Ingram Micro, the world’s largest IT products distributor, has teamed with MaintenanceNet to offer its VARs a Web portal specifically designed for Cisco products.
The new portal, called Cisco Services Quick Quote Tool, will help Ingram’s VARs with the ordering and pricing of Cisco products.
The portal consolidates a number of applications, such as ordering services and regional pricing, into a single location.
That service works with vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco, and the two companies said other vendors are scheduled to join in the future.
Research firm IDC, based in Framingham, Mass., has estimated that about 50 percent of maintenance contracts are allowed to expire, and the servicing of those contracts has turned into a bigger and bigger priority for distributors and the channel.