With the industry thriving on innovation, there are blurred lines between who is competition and who is a partner. However, the reality in delivering Big Data and cloud services to the enterprise is you must have collaboration.

Nelson Nahum, cofounder and CEO at Zadara Storage, Inc., joined Stu Miniman and Brian Gracely, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at Amazon re:Invent 2015 in Las Vegas to discuss partnership and growth in the storage industry.

Storage-as-a-Service market grows

Zadara Storage just announced that the company achieved consistent and major growth across all categories for the past three years. Nahum said the significant growth in the Storage-as-a-Service market is due to a pay-as-you-go model – replacing the company’s older CapEx arrays.

Hybrid story

According to Nahum, the Zadara Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) offers the enterprise a variety of options to connect with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS). “Our services complement AWS in many ways … we are a good partner with Amazon because the customer has a seamless experience,” he said.

On the customer end, the service looks like a traditional array but it is located in the cloud. Nahum explained, “Customers love the possibility of running in a cloud environment, but the traditional offering looks so different from cloud storage, it makes it seem complicated to the enterprise.” Zadara offers the customer both on-premise and cloud solutions.

Managing relationships

When asked about his relationship with AWS, Nahum responded, “Partner or competitor? It all depends on what department you’re dealing with at Amazon Web Services.” He went on to say that Amazon is an amazing partner, but when you talk to their storage people, they see Zadara as competition.

The CEO is excited that Amazon is releasing new features. He believes they are a top innovator in the cloud. He wants to attract customers to the cloud and work with companies like AWS that maintain a leading edge.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Amazon re:Invent 2015. And join in  the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE