XO Partners With Tech Data for SMB Offering
XO Communications and Tech Data Corp., an IT products distributor, on Monday announced a strategic partnership to offer technology resellers advanced IP services and solutions for SMBs.
Tech Data will offer resellers and systems integrators XOs converged IP voice and data services, leveraging networking technologies from Cisco, said the company. XO Communications will benefit from Tech Datas extensive marketing resources and nationwide reseller base to further expand the sales of its services among SMB resellers. Tom Gorey, director of XO Communications Business Partner Program, said the agreement was driven by XOs desire to target SMBs and voice products in the sub-100-user market.
Tech Data reports having more than 90,000 customers, but XO is targeting a subset of Cisco VARs, specifically those that are certified in voice solutions. Gorey said this partnership targets an arena not specifically represented through XOs traditional master agents, which are often disconnected from the CPE and the software parts of the supply chain.
This kind of brings all that back together and provides the Cicso VARs more of a familiar environment for them to sell their solution, said Gorey.
The partnership gives Tech Data Cisco Express, Advanced and Master Unified Communications Specialized partners the ability to resell XO Communications portfolio of IP services, including XO SIP, which delivers converged voice and data services to businesses with IP PBX systems over a single, high-speed connection. Tech Data resellers will be able to offer a bundled solution combining XO SIP service with Cisco unified communications solutions to deliver a cost-effective, feature-rich IP communications system, the company said.
Tech Data provides Cisco resellers with an extensive array of dedicated sales, technical, marketing and product management support to help them profitably capitalize on the demand for the latest networking and communications solutions, said Chuck Bartlett, Tech Data vice president, networking product marketing.
And Cisco said enabling resellers to more profitably deliver unified communications is important to the company.
This is a major agreement for the XO Business Partner Channel as it brings together Tech Datas nationwide network of resellers with XOs leading IP services capabilities and nationwide network reach, said Gorey. Tech Data will help us reach an even larger number of resellers with our industry-leading IP solutions and address their customers needs for converged IP solutions.
Gorey said he expects this agreement to have no impact on XOs current indirect channel partners, but instead to just be a different effort in parallel. If anything, the increased interest with the XO brand name may cause different people outside of the target market to ask their master agents what they can do with XO for similar support, which we will be happy to provide, Gorey explained.
Gorey did not disclose the financial details of the partnership, but said only that Tech Data shares in the value proposition from a profit standpoint, as do the Cisco partners.
Were just really excited about it, said Gorey. We think the combination of having one of Ciscos premiere distribution partners in combination with XO is a winning value proposition for people. And were looking forward to launching this now and growing the business over the coming year.
Cisco Systems Inc. www.cisco.com
Tech Data Corp. www.techdata.com
XO Communications www.xo.com
