Hyper-convergence player SimpliVity will look to grow its business in Canada through distribution, announcing an exclusive pact to go to market through Tech Data Canada.

The deal is Tech Data Canada’s first with a vendor in the growing market for hyper-converged infrastructure, and Greg Myers, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Tech Data Canada, said he sees it as a natural fit for Tech Data, which has traditionally been a strong name in the data centre distribution game.

“The technology motion towards convergence has been gathering momentum in the market over the last few years, and this new set of vendors have taken that convergence to the next level,” Myers said of SimpliVity and its peers. “SimpliVity has been working with partners directly, and found that can only scale so well, so they’ve selected us based on our stregth in the data centre and with server brands.”

The deal will see SimpliVity largely go-to-market with its new distribution partner, and Tech Data Canada will help the vendor gain traction in the Canadian market as it begins to add its own resources in the Canadian market. Myers added that part of the reason Tech Data was selected for the role was pressure from some of its partners with whom the vendor had perviously worked directly. Under the agreement, Tech Data Canada will get staff certified for both SimpliVity’s pre-sales technical requirements and implementation capabilities. The distributor specifically mentioned plans to introduce pre-integrated bundles of SimpliVity’s OmniStack offerings with Cisco UCS and Lenovo servers.

For a vendor still young in its channel development, Myers praised his new partners for being “well prepared” to work with partners, pointing to a mature deal registration and rebate program that can help protect partner profitability.

SimpliVity’s approach is to combined most data centre functionality down into a single device, with the company boasting that it rolls up “8-12 data centre appliances into one 2U building block.” Myers said the technology represents integration of various pieces into one SKU, but also had high praise for the company’s manageability, which can allow “routine tasks for the data centre administrator to be executed more simply, more quickly, and with less complexity.”

“It’s about improving the business processes within the data centre,” Myers said.

While many Canadian distribution deals come about as the result of an extension of similar pacts in the U.S. or in other markets, this deal in Canada is the first point of contact internationally between the two companies. And it’s one that will be “watched very closely in other geos,” Myers said.

“We’re always trying to identify products that will compliment our line card and give our resellers more to offer their customers, and we’re starting with SimpliVity in Canada,” he said.

Myers said although the deal is new, initial steps have already been taken, including a day some select Tech Data partners spent with the vendor in New York City last week to get the lowdown on the company’s technology and the new relationship. The distributor has already had deals closed with SimpliVity, “and some more is about to close,” Myers said.