Distribution Watch: ScanSource, Westcon Group, Arrow Electronics

Hello, and welcome to our Friday the 13th edition of Distribution Watch! This week’s feature includes the latest news from ScanSource Communications, Westcon Group and Arrow Electronics (ARW).

ScanSource: Communications products distributor ScanSource announced it is now offering ShoreTel Sky to its network of resellers, making it the first distributor to simultaneously sell ShoreTel’s on-premise and cloud-based solutions.

The addition of ShoreTel Sky is expected to help ScanSource’s reseller ecosystem to sell hybrid cloud solutions to their customers, according to the announcement. The new offering is also aimed at helping resellers to build a monthly revenue stream as the UC communications market moves increasingly toward an as-a-service model.

“Our partners continue to show great interest in a hybrid approach to delivering their unified communications solutions,” said Rich Long, president, ScanSource Communications, in a statement. “As an expert on ShoreTel’s solutions, we are ready to support our partners in whatever way they choose to deploy them or whichever way their customers need to consume them—premises, cloud or hybrid.”

Westcon Group: WSG’s Comstor business practice has added several new solutions to its ecosystem through a new agreement with Cirrity, a Cisco-powered cloud service provider. The partnership is expected to provide Comstor’s North American resellers access to new white-labeled and channel exclusive cloud-based solutions.

Cirrity’s cloud solutions are all Cisco powered and designed to help partners deliver secure cloud offerings to their customers, according to the announcement. The company’s portfolio includes an Infrastructure as a Service platform as well as cloud servers, disaster recovery solutions, and several other as-a-service products.

“As more resellers look to tap into the power of cloud, what’s necessary is a partner that can help create a faster path-to-market for these emerging solution practices,” said Geoff Fancher, senior vice president of Comstor in the U.S., Westcon Group. “During the past year, Comstor has made significant strides expanding our ecosystem of cloud partners. The addition of Cirrity is a critical step as we enable partners to channel even greater revenues based on the next-generation technology.”

Arrow: Arrow unveiled several new enhancements to the ArrowSphere platform aimed at improving the sales capabilities by simplifying order administration and billing for cloud service provider partners.

Additions to the ArrowSphere marketplace include new billing and management tools for cloud transactions as well as comparison features and tool sets for Arrow’s SaaS and IaaS catalog, according to the announcement. The enhancements are also expected to help resellers rapidly generate customer quotes, orders and invoices in addition to creating controls to administer supply programs and oversee customer accounts.

“The ArrowSphere platform is increasingly the preferred choice for the channel to build or resell cloud services,” said Sean Kerins, president of Arrow’s global enterprise computing solutions business. ”With this release, ArrowSphere advances the support for cloud solution providers with features designed to increase the productivity of their sales and operations resources, improve and optimize solution designs for their customers, and accelerate their growth.”

That’s all for now folks. Go get an early start on that weekend, and remember to join us here next week for more distributor news. Until then, keep on distributing.