Channel News Briefs: Week of Aug. 24

Ingram Micro Expands Services to Government Channel Partners

Ingram Micro has increased its dedicated resources, support services and enablement tools to help its U.S. channel partners address the IT needs of the federal government during the fiscal year-end buying season. To help create bigger opportunities for qualified U.S. channel partners focused on federal government sales, Ingram Micro is providing extended partner sales and technical support, additional credit capacity, and a 24/7 hotline for afterhours requests, escalations and support.

Partners also have access to the GSA Schedule and GSA order desk supported by Promark Technology as well as trade-compliant products, solutions and services to meet federal requirements. Professional services include virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and wireless assessment services, asset management/disposal and a portfolio of cloud solutions.

Tech Data Adds Unitrends DRaaS to Solutions Store

Unitrends has announced that Tech Data is now offering disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) to its worldwide network of more than 115,000 resellers. Unitrends DRaaS is available through Tech Data’s TDCloud business unit in the company’s Solutions Store, which is powered by its StreamOne platform, an automated buying, selling, provisioning and billing system for cloud and subscription-based services technology.

The partnership expands Unitrends channel presence while simplifying the ordering process for its IT channel. TDCloud Services has offered Unitrends virtual and physical backup and recovery appliances to its reseller partners for almost a year, and with the addition of DRaaS, its resellers can now offer a complete suite of virtual, physical and cloud data protection products.

Palo Alto Networks Extends Distribution Partnership With Westcon

Palo Alto Networks, a provider in enterprise security, and Westcon Group, a value-added distributor of security, unified communications, network infrastructure and data center solutions, have expanded their global distribution agreement that opens up new markets for the enterprise security platform.

The two companies have held regional distribution relationships for several years. Under the new deal, the companies will do business in more than 40 countries, providing resellers access to a full technology ecosystem and more efficient global business operations.

Hostway Offers Private-Labeled Cloud for Resellers

Hostway Services, a cloud hosting provider, has launched Cloud Connex, a hosted cloud reseller/partner platform that enables VARs, marketing agencies, system integrators and managed service providers to sell private-label cloud services with no internal infrastructure or development costs. The platform features a brandable storefront template, customer portal for end user on-boarding and self-serve provisioning, and integrated billing and payment processing.

Resellers also have full control over customer pricing as well as the customer relationship, which Hostway said is unavailable from providers like Rackspace, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Hostway also offers a tiered 5 percent to 20 percent discount structure that rewards partners with larger discounts and payouts as aggregated monthly recurring revenue increases. Cloud Connex is now in beta and will soon be available for general availability.