Tech Data Adds Cisco-Powered Peak 10 Hybrid Cloud, Services To TDCloud Portfolio

Tech Data teamed up with Peak 10 to offer a Cisco-powered hybrid cloud solution to its partners, the distributor said Wednesday at its Channel Link event.

The Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution is now available through Tech Data's TDCloud business unit in the division's Solution Store. Peak 10's technology creates a hybrid cloud environment powered by Cisco and backed up with managed services. Peak 10 offers a wide range of solutions, now available through Tech Data, including public and private cloud options with disaster recovery, security, performance and governance.

Cisco Cloud Services Resellers will earn incremental rebates from Peak 10 sales through Tech Data and will receive bundled offers as well.

[Related: Tech Data: Our No. 1 Duty Is To Make Partners Successful ]

"The partners that we have on the Peak 10 side have been fantastic. The excitement, the support, the commitment that Peak 10 has to the channel, to partners and to the program is phenomenal," said Angie Beltz, vice president of Tech Data's Cisco Solutions Group, part of the Advanced Infrastructure Solutions division. "I am just thrilled with this partnership."

The Cisco and Peak 10 partnership is crucial for Tech Data and its partners as partners are evolving their cloud usage from a development focus to needing a production-class cloud, Bharath Natarajan, director of product marketing for TDCloud and Software Services, said.

"It's brilliant timing," Natarajan said.

According to Beltz, the distributor aims to not only provide the Peak 10 technology and services but also to enable partners to use it to their full potential. To that end, Tech Data has invested training and in providing the right systems to scale such as recurring billing and normalized invoices. The Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor already has certified 300 of its own sales force on the Peak 10 offering to provide the best frontline support to its partners, and plans to extend the training and certification to partners soon as well.

"From an enablement perspective, it's not just, 'Here's the offering and good luck,' " Beltz said. "For us [at Tech Data] the real heavy lifting is the enablement piece. We have to make these partners feel comfortable and confident that they can sell the solution with the end user."

Robert Braceland, vice president of sales for Entre Computer Center, West Springfield, Mass., said that his strategy for approaching cloud solutions is to make sure they "make sense" for each customer, which means focusing efforts around Office 365, disaster recovery and backup, and more.

The channel has been evolving rapidly over the past three to five years, Beltz said, and Tech Data is looking to help partners make the best possible technology and services choices in the transition. Partnerships, such as the one with Peak 10, are carefully vetted, she said.

"There's so much complexity that’s happening there, and not all of it is relevant to every partner. What we do is ... we take this massive knowledge and we [digest it into a] 'CliffsNotes' version as it relates to each vertical, its segment," Natarajan said. "It's basically a one-stop shop."

Natarajan said that Tech Data is always looking for new "pioneering and dominant partners" to bring into the TDCloud portfolio. Beltz said there are already some "really exciting" deals in the works to expand the portfolio.

PUBLISHED APRIL 10, 2014