CDW Cloud Collaboration Moves Communications to Cloud

CDW will host a new Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO)-based cloud collaboration solution in own facilities. The new CDW Cloud Collaboration offering combines Cisco collaboration platforms with a host of CDW professional services.

A Cisco Gold Certified Partner, CDW said it plans to fill the void customers have in their deep technical expertise and staff resources for properly managing collaboration technologies. As with other outsourced services, the end goal is enable customers to focus on their core competencies and actually run their business instead of focusing on technologies they don’t have the expertise to manage.

Built on the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (CHCS), the CDW Cloud Collaboration solution was designed to give organizations flexibility and choice in what collaboration applications they deploy. The solution provide customers with their own secure, virtualized private intranet hosted in CDW’s facilities.

“As enterprises adopt collaboration technologies to quickly connect people with a high level of security to the resources and information they need to get work done, many businesses are requiring cloud solutions and looking for options from partners,” said Richard McLeod, senior director of Worldwide Partner Collaboration Sales at Cisco.

For larger solution providers such as CDW, which have the resources to act as cloud builders and construct the data center capabilities necessary to offer their customers cloud-based collaboration services, this could provide a growing opportunity. Vendors have been nudging partners over the last couple of years in several directions so they can find their niche in the growing cloud computing market.

Generally, only the largest solution providers have the resources to become cloud services providers in their own right. For smaller vendors, not so much; and they’re reliant more on existing services to resell, including partnering with the largest providers.