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Tech Data
Tech Data believes solution providers fall into three camps -- cloud resellers, cloud providers and cloud builders -- and has a standard fare of offerings for each camp under its TDCloud brand.
The distributor defines a cloud reseller as a company looking to leverage existing public cloud infrastructures with minimal investment; a cloud provider as a company that has invested in its own infrastructure and wants to offer cloud services on a recurring revenue basis; and a cloud builder as a company selling servers, storage, networking, security and more to build private clouds for end-user customers.
Earlier this year, Tech Data launched TDCloud Academy with Microsoft to help solution providers develop their practice in one of those three areas.
Tech Data believes its have-it-your-way attitude will attract the attention of solution providers of all types.
In addition, Tech Data is poised to launch StreamOne 2.0, an upgraded version of its software sales platform capable of selling cloud services in a solution store format, according to Joe Quaglia, senior vice president of marketing at Tech Data.
The distributor has more than 20 vendors signed to sell cloud services through StreamOne and expects that number to increase exponentially in 2012, Quaglia said.
What's really neat is the vendor or cloud provider has total visibility into what's being sold. The VAR is in total control of provisioning and adding and removing services across their customer base, he said.
Later in the first quarter, Tech Data plans to update StreamOne again to enable solution providers to create their own storefronts for customers to purchase software and services.
Some people think [the cloud] is a threat. Others think it's a game-changing opportunity. Tech Data is in the game-changing bucket, said Bob Dutkowsky, CEO of Tech Data.
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