Comstor targets 200 VARs for Smart Care

Distributor rolls out Cisco collaborative services programme across Europe

After rolling out Smart Care, Cisco's new collaborative services programme, distributor Comstor is hoping to sign up 200 UK VARs for the programme within a year.

The programme has been launched across parts of Europe and Jon Pritchard, Comstor's vice president of Europe, revealed 75 UK resellers had already signed up. He said: "There are a lot of great reasons why resellers are getting behind Smart Care and why we are getting behind it. It allows VARs to look for things like end of life products, products that are not covered by their existing SMARTnet and upgrade opportunities."

Smart Care is a collaborative services programme in which Cisco keeps track of the health of end users' networks and provides information to resellers. Pritchard claimed the programme built on Cisco's existing SMARTnet maintenance programme and revealed he hoped to sign up 200 UK resellers to the new programme over the next nine months.

"The big thing is resellers see this as a natural extension of SMARTnet. It improves margin and it gives VARs an annuity revenue. It allows resellers to do things that they would not usually do," he said.