The company is looking to sign-up partners for the Tech Data Office 365, Azure and the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) Accelerate Programs and will be providing three training streams – for sales, technical, and marketing – to help resellers get on board and attain the Silver- and/or Gold-level accreditations in Cloud Platform and/or Cloud Productivity that will help support and grow their Microsoft CSP business.
Dwayne Earl, Software Business Unit Manager at Tech Data, said that the programme was being launched in response to rising interest in CSP. “We’ve been involved with CSP from the outset and over the past year it has really picked up. We are now seeing more Microsoft Partners wanting to get fully on board and taking it forward as a strategic part of their business.”
Earl said Tech Data would be seeking up to ten resellers for each product set – Office 365, Azure and EMS – for the current wave. Resellers will be required to put at least two members of their team forward for the technical track and one for both the sales and the marketing tracks. “The aim will be for resellers to have the marketing capabilities ready at the point that the individuals in their business have gone through the sales and technical tracks to help generate revenue to support attainment of the Silver or Gold Cloud Competency.”
Earl expects the resellers that go onto the programme to gain the accreditations within a six month time frame. Tech Data will also provide support to each partner through named Business Development Executives, Solutions Architects, and its own CSP Specialists.
Earl also pointed out that the training tracks are modular and can be taken separately outside the Accelerate programs if the resellers already have some skills in Microsoft solutions.
The programme will be repeated on a six-monthly cycle with the aim to recruit more partners each half.