Comstor Strikes Deal with Presidio for Cisco-Powered Cloud Services

Unified communications and network infrastructure distributor Westcon Group announced that its Comstor business practice has signed an exclusive deal with Presidio to allow channel partners access to new Cisco-powered, cloud-driven managed services. The offering is expected to accelerate Comstor’s enterprise-class white-label cloud services, “Powered by Peak,” and is fully supported by Cisco’s (CSCO) architecture.

According to Comstor, the new relationship with Presidio will help it to focus on an end-to-end selling approach centered around getting out of the business of selling technology and into selling quantifiable business outcomes for its end users. Presidio’s expertise in providing professional and managed services for advanced IT solutions combined with Comstor's Executive Relevance Selling program, a training program designed to teach channel partners to sell on business outcomes by quantifying in detail the financial impact of implementing cloud services for end customers, Comstor believes it can help its Cisco partners grow their practices more profitably. 

“When you put all that together, it’s all about how we are the only ones we know of that will enable and empower Cisco partners to put everything they have into a cloud play in 90 to 120 days,” said David McNicholas, U.S. director of Strategic Business Development and program architect at Comstor, in an interview with The VAR Guy.

By helping partners to accelerate their time to market and overall relevance in the cloud managed services space, Comstor and Presidio hope they can help their partners to take advantage of the growing managed services market, which is expected to surpass $250 billion within the next decade, according to analysts. Comstor thinks partners will be eager to utilize its Peak and white-label Presidio services without the fear of—and cost associated with—striking out into the MSP world on their own.

The Comstor and Presidio solution will be supported by Peak’s Cisco-based IaaS technology, providing access to the hypervisor and to a customer’s backup and security platforms without additional upfront capital investments, according to the press release. The bundling will also include the Executive Relevance Selling program. All reseller-branded cloud solutions are constructed on top of Cisco’s existing infrastructure-as-a-service architecture, again lowering the cost and risk for partners looking to expand into the market.

“The barriers of entry for MSPs to build themselves are massive,” said McNicholas. “You can go find IaaS offers but the hard part is if partners want to offer a managed service, it is at least a two-to-three-year and $3 million-to-$6 million endeavor. By offering this Peak powered by Cisco-centric white label service through Presidio, we are making it available for partners.”