Three channel veterans have “got the band back together” to launch a specialist distributor pursuing first-mover status in AI and quantum technologies.
Founded by Jason Rabbetts, Rick Russ and Mark Walker, Kodata emerged from stealth mode last month.
It counts Fsas Technologies, Graid Technology and Speedata among its vendors.
The trio worked in storage distribution together in the 1990s at Ideal Hardware, with Rabbetts and Russ since going on to build and sell two VARs and Walker working in distribution and vendor land.
“We’ve got the band back together,” COO Walker said.
“Jason and I went for a coffee, and came to the conclusion there was a market opportunity for a specialist distributor focusing on parts of the market that aren’t really covered by other players in distribution very well,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“Quantum is coming”
Serving resellers, MSPs and neo-clouds, Kodata will focus on four technology pillars in the shape of HPC and AI, quantum technologies, modern data platforms and operational intelligence.
Quantum computing is “developing quickly”, Walker stressed, with figures from McKinsey suggesting the market could grow from $4bn to $72bn over the next decade and ‘Q-Day’ (an unspecified date when quantum computers can break encryption) looming.
“Quantum is coming, and we want to be a first mover in that space,” Walker said.
“Our opportunity today is to harden or improve the security of today’s infrastructure to meet the threats posed by the forthcoming wave of quantum.
“This is an area of the market the channel simply hasn’t addressed at all, but it’s coming – we believe it will be an industry mega trend just like AI or virtualisation or the internet before it.”
“You can’t have a moving target”
Kodata has “taken great care wherever possible” to select vendors who do not directly compete, Walker said.
Its full vendor roster comprises Quantum Dice, Speedata, LogZilla, Remedio, Concentric AI, Cubbit, Cornelis Networks, Fsas Technologies, Graid Technology, Regatta, TeamsFox, PEAK.AIO, EnQuanta, Positron, Liqid, Airia, Platform9 and Tintri.
Server, storage and HPC vendor Fsas Technologies’ recent commitment to stand behind its partner pricing for a month is providing a “competitive differentiator” amid the current memory crisis, Walker claimed.
“No channel partner, in my many years of experience, can operate on the basis that you don’t know how much you’re going to pay for the kit once you’ve sold it to the end user. You can’t have a moving target,” he said.
The UK specialist distribution market saw a spate of new entrants around 10 years ago in the form of cyber specialists Kite, Ignition andDistology.
“Frankly, we’d be a day late and a dollar short in trying to carve out a space in the general cyber security market,” Walker said.
“So we’re side-stepping that and focusing very much on the quantum cryptography opportunity, where we’ve got the expertise, strategy, and hopefully execution, to do something different.
“We want to grow the business quickly in revenue terms.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
