Stone deepens Huawei ties

System builder extends portfolio with Chinese vendor's network and comms wares

Stone is aiming to boost its professional services business by deepening its relationship with Huawei to cover the vendor's comms and networking gear.

The system builder will now offer its customers a full range of Huawei's networking and unified comms products to its client base. This follows an exclusive agreement, signed a year ago, which saw Stone take on board storage hardware from joint venture Huawei-Symantec.

The additions to the portfolio will be slotted into Stone's professional services operations. Tim Killick, who recently joined the Staffordshire firm as group bids and infrastructure services manager, is responsible for overseeing the Huawei partnership.

"We have a very strong relationship with Huawei and we have chosen them specifically to help us extend a richer, more complete professional services offering to our clients," he said.

David Poskett, Huawei's UK and Ireland vice president, added: "The opportunity to bring our joint solutions to the education and wider public sectors by working together is very important for Huawei in these key vertical sectors. The additional layer on top of the solutions – Stone's UK customer support – makes this a very significant partnership for Huawei."