Cologix Ramps Up Its Channel Push With Arrow Electronics Partnership

Cologix has signed a distribution agreement with Arrow Electronics as the data center company ramps up its channel strategy.

The partnership is Cologix's first and only major distribution agreement and will bring the full breadth of the company's network-neutral interconnection and colocation data center solutions into the Arrow vendor portfolio. Cologix brings more than 350 unique network options to the Arrow portfolio across eight different U.S. markets.

"Cologix ... strengthens our position as a leader in cloud services aggregation for the mid-tier and enterprise channel,’ said Dee Dee Lear, vice president of cloud and business development for Arrow's North American enterprise computing solutions business, in a statement. ’Our solution provider and managed service provider partners now can build public, private and hybrid IT solutions for their clients and extend their services platforms in key cities."

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Over the past few months, Denver-based Cologix has made a "concerted effort" to invest in and grow its channel, bringing on its first channel chief and focusing on actively recruiting new partners. The channel is a "growing portion of the business" and Cologix is very "happy" about the growth it has seen so far, Vice President of Channels Matt Wilson said in an interview with CRN.

"It's just starting. We've really laid the foundation over the past few months and we're expecting pretty significant [channel] growth in 2015," Wilson said.

The company has recruited a broad range of partners so far, Wilson said, primarily focusing on telecom solution providers, as well as hardware and software VARs and MSPs. The ideal partner, he said, is a solution provider looking to build an end-to-end data center solution and realize the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing that expertise. The distribution agreement with Arrow is the next step in rapidly expanding that partner base, Wilson said.

"The partner portfolio [Arrow] brings to the table is one of the key reasons we wanted to work with them. We think there's a lot of synergies there with our data center products and the partners they're offering," Wilson said.

In particular, Wilson highlighted Arrow's ArrowSphere Platform as a key driver for Cologix to choose the distributor for its channel push. He said the platform made it "pretty straightforward and relatively painless" to onboard and it has "impressive" reach to allow partners to resell and enable cloud solutions. Going forward, Wilson said that Cologix plans to stick with Arrow as its sole distributor for the future.

"From a distribution perspective, I'm very pleased with Arrow, and we're going to focus on Arrow for the time being. I think there's a ton of opportunity to work with Arrow and their partners to really grow our business and partner business," Wilson said.

Beyond that, Wilson said partners could expect to see Cologix continuing to expand its channel efforts and recruiting other large partners, particularly master agents.

PUBLISHED JAN. 13, 2015