Phil Manez, Vice President of GTM Execution at VAST DATA, says the VAST Cosmos Partner Program provides partners with the structure and governance needed to scale AI transformation across the Middle East.
How is VAST Data evolving its global go-to-market strategy to meet the needs of high-growth markets like the Middle East?
VAST Data’s global go-to-market strategy has undergone a significant evolution as high-growth markets such as the GCC accelerate their national AI agendas. These markets are no longer simply adopting cloud or experimenting with AI; they are operationalising AI at a national scale, embedding it into government services, regulated industries, and large enterprises. This shift demands more than a traditional vendor-customer relationship. It requires a coordinated ecosystem with clear standards, predictable delivery, and the ability to support sovereign, hybrid, and hyperscale environments.
Through the VAST Cosmos Partner Program, which is part of the broader Cosmos Community, the company has unified its global partner framework to bring structure, clarity, and consistency across channel partners, cloud providers, hyperscalers, and technology alliances. This unified model ensures that partners in the Middle East can build, validate, and deliver AI-ready solutions on the VAST Data Platform with confidence, whether the deployment is in a sovereign cloud, a hybrid environment, or a large-scale AI factory. The strategy ultimately focuses on enabling trusted local delivery while maintaining global alignment, ensuring that customers benefit from both regional expertise and the strength of a globally consistent operating model.
What role does the channel play in VAST Data’s overall GTM execution, and how central is it to your expansion strategy?
The channel is not just an element of VAST Data’s strategy; it is the backbone of the company’s expansion model. AI infrastructure is never deployed in isolation. It is delivered through a complex ecosystem of integrators, service providers, cloud partners, and advisory-led transformation specialists.
The VAST Cosmos Partner Program was intentionally designed to support multiple routes to market within a single, cohesive framework. This allows partners to participate in one or more motions—whether resale, managed services, cloud delivery, or integration—while benefiting from shared governance, enablement, and a go-to-market structure. In the Middle East, where AI initiatives are often partner-led and tied to national digital strategies, the channel becomes the primary engine for delivery.
VAST expects partners not only to sell technology but also to knit together multiple components, build applications, and deliver end-to-end solutions that help customers move from pilot projects to production-scale AI environments. The company’s focus is on equipping partners with validated architectures, repeatable sales plays, technical enablement, and commercial structures that allow them to deliver confidently and profitably in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Can you outline the key pillars of VAST Data’s channel program and how it differentiates itself from traditional storage vendor models?
The VAST Cosmos Partner Program is built around five foundational principles: unified engagement, validated architectures, structured enablement, tiered progression with transparent benefits, and a centralized partner portal that consolidates training, governance, deal registration, and joint go-to-market assets. What sets Cosmos apart from traditional storage-vendor programs is its focus on AI outcomes rather than hardware transactions.
The storage industry has historically centered its partner programs around product resell motions, but real AI deployments require orchestration across compute, data, networking, and software. VAST Data has deep experience in enabling these complex environments, and Cosmos was designed to reflect that reality. The program brings together hyperscalers, ISVs, platform vendors, GSIs, and resellers under one inclusive ecosystem model. This ensures that delivery standards remain consistent, deployments are repeatable, and customers achieve success at scale.
How are you strengthening relationships with distributors and value-added partners across the Middle East to accelerate regional adoption?
VAST Data has placed significant emphasis on strengthening relationships with distributors and value-added partners across the Middle East by focusing on clarity, predictability, and structured engagement. Partners consistently express the need for a clear framework that defines how they engage with vendors—from technical validation through to delivery and long-term support.
Cosmos formalizes this through structured onboarding, defined routes to market, and clear expectations around validation, enablement, and delivery quality. This eliminates ambiguity and makes growth repeatable. In a region where AI adoption is accelerating at unprecedented speed, predictability and alignment become essential. Cosmos provides the foundation for partners to scale confidently, ensuring that every engagement follows a consistent methodology and that partners have the tools and support required to deliver high-quality outcomes.
What specific enablement, training, or co-selling support does VAST Data provide to help partners build profitable practices around your platform?
Enablement is a core pillar of the Cosmos program, and VAST Data has invested heavily in building structured pathways for sales, technical, and services readiness. These pathways include role-based learning tracks designed to help partners develop repeatable AI practices rather than bespoke, one-off deployments.
The company is launching new certifications at VAST Forward, its global user conference, and will roll these out worldwide shortly thereafter. In addition, VAST has aligned technical validation, architectural guidance, and joint go-to-market resources within a single partner portal, eliminating the friction of navigating disconnected systems.
The overarching goal is to make AI solution delivery scalable, predictable, and profitable for partners. By providing validated architectures, repeatable sales plays, and integrated co-selling support, VAST ensures that partners can build sustainable practices that grow alongside the region’s AI ambitions.
How are you adapting your GTM motions to align with the region’s shift toward AI, data-intensive workloads, and sovereign cloud requirements?
The Middle East is prioritizing AI at a national level, with sovereignty and governance requirements that are particularly stringent in government and regulated industries. VAST Data has been an early partner to Core42, supporting the development of sovereign AI environments that operate within local jurisdictions and meet national compliance requirements. More broadly, the Cosmos program aligns hyperscalers, cloud service providers, infrastructure vendors, and integration partners within a single framework, enabling validated architectures that operate seamlessly across sovereign, hybrid, and on-premises environments.
AI workloads are inherently data-intensive and often compliance-sensitive, requiring architectures that deliver extreme performance while respecting locality and governance requirements. VAST’s ecosystem approach ensures that partners can deliver solutions that meet these demands, enabling customers to operationalize AI securely and at scale.
What investments is VAST Data making to ensure partners can deliver consistent customer experience, from pre-sales to deployment and long-term support?
Consistency is achieved through standards, enablement, and accountable delivery. VAST Data already maintains industry-leading NPS scores and exceptional customer retention rates, but the introduction of Cosmos formalizes the processes that underpin this success. The program includes structured onboarding, tiered benefits, aligned governance, and centralized enablement resources that ensure partners follow consistent methodologies. By unifying alliance, cloud, and channel tracks, VAST reduces variability in how solutions are positioned, validated, and delivered. This alignment ensures that customers experience the same architectural standards and delivery quality from pre-sales through deployment and long-term optimisation.
A key addition is the Authorized Services Partner initiative, which expands installation and services capacity through trained and validated partners globally. This not only scales delivery but also diversifies revenue from partner-led services. The result is a predictable, high-quality customer experience across the entire lifecycle—from discovery and design to deployment, adoption, and ongoing optimization.
Looking ahead to 2026, what are your top priorities for expanding VAST Data’s channel ecosystem in the Middle East, and where do you see the biggest growth opportunities?
As VAST Data looks toward 2026, the company’s priorities center on deepening local alignment rather than broadening partner volume. The focus is on strengthening relationships with sovereign AI initiatives, expanding reference architectures with regional vendors and integrators, and enhancing collaboration with GSIs and service providers capable of operationalizing AI at scale.
Over the past two years at GITEX, VAST has signed multiple MoUs to support these efforts, and more recently, ahead of VAST Forward, Kerno announced a new agreement to explore joint opportunities. The biggest growth opportunity in the region lies at the intersection of AI infrastructure, hybrid cloud modernization, and national data strategy.
As governments and enterprises continue to build AI-ready infrastructure, the demand for data platforms, GPU-optimized architectures, and sovereign cloud capabilities will only intensify. Cosmos provides the structure to scale responsibly and consistently across these domains, ensuring that partners can meet the region’s rapidly evolving requirements with confidence and precision.
