Tech Data Hits Home
Norman, Okla.-based Computer Hardware Servicing's business has been up 20 percent in each of the past two years in spite of the tech-spending downturn.
Gray was one of more than 150 TechSelect partners that had access to a wealth of potentially game-changing business opportunities and best practices at the organization's recent get-together in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Gray is ready to sign up for what very well could be the biggest of those opportunities: Tech Data's expanded distribution pact with midrange powerhouse Sun Microsystems.
Under that deal, Sun has created two new partner designations for the distributor: Registered Volume Reseller and Authorized Volume Reseller with access to one- and two-way Sun Fire V210 and V240 SPARC/Solaris servers, as well as StorEdge storage products and related Resource Management Suite and Utilization Suite software. Combine this with the software Sun plans to bring to the table this fall in the form of Project Orion and Mad Hatter, along with its aggressive support of Linux, and you have a rock solid foundation for solution providers looking to grow their services revenue.
Make no mistake. Tech Data, which already supports midrange Unix offerings in Europe, is making a hard and fast push to bring a new level of price-performance to the U.S. midrange market.
Sun, for its part, has made a number of critical changes.
It will fully authorize Tech Data solution providers that provide proof of certification for IBM AIX, HP-UX, SuSE Linux, Red Hat Linux and other platforms. In addition, Sun will prevent its direct-sales force from going after any deals with fewer than 1,000 seats. Finally, Sun has set up a channel structure aimed at ensuring that solution providers buying from Tech Data will not be faced with a price disparity with CDW. That's no small matter.
Ultimately, Gray says Tech Data's Sun deal provides him with breakthrough price-performance and the server and storage firepower to compete with Dell. "That's going to have a big impact on my business," he said.
At the end of the day, that's what TechSelect is all about.
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