Jessica Davis

Tech Data’s plans to offer interoperable managed services tools to VARs looking to move into the managed services arena came as no big surprise to industry observers. But the company’s unveiling of its plan goes deeper than the three technology partners—ConnectWise, N-able and Trend Micro—announced during the distributor’s recent TechSelect conference in Salt Lake City. […]

Open-source enterprise messaging provider Scalix plans to enhance its partner program by offering via Red Hat Exchange a subscription version of its e-mail and calendaring product for small businesses, starting this summer. The move makes the technology more widely available to SMBs (small and midsize businesses), company officials said in a statement. The Red Hat […]

VARs and system integrators are of the highest strategic importance to their vendor partners—much more so than distributors, direct market retailers and especially traditional retailers like Best Buy. In fact, traditional VARs, also known as resellers, are considered by vendors to be the most important and strategic type of partners they have. That’s according to […]

Citrix Systems has shuffled its sales organization, naming a new channel chief in the process. Al Monserrat, currently vice president of North America, will now become Citrix’s new channel chief, serving as the company’s vice president of channels, strategy and sales operations. In his new role, Monserrat will be responsible for relationships with the CSA […]

Hewlett-Packard has named an outsider to serve as its new director of volume distribution channels for the Solution Partners Organization in the Americas. Gary Koopman, 52, brings more than 25 years of experience to his new role at the Palo Alto, Calif., computer systems and technology company, where he will oversee all sales, strategy and […]

The financing arm of Cisco Systems is adding another component to the company’s offerings for small and midsize businesses—a 4.5 percent financing program for Cisco Services targeted specifically at SMBs. The move follows several others by Cisco in its efforts to gain more business from the SMB segment—including product introductions aimed at SMBs and an […]

Trend Micro is taking its antivirus and content security software and services to a new usage-based, software-as-a-service license model for North American VARs and will offer the program through IT distributor Tech Data. The deal fits into Tech Data’s ultimate managed services architecture. The Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor last week at its TechSelect conference in Salt […]

Tech Data has reorganized its channel partner support sales organization to provide a more personal touch, increasing the headcount by 15 percent to 20 percent. With the so-called “teams of two” structure, each VAR gets two designated sales people to handle all their needs when they call into Tech Data. “It’s a higher touch model,” […]

IT distributor Tech Data has formed partnerships with managed services platform providers N-able Technologies and ConnectWise as part of an effort to give its VARs a way to get into managed services. The Clearwater, Fla., distributor disclosed the new initiative during its TechSelect conference in Salt Lake City May 3. The N-able platform will offer […]

Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have taken their channel collaboration one step further with a new program called “Bring IT Together” that offers pre-installed Microsoft software on HP products. A limited time promotion, the companies are offering incentives to VARs which sell certain product combinations that include hardware from HP and software from Microsoft. Let Your Voice […]

Computing just scratches the surface of the sales opportunities in the technology industry, and Tech Data is promising to help the company’s VARs win those deals of the future. That was CEO Bob Dutkowsky’s message in his first address to the TechSelect VAR community within Tech Data during that organization’s conference in Salt Lake City […]