Arrow ECS reveals cloud ambitions

Distributor launches ArrowSphere platform in EMEA after 18 months' careful observation of the mushrooming cloud market

Arrow ECS has taken the wraps off its much-anticipated EMEA cloud strategy with the launch of ArrowSphere, its dedicated cloud platform.

The distributor unveiled its cloud plans at a packed event at its city offices this morning, hailing the growth opportunities its strategy will bring its vendor and 10,000 reseller partners.

Under the ArrowSphere strategy, which will cost a nominal annual fee, resellers are given the opportunity to build a white-label web store and choose from a catalogue of cloud services to sell to their customers.

They can even wrap their own managed services around the offering. ArrowSphere will be launched in the UK on 11 July and in Denmark, France, Spain and Germany in September. The other 22 countries covered by the distributor will see the initiative rolled out in 2013.

Steve Pearce (pictured), vice president of Arrow ECS UK, said: "We are very excited about this. It is a significant investment for Arrow. We have always been at the forefront of technology and understand our role is innovation.

"Five years ago I was sceptical of the cloud, but now I'm a believer. I believe there is genuine traction here. We need to listen to the guys at the front end who deal with customers, and we need to play back what they are saying through our platform to get a set of services that work."

The Arrow store is divided into seven categories: backup, security, unified communications, storage on demand, servers on demand, business applications and communications/collaboration, with support from heavyweight vendors such as IBM, EMC, Trend Micro, NetApp, VMware and Symantec.

Resellers are also given a dashboard to consolidate and aggregate services and help manage subscriptions, explained Julien Peronneau, vice president of business transformation at Arrow ECS.

Laurent Sadoun, president of Arrow ECS EMEA, added: "The era of virtualisation does not need to be proven, we have invested since the very early stages. We do not believe in barriers, we believe in bridges. And [with the launch of ArrowSphere] we are enabling the channel to build bridges that help drive cloud adoption."

Shamus Kelly, managing director of VAR and ISV Portal, welcomed the initiative.

"For us this will be a great fit in the mid-market where there still is a barrier to installation and deployment," he said. "It will enable us to take some of our tried-and-tested enterprise offerings and package them up as services and allows us to address new markets and new business in a fast and simple way."