CenturyLink, Cologix Team With Distribution Giant Arrow

A pair of deals signed by Arrow Electronics highlight a flurry of new partnership agreements between master agents/tech distributors and vendors that rely on the channel.

Arrow this week said it has added CenturyLink Cloud to its ArrowSphere cloud marketplace, which is available to partners in the U.S. and Canada. ArrowSphere offers a collection of services from different cloud vendors; CenturyLink’s IT-as-a-service offerings include pay-per-use pricing and cloud-based managed services.

“Solution providers, MSPs and ISVs, with their tremendous engineering expertise, are now able to utilize CenturyLink Cloud global services for building public, private and hybrid cloud solutions for their business, government and education customers,” said Dee Dee Lear, vice president of cloud and business development for Arrow’s North American enterprise computing solutions business.

Solution-provider partners have several options in working with the ArrowSphere marketplace, including Arrow-managed, solution-provider managed or customer-managed partnerships. They also can connect through an e-commerce engine. MSPs can use ArrowSphere to build cloud solutions by integrating their own services with cloud services and cloud-builder products available in the marketplace.

Arrow’s other new partnership is with Denver-based Cologix, the interconnection and colocation data-center company.

Cologix says making its products and services available through ArrowSphere will help its solution providers automate the provisioning and billing of cloud services.

“Our relationship with Arrow allows partners to take advantage of Cologix’s network-neutral data center products and services as part of the benefit of using the ArrowSphere platform to build best-in-class solutions,” Matt Wilson, vice president of channels at Cologix, told Channel Partners. “Partners can source network connectivity, cloud-based application providers and colocation data center services across eight North American markets through a single IT distributor, which ultimately makes partners’ lives easier.”

Cologix’s data centers are in Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; Jacksonville, Florida; Minneapolis; Montreal; Toronto and Vancouver. Wilson talked in depth about opportunities within Cologix’s partner program last fall at the Cloud Partners Conference & Expo.

Traditional master agents, which are beginning to look more and more like technology distributors thanks in part to their foray into the cloud, also are forging new partnerships with vendors.

Telegration has joined the WOW! Business Partner Alliance program, helping the communications and cloud service provider to better meet the growing demand for IT and network services from its customers in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and southeastern U.S.

WOW! Business offers IP-based network, data, voice and cloud services to businesses of all sizes, as well as government and wholesale customers. The company owns and operates more than 40,000 miles of fiber-optic and coaxial networks. It has a number of data centers as well.

“Forming this partnership adds to our cable and broadband product lines in the regions served by WOW! Business and provides more service options for our nationwide network of agents, subagents and partners,” said Telegration President and CEO Denis Raue. “WOW! Business made our decision to enter this master reseller agreement easy and simple with one of the most channel-focused and channel-friendly contracts we’ve seen …”

Meantime, master agency CarrierSales, which has grown much larger thanks to its merger with fellow master Communication Management Services (CMS), has a new partnership with TCN, the cloud-based call center technology provider. CarrierSales will promote TCN’s contact-center suite, Platform 3.0, to its network of VARs, MSPs, systems integrators, telecom resellers and hardware vendors.

CarrierSales expects the agreement with TCN will strengthen its hosted contact-center offering to its sales partners and make it more competitive by leveraging Platform 3.0’s cloud-based delivery model with pricing based on amount of consumption.

Partners also get API tools designed to allow seamless integration to all existing CRM platforms, including Salesforce, SugarCRM, QuickBooks and Microsoft Dynamics.   

TCN says its platform eliminates the need for complicated hardware and improves connectivity between agents and customers, increasing efficiency without the need for additional staff.

Not to be outdone, cloud broker Elastica has forged a reseller agreement with Accuvant, which provides enterprise information security services. The deal allows Accuvant to offer its enterprise customers Elastica CloudSOC, which businesses use to provide security and compliance for cloud applications and services.

Elastica, which offers a full life cycle of security for enterprise clouds, reveals shadow IT, provides data governance and compliance risk mitigation. CloudSOC aims to detect and prevent threats to corporate data, providing tools for incident response and post-incident analysis.

“The channel is a core element of our go-to-market strategy and we are excited to partner with one of the largest security resellers in the business as we build upon our market momentum,” said Rehan Jalil, CEO, Elastica. “Organizations today face complex challenges associated with cloud application security and we look forward to our partnership with Accuvant to enable enterprises to use cloud apps confidently.”

Follow senior online managing editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.