Distribution Watch: GCI, Avnet, D&H Distributing

Happy Thursday everyone! This week in Distribution Watch we’ve got the latest information from our friends at Global Convergence, Inc. (GCI), Avnet (AVT) and D&H Distributing.

GCI: Global Convergence, Inc. signed a global master distributor agreement with Nuage Networks to offer the full Nuage Networks software-defined networking (SDN) portfolio to its global reseller ecosystem, according to the announcement.

Channel partners can also utilize GCI’s ProvisionPlus global services offering to help them deploy Nuage Networks’ solutions and speed enablement time.

“Our global distribution agreement with Nuage Networks further demonstrates our commitment to bringing leading-edge technologies to the channel,” said Jim Bradshaw, CEO and chairman of the board of GCI, in a statement. “Nuage Networks’ technology is the industry’s premier SDN platform, and with access to this technology, our channel partners can now participate actively and meaningfully in a rapidly growing market.”  

Avnet: Avnet announced the launch of FSA One Frameworks, an offering designed to help accelerate the adoption of converged infrastructure solutions. FSA (FlexPod Services by Avnet) One Frameworks is a set of pre-configured and packaged integrated infrastructure racks that combine products and services from Cisco Systems (CSCO), NetApp (NTAP) and Avnet, according to the announcement.

FSA One Frameworks will provide partners in the United States and Canada with “a high-velocity sales motion” for quoting and shipping a series of pre-validated and pre-integrated FlexPod configurations. Each setup is designed to help channel partners speed up sales and complete solution registration, as well as to create more aggressive pricing through automatic price variance requests. Additional structured options for selling FlexPod open additional vertical market opportunities for partners, according to Avnet.

“FlexPod Services by Avnet was initially introduced to our partner community in May 2011, and FSA One Frameworks is a value-added extension of that original offering,” said Jim Kebert, vice president of Avnet’s NetApp solutions business. “Avnet’s NetApp solutions team stands ready to serve our partner community in providing their customers with faster returns on their investments through the benefits of pre-assembled configurations, accelerated deployment and the reduced risk that comes with pre-validated architectures.”

D&H: D&H will hold its 2015 Mid-Atlantic Fall Technology Show on Oct. 22 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where the company plans to host about 100 vendors and nearly 1,000 resellers and dealers.

Highlights of this year’s event include a “Next Generation Computing” center aisle on the exhibit floor to illustrate the features in Microsoft Windows 10, along with Intel’s 6th generation processing microarchitecture. D&H plans to provide special discounts for orders placed on the show floor to incentivize resellers and dealers to drive new business opportunities.

“This market never ceases to bring innovation and catalytic change to the information technology front. We use our trade events as a vehicle to keep customers on the cusp of this continuous evolution,” said Mary Campbell, vice president of Marketing at D&H Distributing. “We’re proud to offer training to help resellers learn more about Microsoft Windows 10 and the newly launched Intel processing core, giving them early strategies on how to turn these new developments into sales to build their businesses, and to deliver new benefits to end users.”

That’s all for this week, but we’ll be back next time with even more great distribution-centric news. Until then, keep on distributing.