Eurodata wins race for NHF supplier status
Reseller earns offficial supplier status for public-sector housing organisation
VAR Eurodata Systems has been awarded official supplier status by the National Housing Federation (NHF), whose members spend more than £1.2bn on IT systems a year.
The NHF is a public-sector umbrella organisation that represents 1,400 housing associations that provide homes for five million people across England, including teachers, nurses and those on low incomes. Eurodata was short-listed as an official supplier after recommendations by a number of vendors, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard (HP).
Eurodata will now build its managed services around the IT infrastructure already deployed in the NHF’s members, who have 15,000 servers and 5,000 terabytes of data installed at present. Managing director Des Lekerman told CRN that Eurodata has been working with the NHF for a while.
“This formalises our position with the NHF, and it is like a framework agreement. It is also a comfort factor for [the NHF’s] regional bodies that we are now approved. We know their pain points, have solutions specifically aimed at them, and we also have sales people focused directly on their sector,” he said.
Lekerman added that Eurodata was the first NHF supplier to be awarded this formalised position in London, although vendors such as Cisco and HP do already hold the same status in other locations.
George Grant, head of alliances at the NHF, said that due to its Microsoft Gold partner status, Eurodata would initially be tasked with deploying mobility, virtualisation and back-end infrastructure migration across NHF members.
“The appointment of Eurodata will help us to reduce the cost of IT provision to each housing association. The NHF believes there is tremendous value in helping its members maximise the use of IT to meet social housing objectives,” he said.