Cohesity has tabbed Tech Data as their first comprehensive distribution partner in North America, after soliciting bids through an RFP process. Cohesity says that bringing on distribution won’t change its fundamental principles towards partnering, and using a value-focused channel.
Kevin Kennedy, Senior Vice President of Sales for Enterprise Solutions at Tech Data
Tech Data has announced that it has succeeded in winning an RFP put out by hyperconverged secondary storage solution vendor Cohesity, and will be the sole distributor for Cohesity in the United States and in Canada. While Cohesity uses distribution in other geos, it is their first comprehensive distribution deal in North America.
“We couldn’t be more excited about adding Cohesity to our line card,” said Kevin Kennedy, Senior Vice President of Sales for Enterprise Solutions at Tech Data. “Some of our reseller partners who are also Cohesity partners had wanted us to add them. We didn’t have the opportunity to pursue this until they offered the RFP, and it was a huge win for us to be successful with that.”
Cohesity has consistently stated over the last two plus years that North American distribution wasn’t something they would be looking at until the business here grew to the point where it made sense. That time arrived around three months ago, said Todd Palmer, vice president of worldwide channels at Cohesity.
“Our business has been growing rapidly and we thought it was time for the Americas,” Palmer said. “We had been using distribution everywhere else that we sold in the world. In North America, we had been using distribution specifically around our business with CDW, because they had so many vendors. The CDW business will now also be handled by Tech Data.
“Now instead of us supporting our growth by hiring a lot of new operational and financial resources, we can leverage those provided by Tech Data,” Palmer added. “We were also seeing some larger national partners in America very excited about us, and we needed the support of a larger company to give them the services and support. We also needed distribution help scaling our enablement across the Americas.”
Palmer explained how Tech Data became the choice.
Todd Palmer, vice president of worldwide channels at Cohesity
“We went through an extensive RFP in the US and Canada, a process that started about three months ago, and which was a very exhaustive search,” he said. “We determined that they can best help us scale our enablement, and help bring more focus. A couple of things in particular stood out. The combined Tech Data and Avnet organizations have a number of value-added services we wanted to be able to utilize, both presales technical ones around storage and also professional services. They also have strong depth of alliance relationships with partners who are important to us. Having a distributor that has a deep relationship with our platform providers – Cisco, HPE, and Dell EMC – was really important.”
Kennedy emphasized that Tech Data considers getting the Cohesity business – especially through a deal that gives them the sole distribution rights – to be a major coup.
“The RFP here was really unique,” he said. “Seldom do we have an opportunity to be a sole distributor. The vendor often wants two or three distributors in the same geo. That’s still good – but it’s less compelling. In addition, the opportunity for us to assist them beyond the traditional resell motion was attractive. We had helped other companies do the same thing in transitioning from being a software and infrastructure provider to only providing software. They can focus more on storage innovation because they don’t have to manage all those infrastructure relationships. We can do that for them, and let them offload that infrastructure component. They will give us the guidance on their alliances with the infrastructure providers and we will do the heavy lifting of integration for them.”
Cohesity products will not be open distribution, and only approved Cohesity sellers will be able to buy the product. That reflects Cohesity’s channel philosophy, which will remain consistent despite the move to distribution in North America.
“We call it our focused partner approach,” Palmer said. “We want to focus on having the smallest number of partners needed in our selling territories because we want to be able to be sure that we can invest in each partner to the same degree that they invest in us in terms of time, dollars and resources. Tech Data will let us do that. We will also be doing targeted recruitment. We might not have an ecosystem partner in say, Omaha Nebraska. Tech Data can provide us with the names of who we should be looking at.”
Kennedy said they are extremely optimistic about Cohesity’s potential to expand its business in Canada through Tech Data.
“We have already seen tremendous performance recently in Canada, and adding this kind of fast-moving product line gives Ed Galasso and his team another bullet in the gun.”
