Westcon Group Adds Cirrity To Lineup As Cloud Market Opportunity Grows

In the distributor's latest move to boost its cloud portfolio, Westcon Group has added Cirrity to its lineup.

Cirrity is a channel-only cloud service provider that offers Cisco Systems-powered white-labeled, secure and compliant cloud solutions. Cirrity will be added to Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Westcon Group's growing Comstor business practice, which focuses exclusively on distributing Cisco solutions around data centers, unified communications, security and networking.

The solutions being added to the Comstor portfolio include disaster recovery services, backup-as-a-service, desktop-as-a-service and VMware vCloud-based HIPAA- and PCI-compliant cloud servers.

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"At Cirrity, our only focus is delivering 'as-a-service' offerings for the channel. Our technology is specifically designed to help VARs and service providers incorporate cloud services into their business -- without the high cost of building and managing their own infrastructure," Dan Timko, president of Cirrity, said in a statement. "Westcon Group is a company that truly 'gets' cloud and understands how to best put it to use for partners."

Geoff Fancher, senior vice president of Comstor in the U.S,. said in a statement that the addition of Cirrity is a "critical step" as the distributor looks to help its partners leverage next-generation technologies, such as cloud.

"As more resellers look to tap into the power of cloud, what's necessary is a partner that can help create a faster path-to-market for these emerging solution practices," Fancher said in a statement.

Building a strong cloud portfolio is especially important, according to Comstor, as the growth for cloud services explodes, the technology becomes easier to use, and customers begin to more readily accept it. Analysts predict the cloud market will hit $200 billion by 2020.

Ron Dupler, CEO of Kittery, Maine-based GreenPages Technology Solutions, praised the move by Westcon Group, saying Cirrity has been a strong channel and strategic partner for the solution provider over the past few years.

"We see them as one of our strongest partners in the space," Dupler said.

One of the reasons GreenPages chose and continues to use Cirrity is that the vendor brings innovative cloud solutions to the table, such as disaster-recovery-as-a-service, Dupler said.

"When we look at the cloud market right now, there's people offering raw infrastructure and platform-as-a-service but what we're looking for is vendors using cloud services to innovate and allow customers to do things in new ways," Dupler said. "[Cirrity is] looking at the road ahead in terms of how we use cloud to help customer do things faster, cheaper and better."

While GreenPages currently works with Cirrity directly, Dupler said he plans to evaluate working with the vendor through distribution.

"We'll certainly be checking that out because we believe in the value that distribution provides," Dupler said.

PUBLISHED MARCH 11, 2015