Redstone gets closer to CA

Reseller extends relationship with vendor to cover entire product portfolio

Bullish VAR Redstone Managed Solutions has extended its reseller relationship with CA.

The firm, which has offices across the UK, initially started working with CA with its eTrust anti-virus suit after it bought rival VAR Tolerant Systems last year (CRN, 25 July), but will now cover the vendor’s entire product portfolio.

Speaking to CRN, Tariq Saied, managing director of Redstone Managed Solutions said: “We are a Microsoft gold Partner and have been in discussions with them about how to pitch Exchange 2007, for example integrating it into IP telephony, which another part of Redstone – Redstone Telecom – specialises in.

“We also wanted to look into ID and access management, disaster recovery and email archiving among other things, and once we bought Tolerant and started a relationship with CA, we realised that CA offered all those technologies already and it made sense just to expand what we do with them.”

Saied said that the VAR aims to have product bundles featuring CA technology in place when Exchange 2007 launches in June this year.

“We now have a deeper relationship with CA,” he said, “rather than a standard reseller relationship.”

On the anti-virus side, Saied explained Redstone Managed Solutions will be developing its own threat management suite using CA’s Software Development Kit (SDK).

Terry O’Loughlin, UK channel sales manager at CA said: “A key area for CA this year is Microsoft Sharepoint and Exchange 2007, we intend to focus a lot around that area.

“As a result, our relationship with Redstone Managed Solutions has evolved and they are a very important partner for us going forward.”