Bell Micro is to begin offering packaged services around every Microsoft licence it sells as part of an extension of its Partner Services practice.

The distributor has created a nine-strong dedicated Microsoft services team and will hard-launch 35 Microsoft installation packages to resellers in September.

Partner Services, which was founded nine years ago and has 60 UK staff, had previously focused on infrastructure services around vendors such as HP, IBM and Symantec.

Ben Abraham, commercial manager for Partner Services, said he expected 50 of the 700 UK resellers currently using Partner Services to immediately exploit the new packages. The services will eventually be rolled out across Europe.

“Every Microsoft offering we take to market will have a services aspect. For instance, when the new version of SQL Server comes out, resellers will be given a services option if they do not have it in-house,” Abraham explained.

Abraham said resellers moving into services often struggled with project over-runs and argued that Bell’s approach would guarantee a shorter sales cycle.

Simon Aldous, partner group manager for Microsoft, said: “What Bell is doing supports our goal for this year of driving the category element of our portfolio. It will allow resellers to bring additional resources into their business if they lack the skill or if their engineers are deployed elsewhere.”

Scott Fletcher, chief executive of reseller ANS, argued that sub-contracting services would work for commoditised offerings such as servers and operating systems, but not for high-end software.
“That is something the reseller should be taking responsibility for themselves as the end user expects them to project manage it,” he said.