While so much of technology spending has suffered from the ravages of the recession over the last nine months, a few areas have enjoyed relative immunity, and storage and virtualization technologies are often mentioned as two of those areas.

Now Ingram Micro, recognizing the strength of and demand for those technologies, is offering a way to help solution providers demonstrate their benefits to end customers. The Ingram Micro Infrastructure Technology Solutions Division this week announced that it will create an EMC Velocity2 Solution Center partner training and demonstration lab at its Solution Center in Buffalo, N.Y.

“We’ve seen a steady increase in demand from our partner base for more resources and support offerings around data center solutions and virtualization in particular,” says Keith Bradley, president of Ingram Micro North America. “Demand for more education, training, resources and solutions has spiked in the last six to nine months, in part due to economic drivers which are forcing businesses to cut costs, optimize the business and reduce real estate.”

He notes that managed infrastructure has also become a big opportunity for solution providers, especially those targeting midmarket and small enterprises, and those that have an established managed services practice.

“It’s always easier to sell when the buyer can test-drive the product or service and see it in action—try before you buy,” says Bradley. “That’s especially true when you’re dealing with big purchases and more complex technologies such as those found within the data center.”

The new EMC Velocity2 Solution Center will enable demonstrations for backup, recovery, archive and virtualization solutions in real-world application environments, according to Ingram Micro. It is also designed to offer technical training around EMC data center architecture and VMware virtualization.

The solution center will also offer solution providers access to reference architectures, Web-based presentations and prospect-facing demonstrations that showcase and address six of the most common business challenges facing today’s small business and midmarket customers.

It is available now exclusively to EMC-accredited channel partners in the United States.