Technology Reseller v20 2019

01732 759725 08 NEWS : DISTRIBUTORS DCC Technology, trading as Exertis, is continuing its ambitious growth strategy with the announcement of two more acquisitions on continental Europe. These are Stuttgart-based COMM-TEC Gmbh, a supplier of Pro AV solutions to resellers and systems integrators across Europe, and the Dutch company Amacom, a supplier of consumer electronics and small domestic appliances to retail, etail and B2B resellers. The proposed acquisition of COMM- TEC, which generates annual revenues of 90 million euros and employs 150 staff across Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Spain, strengthens DCC Technology’s presence in Europe and provides synergies with its Pro AV Solutions divisions in the UK&I, Nordics and France. With revenues of € 160 million and a workforce of 80, Amacom gives Exertis the opportunity to expand its Consumer Electronics business in the Benelux market and meet the needs of vendors that increasingly want to work with fewer partners across Europe. Two more acquisitions announced by Exertis Midwich enters Nordics Specialist audio visual distributor Midwich has continued its European expansion with the acquisition of AV Partner AS, a Norwegian value-added distributor of AV products. Norway is the third new country Midwich has expanded into this year, following its entry into Italy and Switzerland with the acquisitions of Prase (Italy) and MobilePro (Switzerland) in January. Founded in Oslo in 2010, AV Partner has a market leading position in the Norwegian projection market, with brands including Epson, Optoma, Casio and Hitachi, as well as a growing displays business through an exclusive distribution agreement with Vestel. www.midwichgroupplc.com Ingram Micro opens cyber security COEs Ingram Micro is strengthening its EMEA-wide Cyber Security division with the opening of two more Cyber Security centres of excellence (COE) in the region. Like the distributor’s existing COE in Dubai, the centres in the Netherlands and Eastern Europe will offer specialised cyber security training, support, managed services, solution architecting and consulting. Dr. Ali Baghdadi, Ingram Micro senior vice president and leader of the EMEA Cyber Security division, said: “We are fortunate to have successful Cyber Security businesses in many other regions across the globe and we will work closely with our colleagues to share best practices, including strategies on how to help our partners easily expand into this high-value market.” He added: “We will also leverage Ingram Micro’s proprietary Cloud Marketplace, enabling our customers to obtain subscription-based security services, while opening up more than three million active subscribers to our Cyber Security vendor partners.” www.ingrammicro.com DrayTek first for Nimans Nimans has strengthened its relationship with network connectivity and infrastructure specialist DrayTek by becoming the UK’s first and only Authorised Telecom Distributor, opening the door for resellers to become DrayTek Authorised Dealers. DrayTek Sales and Marketing Manager Julian Hubble said: “Growth has doubled every year we’ve been working with the company and now it’s time to take things to an even higher level. Nimans is the only company with authorised telecom status, and it means their resellers can take advantage of many additional support services.” These include regular newsletters, free direct technical support, training courses and a free ACS Cloud Management service that enables up to 500 devices to be managed remotely. www.nimans.net IBM cloud services now available on ArrowSphere Arrow Electronics has expanded its ArrowSphere cloud platform with the addition of IBM cloud services that meet a variety of customer needs, from developer tools, compute and storage to analytics, mobile and security solutions. The ArrowSphere platform enables solution providers to quote, order and provision a wide variety of cloud solutions in a matter of minutes. The IBM Cloud Market Place on ArrowSphere offers a choice of more than 170 platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service solutions that allow organisations to deploy and access virtualised IT resources through the cloud and develop and run applications for the public cloud. ArrowSphere also provides IBM software-as-a-service solutions, including the IBM MaaS360 cognitive unified endpoint management (UEM) solution for consolidated management of smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops and wearables; and IBM SPSS Statistics, for ad hoc and predictive data analysis. fiveyearsout.com Entanet entices resellers with GPON offer Entanet, a CityFibre company and wholesale provider of full fibre connectivity, is aiming to boost sales of Gigabit-ready Ethernet services to SME customers by offering resellers a 500Mbps connection for just £225 per month. Available where Entanet provides access to the CityFibre full fibre infrastructure, the fully symmetric Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) connection offers speeds of up to 1Gbps, unlimited usage and a 100% SLA with a Guaranteed Return to Service within five business hours. Paul North, Head of Sales at Entanet, said: “Many smaller businesses need really fast and reliable connectivity to support critical business applications and services. But while they want the kinds of speeds and guaranteed bandwidth that a leased line can offer, many can’t afford to make that kind of commitment. By providing a 500Mbps GPON for a base cost of only £225 to our partners, we are giving them the flexibility to deliver higher speeds and bandwidth over full fibre to SMEs who would otherwise have to settle for contended broadband services.” SME customers can also take advantage of the government’s Gigabit Voucher Scheme and apply for up to £2,500 off the connection charge. www.enta.net/fullfibre Nimans marked its enhanced status with a celebration at its Manchester headquarters. Paul North