Affiniti claims 02 partner status is paying off

Reseller is one of three UK VARs to have signed up to 02's Centre of Excellence initiative

Reseller Affiniti has claimed it is already benefiting from its status as an O2 Data Centre of Excellence partner less than two months after joining the programme.

Affiniti is one of three UK VARs to have signed up to the initiative since it was launched on 18 January, netting it extra marketing, training and recruitment benefits.

Sally Fuller, director of lines of business at Affiniti, told CRN: “We have been taken into O2’s inner circle and now have more visibility around its product roadmap. This means we can generate more excitement about where the mobility market is going.”

She added that Affiniti was already receiving high-level training from both O2 and its vendor partners such as Research In Motion and Nokia.

Some 16 resellers have been invited to apply for Data Centre of Excellence status. Fuller argued that Affiniti would be the first to benefit from partner expansion.

“We don’t see this as a problem because it means more partners for us to work with,” she said. “The intention is for us all to work together to give the customer a better idea of how to exploit mobility.”

Ben Dowd, general manager of UK business sales at O2, said in a statement: “Affiniti already has a well developed strategy for mobile data solutions and is a specialist in this field. It knows the data market and will help O2 to understand and meet its business customer needs.”

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