CLEARWATER, Fla., Sept. 17, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 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 award-winning Solutions Store, powered by StreamOne. As Tech Data Cisco Cloud Partners, 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 services," said Stacy Nethercoat, vice president, Product Marketing, Software and Cloud Services at Tech Data. "As a Cisco Powered provider, Tech Data is enabling resellers to transform their business practices into thriving cloud and managed service providers using the HCS offering."
"For Tech Data, Cisco HCS represents a comprehensive solution for partners seeking to expand their Cisco Powered portfolio," 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 solution that allows partners to create Cisco Powered cloud services around Cisco Collaboration technologies, including Unified Communications (UC), voice, TelePresence®, video and Cisco WebEx®. HCS enables Cisco partners to deliver the full range of Cisco Collaboration functions to the end customer "as-a-service" along with the tools to manage those functions in an automated and flexible 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.
Cisco Powered represents the industry standard for best-in-class services based on Cisco validated architectures. For end customers, Cisco Powered services deliver faster time to value, industry-leading performance, and investment protection through continuous innovation.
"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 based service," said Richard McLeod, senior director of Collaboration Sales at Cisco. "Customers require a unified communications platform that provides 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 managing service levels
Solution providers can differentiate themselves by building upon the Cisco HCS solution 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 as a Cisco Powered provider by bringing Cisco HCS service 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 service 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 .
About Tech Data
Tech Data Corporation is one of the world's largest wholesale distributors of technology products, services and solutions. Its advanced logistics capabilities and value added services enable 120,000 resellers in more than 100 countries to efficiently and cost effectively support the diverse technology needs of end users. To learn more, visit www.techdata.com , or follow us on Facebook and Twitter .
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