Scality Hires Former HPE Exec Peter Brennan As CRO

‘My philosophy and reputation is channel-first. I want to be maniacal not only about the customers but also the partners. Partners will be pleased with what we are doing. And a focus on the channel is not new to Scality,’ says Peter Brennan, who is now responsible for worldwide sales, alliances, channels and related marketing activities at Scality.

Distributed file and object storage technology developer Scality has appointed former Hewlett Packard Enterprise executive Peter Brennan to be the company’s CRO.

Brennan, who previously served as a vice president and managing director at HPE, is responsible for worldwide sales, alliances and channels as well as related marketing activities as Scality’s CRO, Brennan told CRN.

For Brennan, joining Scality was an opportunity to have an impact on a company he said he knows well.

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“Scality has been a key partner to HPE for a while,” he said. “My teams at HPE did a lot of work with Scality and the value the company provided with unstructured data. There are a lot of opportunities in the airline, financial and other customers where Scality can really make a real difference. And I’m ready to pour gas on the fire.”

Scality has always been a channel-friendly company, which Brennan said fits his experience.

“My philosophy and reputation is channel-first,” he said. “I want to be maniacal not only about the customers but also the partners. Partners will be pleased with what we are doing. And a focus on the channel is not new to Scality.”

That focus is even higher on Scality’s Artesca technology, a lightweight, enterprise-grade, secure S3 object storage software aimed at data on the edge launched last year, Brennan said.

“I will be extremely aggressive with the channel with Artesca,” he said. “My goal is to make this a pure channel play. But I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m only in my first week here. But that’s our flag on the hill.”

Brennan said he expects Scality to continue to have a good relationship with HPE.

“But I’m here to also grow our other relationships, including with Supermicro and Cisco,” he said. “Scality is viewed as a trusted partner. I hope the teams know me as a trusted partner as well.”

Hiring Brennan was a smart move for Scality, said Rob Schaeffer, president of CBT, an Orange, Calif.-based solution provider and partner to both Scality and HPE.

Schaeffer said he has known Brennan for 15 to 20 years.

“Peter brings Scality a maturity of leadership in business and data and in how businesses transform going back decades,” he said. “He has continued to rise to leadership positions in many organizations. This needs strength in technology and finance, and how to motivate people. Peter has a great balance of both.”

HPE and Scality have a great relationship, and Scality complements HPE when it comes to object and file storage, Schaeffer said. And because of Brennan’s work at HPE, he will be able to accelerate and grow that relationship, Schaeffer said.

“But I also think that, because of Peter’s skills, it’s not just HPE’s relationship with Scality that will grow,” he said. “Scality will also grow its relationship with Veeam and others because Peter’s well connected in the tech industry.”