Tech Data has announced the addition of Amazon Web Services to its TDCloud vendor lineup and is eyeing other major and emerging cloud vendors as it moves forward with its new cloud push.

According to Bharath Natarajan, director of Tech Data's new TDCloud business unit, the addition of Amazon Web Services to the TDCloud program will arm solution providers with significantly more opportunities in the fast-growth market of cloud storage.

"The reason why Amazon is really important is that, within the category of storage, Amazon is a dominant player," Natarajan told CRN during an interview at Tech Data's TechSelect conference in Puerto Rico this week. Natarajan made note of Amazon recently claiming one of the top spots in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for cloud offerings and said that Tech Data is already holding conversations with five other major vendors that appeared on that grid.

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That said, Natarajan stressed the strict process through which cloud vendors are vetted and evaluated -- both in terms of their product offerings and their relationships with the channel -- before being added to the TDCloud program.

"Tech Data from the get go has said, 'We're not going to throw out this fish net and drag in anybody who wants to be in [the TDCloud] line card," Natarajan said. "We want to go find folks ... that makes sense, and that there's demand for."

Vendors included in the TDCloud lineup fall under eight different categories, ranging from backup and data recovery to content management and security. Other major cloud vendors, including HP, Microsoft, IBM, VMware and Intermedia, already participate in the TDCloud program.

With Amazon now added to the mix, Tech Data partners will have access to the full Amazon Web Services portfolio, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Simple Storage Service, AWS Storage Gateway and Amazon Relational Database Service.

Tech Data in September launched a separate business unit for TDCloud, in an effort to arm VARs with the dedicated training and sales resources they need to transition to the cloud. That business unit is spearheaded by Natarajan, who said Tech Data's cloud business has been growing steadily over the past year.

"We've actually had active, incredible sales in the last year -- about 1,000 partners, which is phenomenal ... and that continues to grow. And remember, the business unit just came out a couple months of go," Natarajan said.

"The material aspects here aren’t really the number of vendors you have or the number of offers you have. It's around how many partners are transacting with you, how many seats are you selling, what kind of revenue are you pumping through," he continued. "So in all those areas, we are really doing very well. And we continue to execute."

PUBLISHED NOV. 9, 2012