Tech Data has unfurled a set of pre-configured cloud offerings spanning products and services from multiple vendors.
Available via what the distributor has christened a Cloud Solutions Factory, the goal is point partners towards offerings that Tech Data has already validated as being interoperable.
The goal is to apply many of the same concepts distributors originally developed for solutions that were deployed in an on-premises environment to cloud platforms, says Sergio Farache, senior vice president for strategy, innovation, cloud and mergers, and acquisitions at Tech Data. Crafting cloud solutions can be extraordinarily complex given all the disparate vendors involved, adds Farache.
“It can be complex to put all the pieces together,” says Farache. “It’s now an ecosystem of companies.”
Tech Data is leveraging the relationships it has developed with, for example, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Red Hat, NetApp, Veeam and Autodesk to create “click and run” solutions, say Farache. The primary benefit of this approach is that it substantially reduces the amount of time a partner needs to deploy a cloud solution, says Farache.
Over time, Tech Data plans to significantly expand the number of IT vendors participating in the Cloud Solutions Factory, adds Farrache.
As cloud computing continues to evolve, Farache notes that multi-vendor cloud computing will become more commonplace. Channel partners will be able to rely on Tech Data engineering expertise to navigate the nuances of each of those cloud platforms, says Farache. At the same time, each of those cloud computing platforms is becoming more complicated to master as emerging cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, containers, and customers increasingly embrace serverless computing frameworks. Those challenges will only become even more complicated as organizations also move to adopt hybrid cloud computing spanning multiple public clouds and on-premises IT environments.
Put it all together, and it’s becoming rapidly apparent that very few solution providers in the age of the cloud will be able to go it alone. The simple matter is that there isn’t enough engineering expertise to go around. The challenge facing solution providers now is determining where best to add value by developing their own expertise versus rely on a distributor.
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