Tech Data (Nasdaq: TECD) is having a busy week this week with taking several Canadian solution providers to Rome and signing off on two very significant vendor partnership deals.
The first will see the Clearwater, Fla.-based broadline distributor partner with NEC Display Solutions to provide NEC’s content creation services to its channel of over 60,000 resellers. This new service provides resellers with the potential to capitalize on increased revenue and high-margin opportunities generated from creative development.
The second deal involves Taiwan-based Asus. Asus’ new lineup of touchscreen All-in-One (AIO) PCs will also be available to Tech Data’s roster of solution providers.
Tiffany Severance, director of client systems product marketing at Tech Data, said the company is partnering with Asus to introduce their new portfolio of All-in-One PCs to our resellers in the channel. With the increased popularity of AIOs in both the business and consumer market segments, the Asus AIOs are well-suited for users wanting to work in a highly productive and collaborative manner across a wide range of applications. Research numbers from IDC and the NPD Group support Severance’s claim. IDC indicated that the intent to purchase All-in-One solutions will rise from 9.9 per cent to 15.7 per cent among commercial PC users worldwide within the next 12 months. Additionally, NPD Group reports that 34 per cent of consumer desktop purchases in the month of July were All-in-One PCs.
Meanwhile, Wendy Maurer-Linsky, vice president of peripherals product marketing at Tech Data, said that NEC’s content creation services and digital signage prove to be a rapidly growing industry and Tech Data’s partnership with NEC provides a great opportunity for resellers to increase profit in a fast-growing market. NEC’s content creation services establish a comprehensive, cost-effective digital signage network with dynamic content, regardless of budget or timeframe, enabling our reseller customers to assist their end-users with advertising campaigns, tradeshows, corporate Web sites, and more.”
Synnex a real gem
At Synnex this week, they released its financials and announced a significant deal for its services arm Concentrix Corp. (NYSE:SNX). Synnex acquired Gem, a European-based provider of customer contact solutions that supports a global customer base in 28 languages from locations in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Debrecen, Hungary.
According to Chris Caldwell, senior vice president and GM, Global Business Services, this acquisition is complementary to Concentrix’ services and geographic footprint. Gem’s growing social enterprise practice and the ability to effectively capture and analyze information exchanged in social communities will be a key competitive differentiator for Concentrix to give our customers better insight into their overall markets. With the acquisition of Gem, Concentrix will have over 7,500 employees around the world, operating in 10 countries and delivering support in all major languages.
As for its results, Synnex did pretty well for the third quarter. Company CEO Kevin Murai reported distribution revenue from operations was $2.54 billion, an increase of 17.9 per cent over the prior fiscal year third quarter. The late 2010 acquisition of Infotec Corp. in Japan added $297 million to the third quarter, while global business services revenue was $40.5 million, an increase of 30.7 per cent over the prior fiscal year third quarter.
The company also announced officially in Canada the mECExpress mobile application for its e-commerce Web site, which is developed for use on Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7 and HP Palm Web OS mobile devices.
Rival Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) said this week that it expects to release financial results for the third quarter ending Oct. 1, 2011, after the market closes on Oct. 27, 2011.
And, Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT) said it will release first quarter fiscal year 2012 earnings live via the Internet at www.ir.avnet.com on Oct. 27.
ScanSource (Nasdaq: SCSC) holds its annual partner conference in Nashville, Tenn.
More than 300 solution providers attend the event. The POS & Barcoding specialty distributor’s focus for the conference was “Giving Back” and company president Jeff Yelton said the messages delivered at this year’s conference were insightful, inspiring and thought-provoking, both from a business perspective, as well as from a personal point of view. “We believe we share with our customers and vendor partners not only a passion for growing our businesses together but also a passion for giving back. Our Partner Conference is a wonderful opportunity to bring our partners together to discuss business challenges and new growth opportunities, as well as to be inspired by incredible stories of selflessness and partnering together.”
Arrow gets analytics
At Arrow [NYSE: ARW], the value-added distributor launched a next-generation analytics Empower enablement program for IBM solution providers selling the IBM analytics technology in North America. Under the Empower enablement program, Arrow ECS provides technology solutions, opportunity analyses, education, demand-generation services and business resources to help solution providers establish and build practices for high-growth technology areas.
