PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
We round up the latest channel partnerships, distribution deals, partner programmes and more from the IT and tech industry.
TECH DATA PARTNERS WITH DICOTA AND BITTITAN
Tech Data is now stocking the full range of high-end mobile bags and cases from DICOTA, one of the Europe’s leading manufacturers of accessory products, presenting resellers and retailers with an ‘exceptional’ margin-making add-on opportunity.
DICOTA plays mainly in the mid-to-high quality end of the market and some of its products carry retail prices that run into three figures.
“The bags, backpacks, business trolleys and carrying solutions from DICOTA are already very popular in many European countries and we see bags of potential for our professional stockists in the UK,” said Simon Hughes, category manager for accessories at Tech Data.
“The quality, design and the protective effect for high-quality mobile devices were convincing enough for us. From a reseller point of view, we also see the benefits of DICOTA products mainly targeting the mid- and premium segments. For retail, this produces an attractive margin opportunity in a market that is fairly saturated with nondescript, no-name solutions.”
This week, Tech Data has also announced a partnership with BitTitan, the cloud enablement services provider available on the StreamOne platform, making it easy for resellers to access and use its solutions whenever they are needed for a customer transition.
BitTitan’s market-leading MigrationWiz and DeploymentPro solutions provide a fast and easy way to transfer mailboxes and data from any platform to Office 365, with auto-scaling and configuration in the cloud and zero downtime. The availability of these solutions in via StreamOne will enable resellers to manage migrations to Office 365 quickly and efficiently.
EXERTIS APPOINTMENTS AND STORMAGIC DEAL
Exertis announced it has increased its investment in specialist print and channel support resource following a period of consistent growth. New roles see Exertis recruit a Ricoh specialist for the first time, an Oki specialist, three print dedicated field-based channel account managers, and two new business managers to oversee the office automation (OA) and commercial sectors.
Jamie Brothwell, Exertis’ print general manager commented: “the print business has grown significantly year-on-year on all scores and for us to continue to support our customers it is the right time to invest in the specialist and channel support teams.
“Customers can now directly benefit from our more in-depth knowledge of vendor technologies, increased face-to-face touch points, and accelerated insight into opportunities such as office automation.”
Sam Halstead (Ricoh) and Emily Davy (Oki) are vendor market and technical trained and equipped to advise and support Exertis customers with their specific print needs. The three field-based channel team recruits will directly support resellers with their general print business and in areas of bespoke delivery services, pre-delivery inspections and vendor technologies such as Samsung OA, Oki Executive Series and Lexmark BSD.
The sector business managers for OA and commercial will provide market insight, support and education across all vendors Exertis supply so resellers and the Exertis sales teams have ready access to up-to-the-minute product, promotion and market opportunity information.
Exertis has also announced a distribution partnership with StorMagic, a software-defined storage company, and the launch of a new range of validated Lenovo and SvSAN hyper-converged solutions for small to medium sized businesses.
SvSAN from StorMagic eliminates the need for physical SANs in high availability and load balancing environments, without compromising on performance. Leveraging Lenovo’s portfolio of enterprise servers, resellers can choose from three configurations that include StorMagic’s SvSAN software-defined virtual storage platform providing a high-capacity hyper-convergence solution that is reliable, simple and scaleable.
Gareth Bray, head of commercial enterprise solutions at Exertis, said: “The combination of StorMagic and Lenovo provides a powerful proposition for our customers. With a choice of options, our resellers can deliver a trusted solution that provides high class performance for smaller companies that have more modest budgets.”
INGRAM ACQUIRES COMMS-CARE
Ingram Micro has acquired Comms-care, a leading provider of technical services to the IT channel.
Comms-care’s services include pre-sales support, configuration, professional services, maintenance and managed services designed to enable channel partners in delivering a cost effective total solution in the fast growing networking and data center solutions markets. Comms-care delivers expertise through its growing 225 staff members and 130+ field based vendor accredited consultants exclusively through channel partners supporting security for public and hybrid cloud solutions.
Comms-care currently serves approximately 850 channel partners and customers in the U.K., holding accreditations with Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft, and VMWARE along with technical capability in Dell, HP, IBM, Juniper, NetApp and Lenovo.
Brent McCarty, Ingram Micro vice president and chief country executive UK, commented: “The addition of Comms-care supports our strategy to expand our global capabilities and expertise in fast growing, high value markets. Comms-care offers a unique opportunity as they have developed a well-respected, unique services model that exclusively serves the channel. We are delighted to welcome the Comms-care team to Ingram Micro.”
