CLEARWATER, Fla. (September 17, 2013) – Tech Data Corporation (NASDAQ: TECD) today announced a distribution agreement with collab9, a provider of Cisco-Powered hosted collaboration solutions, to deliver Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) as a service-based offering through its Solutions Store. As a Tech Data Cisco Cloud Partner, resellers will have access to a single order and provisioning source for all their cloud services through the TDCloud business unit. The announcement was made in conjunction with Tech Data’s Fall Channel Link event, being held this week in Anaheim, California.
“The TDCloud business unit is pleased to partner with collab9 to add Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution to its portfolio, which will significantly benefit our channel partners seeking to leverage sophisticated cloud infrastructure,” said Stacy Nethercoat, vice president, Product Marketing, Software and Cloud Services at Tech Data. “With Cisco HCS, Tech Data is enabling resellers to transform their business practices into thriving cloud and managed service providers.”
“Cisco HCS represents a comprehensive white-label solution for partners seeking to expand their Cisco cloud practice,” said Angela Beltz, vice president, Product Marketing, Cisco Solutions Group at Tech Data. “Cisco HCS provides our resellers high-margin opportunities to resell white-label cloud services to end customers. With this service offering, resellers can become more customer-focused and drive a faster time to revenue and improve profitability.”
Cisco HCS is an end-to-end system that allows partners to create subscription-based, “as-a-service” offerings around Cisco Collaboration technologies, including Unified Communications (UC), voice, TelePresence, Video and Cisco WebEx®. The offering includes the full range of Cisco Collaboration functions along with the tools to deliver those functions to the end customer in an automated and predictable manner. The collab9 Cisco-Powered HCS service helps businesses manage complexities in the disparate, BYOD and mobile environments, allowing real-time collaboration to help improve productivity, performance and customer service in an organization.
“As customers’ IT consumption behaviors shift toward cloud and operating expenditures, authorized Tech Data and Cisco resellers can offer increased choice with this new Cisco HCS service,” said Richard McLeod, senior director of Collaboration Sales at Cisco. “Customers require a unified communications platform that ensures reliability and scalability to manage the complexities around BYOD and a mobile workforce. Today’s announcement brings collab9’s Cisco Powered HCS offer to market for Tech Data resellers.”
Benefits of Cisco HCS to solution providers include:
- Delivering a unified user experience
- Optimizing resources and shifting the IT spend from a CAPEX model to an OPEX model
- Improving IT and business agility
- Maintaining control and manage service levels
Solution providers can differentiate themselves by building upon the Cisco HCS foundation with their own products and services, offering high-quality, faster deployment times and services to more customers.
“Our partnership with Tech Data on the Cisco HCS solution is an exciting opportunity for collab9,” said Kevin Schatzle, chief executive officer, collab9. “Solution providers have a proven platform in bringing Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to their end customers. Tech Data adds significant value by bringing Cisco HCS to the channel, further enhancing VAR businesses and adding to the end users’ benefits through reduced costs and complexity and unlocking potential business efficiencies.”
Through the HCS offering, resellers will gain access to Tech Data’s best-in-class partner enablement team supporting profitable growth into cloud services, as well as Momentum, Tech Data’s exclusive customized enablement and education program that helps resellers accelerate their Cisco practices.
Cisco HCS is immediately available to Tech Data’s channel of solution providers through its award-winning Solutions Store. The Solutions Store is powered by Tech Data’s StreamOne platform, an automated technology that scales the business and operational scope associated with cloud and subscription services.
To learn more about Cisco HCS, contact the TDCloud team at (800) 237-8931, ext. 87663, email tdcloud@techdata.com, or visit the TDCloud website.
To speak with one of Tech Data’s dedicated Cisco team members, call (800) 237-8931, ext. 77776, email ciscosales@techdata.com, or visit the Tech Data Cisco Manufacturer Store at www.techdata.com/cisco.