Tech Data Unveils Open Tech Community
Tech Data Corp. (TECD) has announced Open Tech, a new channel for open-source independent software vendors (ISVs) to market and sell their solutions to thousands of resellers nationwide. Tech Data previewed Open Tech last month during its 2009 Vendor Partner Summit, and the company introduced the initiative to nearly 250 SMB resellers attending the TechSelect Partner Conference in Orlando last week.
“Open source software continues to gain momentum as a robust, cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes,” said Stacy Nethercoat, Tech Data vice president, Software Product Marketing. “The challenge users face, however, is the limited availability and awareness of all the innovative open source business applications in the market, like business intelligence, content management and data backup. These solutions make open source more viable for business use. Through Open Tech, Tech Data will enable the ISVs developing these applications and the resellers supporting the IT solutions needs of end users nationwide to partner with one another to capitalize on the growing demand for open source.”
Tech Data said Open Tech builds upon its extensive experience supporting open-source leaders like Novell and Red Hat. That experience includes helping these vendors grow their businesses through the channel by recruiting new resellers to deploy their solutions to SMBs, large enterprises, government agencies, educational institutions and health care facilities.
Through Open Tech, Tech Data will:
- Recruit New Open Source Vendors – Tech Data is negotiating with several open source ISVs interested in expanding their reseller partner base. Tech Data will recruit open source ISVs developing a wide range of solutions, including business intelligence and database management, data backup and recovery, content management, messaging and unified communications, office productivity, middleware and security.
- Recruit and Enable New Open Source Resellers – Tech Data will enable existing open source resellers to expand their practices with new solutions and open source technical training available through TDEducation. The company also will leverage its data mining and channel marketing to identify and recruit new resellers likely to add open source alternatives to their solutions offerings.
- Establish The Open Tech Community – With a membership of resellers, open source ISVs, and leading hardware manufacturers, the Open Tech Community will work together to develop strategies to capitalize on emerging demand for open source solutions. The community will interact through physical and virtual events, and the new Open Tech Web portal.
- Expand Open Source Licensing Expertise – Tech Data’s software-licensing specialists will support the licensing requirements for all Open Tech software partners.
- Enhance Open Source Sales And Marketing – Open Tech will provide open-source vendors with a comprehensive channel marketing program to recruit and enable targeted resellers. Open Tech also will provide extensive open source product training for Tech Data’s Sales teams.
- Develop Custom-Configured Open Source Bundles – Through its East and West Coast integration centers and on behalf of its reseller customers, Tech Data will custom-configure systems and servers with open source solutions for quicker deployment to end users.
