Privately-held distributor Westcoast has signed a partnership deal with business-to-business (b2b) telecoms distributor Avenir Telecom.

According to the two firms, the deal will provide resellers with devices and connectivity to supply a complete business solutions to their customers, and will also enable Westcost to deliver a fully converged IT and telecoms solution for the first time.

Westcoast claimed that its reseller base will benefit from the union of its expertise in the IT sector and Avenir's relationship with all five UK mobile operators.

Jasmine Gledhill, group marketing director at Westcoast, said. "Many of
Westcoast's resellers currently only talk to their customers about hardware
or software. By offering them access to an experienced team that understands b2b mobiles and all the tariffs that are available, we are helping our resellers move into other areas of business and to increase their revenue opportunities. For the end user, the ability of a reseller to offer a fully converged, mobile data solution is a key selling point".

Duncan Forsyth, managing director of Westcoast, said: "This partnership is
indicative of the way that Westcoast continually looks to improve the
quality and range of products and services that it offers. Merging our
capabilities in the IT market with Avenir's in the mobile channel will provide our resellers with more reasons to speak with their customers and to build out complete mobile data solutions for them."

Forsyth continued, "The focus for the end user is firmly on being able to get a complete business solution from a single provider which, through its partnership with Avenir, Westcoast can now deliver."

Tanny Price, managing director of Avenir, said: "As the mobile distribution
market continues to evolve, Avenir remains focused on the opportunities
ahead in the IT reseller sector. Our partnership with Westcoast represents a
milestone for Avenir in terms of presenting our customers with a complete
converged business solution, which is so important in the current market
climate.

"End users are increasingly demanding converged devices and connectivity
that brings mobile data to their door in one package, by one supplier, and
we have spent a significant amount of time investing in our relationship
with Westcoast to ensure that we can both provide the optimum solution for
our customers. At Avenir, we have also implemented a dedicated IT reseller
team to support our customers at every step of the process."