Synnex Canada is building up its game in mobility. The Canadian subsidiary is following its U.S.-based parent’s lead with the rollout of MobilitySolv, the latest member of the distributor’s family of “Solv” solution bundles.

The distributor is in the mist of the first phase of a three-phase rollout for MobilitySolv, said Adnon Dow, vice president of global mobility solutions for Synnex. It’s building out its line card of vendor offerings in the mobility space, then will build out the company’s VAR community around mobility, the stage it’s currently at in the U.S. After that, Dow said it will turn its attention to building ecosystems and specific solutions around verticals on industry opportunities.

“We’re about 85 percent there in Canada,” Dow said of the effort to develop the line card. “We’re trying to tie down the carrier relationships and figure out the go-to-market with them. That was the most intensive effort we had in the U.S., and it’s just really happening.”

Dow expects MobilitySolv to kick off in a big way in Canada in January, with the offering rolled out completely in by February. He said the company is currently up and running transactionally, able to help solution providers activate with carriers. It’s been able to take advantage of North American or global deals with mobility vendor partners to streamline developing the line card. From there, it’s a matter of getting building resources around the new mobility practice, and building up the services and structure around it. Here too, Synnex will lean heavily on what it’s learned from going through the MobilitySolv launch in the U.S.

“It’s easy to sign vendors and sign partners, but it’s another thing to ramp them up and get them to revenue. There’s a lot more heavy lifting, training, and enablement that need to be done to make it a reality. In the U.S., it took us longer than we anticipated to et that traction.”

So the Canadian launch will benefit from that experience, with more marketing campaigns and support in place at launch time to help partners quickly get to “sustainable revenue” with the new practice area.

“We’re already tweaking the program and correcting course in the U.S., and we’re seeing the results,” he said.

Ultimately, Dow said he sees an opportunity for every solution provider in the mobile space, as it becomes the ubiquitous, and perhaps even dominant in terms of endpoints. But Dow said the ideal solution provider for MobilitySolv brings at least some wireless background, has an applications- and services-based business model, and “has truly embraced innovation.”

“They’re not a traditional networking VAR, they’re not a traditional voice guy,” Dow said. “They’re dabbling in applications, dabbling in devices, they can take the message to the market and they can invest and create a practice around mobility.”

That’s important because Dow has built the MobilitySolv methodology around taking a look at mobility beyond the device. The distributor has built the practice around three pillars: connecting devices, moving information to the devices, and controlling security and management in the mobile environment. And then, when things move into the third phase of Dow’s plan – the one that’s yet to really kick into gear in the U.S. – things get more interesting, as the distributor looks to move beyond endpoint-centric mobility. Dow describes building a business around machine-to-machine computing, the much-vaunted Internet of Things.

Dow said he also sees a great opportunity to help managed service providers extend their reach beyond remote control and management of PCs, networking gear and servers, to include more mobile devices.

Mobility is a hot topic in the channel, so it’s not surprising that distribution is getting involved. Synnex rival Ingram Micro Canada has also been building out a significant mobility presence over the last two years.