I know first hand how important the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is for the greater Toronto community. Late last year the great men and women of this hospital helped my daughter Sofia see again out of her right eye.
So I was pleased and encouraged that Tech Data Canada (Nasdaq: TECD) together with Cisco Canada (Nasdaq: CSC)) created a sales program that not only rewarded those who over-achieved targets, but raised $10,000 to benefit the SickKids Foundation.
Cisco and Tech Data ran an exclusive program for the TechSelect community from November 2010 to January 2011. TechSelect is a large buying group of about 50 solution providers in Canada.
Cisco Canada channel chief Donna Wittmann said the company was thrilled to partner with Tech Data on a program that enabled the TechSelect community an opportunity to give back while growing their business. The success of this program demonstrates that Tech Data shares our enthusiasm for helping those in need.
Tech Data Canada president Rick Reid said he was proud of the accomplishment and that supporting SickKids aligns perfectly with the principles and values of Tech Data and the TechSelect community program.
TechSelect partners actually selected SickKids as their charitable choice.
Awards season
Tech Data Canada won three awards at the annual Intel Distributor Sales & Marketing Summit in Las Vegas. The distributor captured the Top ASP Performance Volume Award, the Marketing Innovation Award for Servers and second place for the Sandy Bridge Contest.
Greg Myers, vice president of marketing for Tech Data Canada, said the company is often compared to four other distributors at this event and to take this many of the available awards is quite an honour.
Tech Data wasn’t the only winner from distribution this week as Arrow Electronics (NYSE:ARW) was named Distributor of the Year for the Americas by National Semiconductor.
Comstor, Westcon’s Cisco distribution arm to no one’s surprise won the Global Distribution Partner of the Year award at the Cisco Partner Summit in New Orleans.
Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) is slowly becoming quite the channel friendly vendor as it inked a joint development deal with Avnet Technology Solutions (NYSE: AVT).
This initiative is called Avnet Accelerator and will provide channel partners with tools, training and business assessments for them to invest in Ethernet fabric technologies from Brocade. Avnet Accelerator enables resellers to design and implement advanced data centre solutions for customers who face experimental costs associated with virtualization and application proliferation. The Avnet Accelerator will primarily focus on solutions that can be deployed with the use of Brocade VCS technology, including the acclaimed Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switch.
Avnet created the multi-faceted, invitation-only program to enables solution providers to leverage the capabilities of Ethernet fabric technologies in building network architectures that manage the growth of server virtualization and virtual machines inside data centres.The program is designed to methodically increase the adoption of Ethernet fabric technologies and provides support through all stages of the pre- and post-sales process, and provides VARs with tools, collateral and resources to drive sales, according to the Tempe, Ariz.-based distributor.
With this program, Avnet will be the first distributor to offer demonstrations of the Brocade VDX 6720 switch in a live data center environment at its SolutionsPath Demo Center in Tempe. Invited resellers can log in from anywhere to create instant proof-of-concept solutions for customers using Brocade technology. Also part of the package will be access to the demo centre to conduct training and verification.
Scott Look, vice president and general manager of the Technology Infrastructure Solutions Group at Avnet, said wide-scale virtualization and cloud computing initiatives are changing the way network architectures are built and managed. This program will provide resellers with specialized expertise around Brocade Ethernet fabric-based technologies – a critical element for partners providing data center solutions in industries with high-traffic networks, such as government, education and healthcare.
Program participants are eligible to receive targeted certification training, whiteboard selling techniques for customer collaboration and vertical market sales guides. They will also be able to access demonstration equipment, conduct quarterly business planning sessions and assessments, and participate in demand generation campaigns. Additionally, eligible resellers will be able to participate in Avnet’s financial services program.
