Cloud Distribution kicks off new datacentre division with double vendor signing

Distributor splits sales, tech and marketing into dedicated teams for each technology

Cloud Distribution has launched a dedicated datacentre infrastructure team and signed up two new vendors to kick off the unit.

Cloud previously operated a centralised team of sales, marketing and technical staff across its IT areas, but has split its employee base into three areas to focus on security, networking and datacentre.

The announcement comes as the firm signs distribution agreements with data virtualisation vendor Actifio and flash player Accelstor.

Cloud's director of datacentre, Bruce Hockin, told CRN that the move to spin out the datacentre team into a separate unit was made as a result of increased demand from partners and end users.

"The reason we did the datacentre team was because a greater, significant proportion of our opportunities are coming out of the datacentre business," he said.

"The reason for that is we're seeing a lot of moves to the cloud, and the public cloud is pushing hard on traditional datacentre environments. It's competing with it for wallet share, so people are going to have to innovate more in the datacentre.

"To do that you can't say you're going to innovate with a traditional player, that doesn't work, so what we're trying to do is bring together multiple technologies to create solutions for innovation in the datacentre and to compete in the new cloud-centric, consumption-model market.

Hockin said the new team will pull together products from its datacentre portfolio, as well as the two new signings, to put together go-to-market strategies for Cloud's reseller partners.

Of the new signings, he said that he believes Actifio to be "a couple of years ahead" of some of the other players in the backup and disaster-recovery space, with Cloud being set the aim of increasing the vendor's partner count in the UK slightly, but more importantly focusing on partner enablement.

Cloud also becomes Accelstor's first distributor in the UK, with the Taiwanese flash vendor looking to disrupt a market that has seen a number of new players over recent years, as well as vendor consolidation.

"A lot of the mainstream players have entered the market with all-flash solutions, either as a reconfiguration of the existing platforms or they've made acquisitions," Hockin said.

"It really doesn't leave many players left to drive the innovation, and Accelstor are one of the few players driving innovation around flash, but they're doing it at a price point that appeals to a much wider audience.

"What they can achieve from a performance perspective means they can really save a lot of money for end users."