Originally reported by Channel Futures. Published February 2020.
Platform9 Partners with Promark to Expand Kubernetes and OpenStack Distribution
Platform9, a provider of managed Kubernetes and OpenStack services, has signed a distribution agreement with Promark Technology, a subsidiary of IT distribution giant Ingram Micro. The deal gives Platform9’s two flagship products — Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK) and Platform9 Managed OpenStack (PMO) — access to Promark’s established network of value-added resellers (VARs) and channel partners across the United States.
Why the Deal Matters for Platform9
According to Kamesh Pemmaraju, Platform9’s head of product marketing, the primary challenge the company faced before the Promark deal was market awareness. Despite offering what he described as a compelling managed solution, many potential customers were unaware that Platform9 existed — and were instead attempting to build and operate their own Kubernetes environments independently.
“People don’t know about us. We have a very compelling solution but customers don’t know we exist… they try to build this on their own and find it hard to do.”
— Kamesh Pemmaraju, Head of Product Marketing, Platform9
Pemmaraju positioned Platform9’s value proposition as an “easy button” for Kubernetes deployments — a fully managed alternative for organizations that discover, often painfully, that self-managing Kubernetes at scale is far more complex than anticipated. By leveraging Promark’s extensive channel ecosystem, Platform9 gains access to training programs, marketing infrastructure, partner services, and a broad reseller base that would take years to build independently.
What Platform9 Offers: PMK and PMO
Platform9’s two core products address two of the most operationally demanding open-source infrastructure technologies:
- Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK): A SaaS-delivered managed Kubernetes service that supports deployments across public cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud, and on-premises environments. The service is designed to abstract away the operational complexity of cluster provisioning, upgrades, and lifecycle management.
- Platform9 Managed OpenStack (PMO): A managed service that enables organizations to stand up an OpenStack private cloud in minutes, with Platform9 taking responsibility for the full OpenStack lifecycle — including updates, patches, and operational monitoring.
Both products are targeted at enterprises that want the capabilities of these open-source platforms without the significant engineering overhead typically required to operate them reliably.
Promark’s Perspective: Meeting Channel Partner Demand
Jeffrey Brown, President and General Manager of Promark Technology, framed the partnership as a direct response to demand from Promark’s channel partners for cloud-native solutions that help end customers navigate hybrid cloud strategies.
“Our channel partners and resellers look up to us for new born-in-the-cloud technologies. Many organizations search for efficient and affordable ways to implement a hybrid cloud strategy and our partners are there to help them with this mission. Platform9’s managed Kubernetes platform provides a fully automated solution to tackle the challenges of hybrid cloud environments.”
— Jeffrey Brown, President and General Manager, Promark Technology
Brown highlighted the combination of automation, simplified deployment, and cost efficiency as the key attributes that make Platform9’s offering attractive to Promark’s reseller base and their enterprise customers.
Industry Analyst View: Addressing the Kubernetes Skills Gap
Tony Iams, an IT analyst with Gartner at the time of reporting, noted that the deal reflects a broader market dynamic: as Kubernetes adoption accelerates, many organizations lack the in-house engineering expertise to deploy and maintain production-grade Kubernetes clusters.
“As the use of Kubernetes proliferates, organizations that lack the engineering resources to deploy and maintain Kubernetes clusters seek out managed service providers such as Platform9 to automate management of container systems on-premises or in public clouds. By leveraging Platform9’s PMK SaaS offering, Promark will make Kubernetes available to a wider base of mainstream users.”
— Tony Iams, IT Analyst, Gartner (via Channel Futures, February 2020)
Rollout and Availability
At the time of announcement, both PMK and PMO were immediately available through Promark’s distribution channel. Promark’s sales teams had begun training on Platform9’s product portfolio, with additional VAR onboarding sessions scheduled to follow shortly after the announcement.
Context: The Managed Kubernetes Market in 2020
This distribution deal reflects the wider challenge enterprises faced in the early 2020s: Kubernetes had become the de facto container orchestration standard, but operating it reliably required deep expertise in networking, storage, security, and cluster lifecycle management. Managed Kubernetes services — whether from hyperscalers like AWS (EKS), Google (GKE), and Microsoft (AKS), or from independent providers like Platform9 — emerged to bridge that skills gap. For organizations running workloads on-premises or in hybrid environments where hyperscaler-native managed services were not an option, providers like Platform9 offered an alternative path to operational Kubernetes without building a dedicated platform engineering team.
The Promark partnership gave Platform9 a channel-sales mechanism to reach those organizations at scale, particularly mid-market enterprises that typically engage with IT distributors and VARs rather than purchasing directly from vendors.