Qumulo needed EMEA crew, and an ex-Isilon bunch worked out nicely

Commercial scale-out filesystem startup Qumulo is setting up shop in Europe and using ex-Isilon execs to run its show.

Thore Rabe was a Dell EMC Isilon VP who ran the EMEA operation. He becomes Qumulo's VP and General Manager for Europe. Dr Stefan Radtke was CTO for Isilon in EMEA. He is now Qumulo's CTO for the same region.

Radtke tells us there is a sales rep in the UK and more in Germany, with a systems engineer in both countries.There will be a team covering the rest of Europe. He said that they hadn't needed to approach people – all the hirees, many ex-Isilon, approached Qumulo first. There has been no comeback from Dell EMC about this.

Qumulo is onboarding channel partners, with two already in the UK, two in Germany and talks ongoing with another in France.

The existing partnership with HPE, whereby it sells its Apollo hardware with Qumulo's software, is also being extended to Europe, meaning Qumulo will have a substantial presence in Europe quite quickly.

+RegComment

It seems to Vulture Central's storage desk that Fujitsu – with its European presence, x86-based server line, and no modern scale-out file system product – is a natural EMEA partner for Qumulo. Such a deal would provide scale-out file system cover for its NFLEX converged system deal with NetApp.

As Rabe and Radktke will have a good knowledge of Isilon's European customers, they should be able to hit the ground running and start selling Qumulo's claimed innovations and benefits against Isilon and its 15-17-year-old OneFS software. ®