Solution Provider Carousel Industries Launches First-Ever Partner Program, Expects It To Be 'Major Growth Engine'

Carousel Industries is launching its first-ever partner program allowing solution providers to bundle and resell Carousel's portfolio of solutions and services, planning to become a one-stop shop for partners to fulfill customer needs.

"We're unique in the industry in terms of offering both the suite of services from managed services to security, video and data infrastructure, including Cisco, that we know we're going to market with something special and very different from any other master agent," said Tim Kennedy, vice president of carrier services at Carousel, in an interview with CRN.

The Carousel National Agent Partner Program is opened to VARs, MSPs and telecom agents to leverage the solution provider's more than 400 architects around networking, cloud, carrier, hosted, data center, managed services, inventory management, IT outsourcing, security and unified communications and collaboration.

[Related: Carousel Industries IoT-Enables Health Care Provider With Compete Upgrades In 14 Facilities]

Founded in 1992, the Exeter, R.I.-based solution provider is ranked No. 64 on CRN's 2016 Solution Provider 500 list and partners with the likes of Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and Verizon.

"This is for partners who just don’t have a home for things like service contracts or Cisco SmartNet, or for managed services – we do so many things with [Microsoft] Skype For Business, we're known for being a big Avaya partner – we just have so much to offer," said Darryl Senese, director of Carousel's carrier services business. "Then when you add our geographic coverage as far as our 27 offices, there's not a lot we can't do."

To lead its channel program, Carousel hired channel veteran Anthony Cavotta in January as director of Carousel's partner program. Cavotta previously spent 17 years at Windstream Communications with his last position as Senior Channel Manager.

Solution providers who join the program can leverage Carousel's back office and project management support team. Carousel's team of technicians provide service and support that enable partners to improve the overall customer experience and revenue potential, said Kennedy.

"Most of the master agents leverage their contract vehicles to allow smaller partners to take advantage of some of their terms and commission rates, but very few have the project management resources that we have," Kennedy said. "A telecom agent or a VAR that doesn't have a carrier practice, can work through us and know that we're going to support every installation from carrier to services with the full support of our project management team."

Carousel’s channel team will help to facilitate and manage the relationships between Carousel and its agent community that sell its solutions to end users. Agents oversee the administrative and financial transactions to ensure the sales process runs smoothly, according to the company. Carousel's team works with agents to support events, train their teams and partners, provide sales and marketing tools and resources and generate new revenue.

Carousel expects the partner program to "be a major growth engine for the company," said Kennedy.

In October, Carousel completed its acquisition of Atrion with the goal of becoming a $1 billion company. The solution provider also became a Cisco partner in 2016 after years of only reselling competitors.

Each step of the way, Carousel becomes aims to become more valuable to its channel partners.

"Our partners can leverage our extensive, differentiated portfolio of services and solutions to ensure they are bringing best-in-class offerings to their customers to augment and improve the overall customer experience," said James Marsh, chief revenue officer at Carousel, in a statement. "In so doing, they can become a one-stop-shop for their clients’ needs."