11-jun-2019 - Emmen

Leading US distributor uses ALSO’s Cloud Marketplace

D&H, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the largest distributors in the United States with annual sales of around US$ 4.0 billion. Founded over 100 years ago, the company is well on the way to being included in the Forbes TOP 100 Private Companies list and is a strong player that is now offering its channel partners the ALSO Cloud Marketplace, a comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service solution. Resellers can use it to provide their customers with customised IT infrastructure and software on demand for their workplaces, aka IT seats. This new strategic partnership in one of the world’s largest markets sends an important signal for ALSO’s successful expansion toward North America. ALSO is thereby also demonstrating its high level of solution and development competence as a leading European solution provider for the channel.

«The partnership addresses a market of about 75 million small and midrange businesses and is a significant milestone in our endeavour to gain a sustainable foothold in one of the world’s largest and most influential markets,» says ALSO Holding AG CEO Gustavo Möller-Hergt. «The agreement is also an important confirmation of the performance of our Platform-as-a-Service solution, with which our partners can successfully develop their business models further in the direction of consumptional business. We already manage around 2.3 million IT seats via our ALSO Cloud Marketplace, but the potential is nowhere near exhausted. Our aim is to manage ten million IT workplaces in up to 80 countries.»

IT infrastructure, software and devices for every workplace can be booked and managed on demand via the Platform-as-Service solution developed by ALSO, hence the ALSO Cloud Marketplace offers strategic partners like D&H enormous benefits. They no longer need to invest in tools of their own to map their as-a-service business. Instead they can concentrate on setting up more seats and monetarising them jointly with their customers. In addition, the marketplace and its portfolio will always be kept up to date. The PaaS solution also enables resellers to realign their business models. At no great expense they can customise, manage and develop their customers’ IT seats without needing to set up an infrastructure of their own. Their mainly SMB customers then benefit as well.

«We’ve paid close attention to how our VAR and MSP partners do business, asking them what elements would help expedite their migration toward a more lucrative managed and cloud services model», says D&H’s Vice President of Cloud Jason Bystrak. «ALSO’s transactional interface addresses many of the needs those partners outlined. The platform allows MSPs to deliver a range of both hosted services and hardware through a streamlined, simple-to-execute, and customized transactional system.»

The new strategic partnership with D&H is one of a whole range of partnerships that ALSO has concluded around the world over the past four years. They include collaboration with Treolan, an IT distributor in Russia, and partnerships with Bezeq International and Intcomex, who are placing the ALSO Cloud Marketplace at the disposal of their partners in Israel, South America and the Caribbean. Innovix Distribution offers it to its channel customers in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, while Logicom does so in Southern Europe and the Middle East. The distributor Westcoast offers the ALSO Cloud Marketplace to its customers in the UK and Ireland.