeconomic times.

Awards & Recognitions
We kicked off the year in style. We didn’t just win one Product of the Year award; we won two Product of the Year Awards for Infinidat’s continuing innovation. TechTarget selected our InfiniBox™ SSA II – an all-flash storage array – as the “Gold Winner” in the Storage Product of the Year “The Best Enterprise Storage Arrays” category. TechTarget also named our InfiniGuard® solution as the “Gold Winner” in the Storage Product of the Year “The Top Backup and Disaster Recovery Services” category. These are among the most prestigious global awards in the storage industry.

We rounded out the year with our strong showing in the upper right-hand quadrant of a Gartner Magic Quadrant. Infinidat was named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage, marking the 6th year consecutive year that Gartner has recognized Infinidat in enterprise storage. We believe this recognition builds on our momentum of strong growth and execution in 2023.

Other awards and recognitions of note included:

• Infinidat was recognized as 2023 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice in Gartner’s Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer: Primary Storage” for the fourth time. The feedback, which is validated by Gartner, showcases our powerful mix of innovative solutions and providing an excellent customer experience
• IT analyst firm GigaOm recognized Infinidat as a Leader and an Outperformer in primary storage for large enterprises
• GigaOm named Infinidat as the industry Leader and Fast Mover in block and filed-based ransomware protection for primary storage
• Storage analyst firm DCIG named InfiniBox SSA II/InfiniBox® one of the world’s top 5 high-end storage arrays
• Storage Magazine, UK named Infinidat a Winner in the Storage Optimization Company of the Year category and a Runner Up in three categories – Editor’s Choice – Product award, Performance Storage Vendors of the Year, and the Storage Innovators Award
• The InfiniBox SSA II received a Best of Show Award at the Flash Memory Summit 2023, recognized as “Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation”
• Infinidat won the Top 50 Executive Team Award and the Top 50 Marketing Team Award in the 2023 OnCon Icon Awards.

New Solutions in 2023
Building on our technological leadership in enterprise storage, Infinidat had a great year of new platform introductions, including:

1. InfiniSafe® Cyber Detection
2. InfuzeOS™ Cloud Edition
3. SSA Express Software
4. New, larger capacity InfiniBox SSA II
5. Scale-up offerings for the InfiniBox SSA II

Infinidat's InfiniSafe Cyber Detection helps enterprises resist, avoid, and recover from cyberattacks. Infinidat is now one of the very few storage vendors to offer cyber detection on primary storage.

With the launch of InfuzeOS Cloud Edition, we put our comprehensive, software-defined storage capabilities into the AWS public cloud to enable and support the hybrid cloud storage deployments of enterprise customers. This provides a consistent core-to-cloud experience.

In Q4 2023, Infinidat started shipping SSA Express Software, providing a fast, all-flash engine integrated into the hybrid array. SSA Express Software eliminates the need for enterprises to purchase a separate siloed flash array to support smaller applications and workloads that require high performance at low latency.

Furthermore, Infinidat expanded its InfiniBox SSA II solution in September 2023 with a new model that delivers double the capacity, along with partially populated models in a scale-up architecture for greater flexibility and control. Infinidat now provides a scale-up architecture with 60%, 80% and 100% populated models.

The doubling of the SSA II's capacity gives enterprises the ability to advance a greener data center with reduced enterprise power and cooling needs, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) beyond what is currently possible with competitors’ systems. Reducing power usage per effective PB by enlarging the capacity within the same sized rack meets sustainability requirements and fulfills the promise of green IT.

First with Customers
It has been a year of dazzling “slam dunks” with customers. The Detroit Pistons selected Infinidat as its #1 pick for enterprise storage. Further, customers ranging from Fortune 50 customers and cloud service providers to financial institutions to data-driven enterprises, such as a gaming equipment maker and a karaoke system market leader, validated and endorsed Infinidat. Enterprise customers realize the unique combination of business and technical value that we deliver.

Positive ROI
In 2023, we took a big step forward by quantifying the financial benefits our enterprise customers gain with a strong return on investment (ROI) and extremely fast payback on our InfiniBox solutions. The result is the IDC “The Business Value of Infinidat Storage” White Paper. This independent research found that the payback for an enterprise’s purchase of an InfiniBox hybrid storage solution is 11 months, showing a rapid ROI for an enterprise-class, cyber resilient storage platform.

This IDC research also revealed that our customers realize significant additional value, with an average annual benefit of $1.29 million per organization and a 162% ROI. Infinidat is fundamentally changing the economics of enterprise storage, creating significant business value for organizations with large capacity storage needs.

Supporting the Channel
For channel partners, we introduced a series of new initiatives, extensions and updates to our partner program worldwide. Partners remain core to our business, and we continue to invest heavily in the channel. We created a new sales enablement and training program, called the Infuziast Certified Partner Program. We delivered enhancements to our EMEA and APJ channel partner programs. Infinidat’s channel team was also expanded globally. We also announced partner advisory boards and partner tech clubs – all in the interest of supporting, equipping, and inspiring our channel partners.

Recognition of our channel partner program and leadership was a strong validation. Infinidat earned a 5-star rating in CRN’s Partner Program Guide for the second consecutive year. Infinidat was also named to the 2023 CRN 100 list in the Software-Defined Storage category. In addition, CRN named Mitch Diodato as a 2023 Channel Chief. Mitch is the Senior Director of Channel Sales for the Americas at Infinidat. James “JT” Lewis is Infinidat’s Director of Channel Sales for EMEA and APJ.

The Infinidat community of customers, partners, and employees is thriving on multiple fronts, and we’re heading into 2024 with innovative, value-optimized solutions that are right-sized for the changing needs and requirements of enterprise storage. To use a sports analogy, we’re at the top of our game.