D&H Canada has expanded its growing Modern Solutions business and relationship with a longstanding key vendor, announcing that it will offer Lenovo’s full lineup of Infrastructure Solutions Group data centre products.

“Lenovo ISG augments what we’ve got as a strong business on the PC side,” said Dan Reio, new director of modern solutions at D&H Canada. “They’re seeing a lot of success where customers are buying Lenovo PCs already, so there’s a natural affinity, and with their L360 framework, they do a good job of looking like one big happy family with specialists [on the data centre and PC sides] as oppose to two different pillars.”

The distributor currently has stock of Lenovo’s data centre hardware offerings, though Reio said it’s still “working on the next steps” around representing its True Scale IaaS products. Reio said D&H has already hired a Lenovo-focused technical solutions architect to support its VARs in building a business around Lenovo ISG.

That includes partners with existing data centre businesses that are new to Lenovo and existing D&H customers who do business with the distributor around Lenovo PCs and other end-user devices but may be able to expand their business to the data centre space.

“We’re looking at that SMB and midmarket base of resellers and bringing them technology they may not be working with today,” Reio said. “We get them in front of many brands, and some will certainly listen to a story around profitability and growth.”

The distributor is running a promo through November 29 to take a group of resellers to Lenovo’s headquarters in Raleigh, NC, next January for a deep dive into how to build their business around Lenovo further.

The Lenovo announcement comes as D&H has focused more on the Modern Solutions business, its name for the data centre technologies group. Reio, brought onto the D&H Canada team a quarter ago, is leading the push, which includes adding new vendors, new resources, and support for its existing data centre business and vendors.

Reio noted that while data centre product sales suffered a bit during the COVID era as the PC business and cloud services skyrocketed, there has recently been a “resurgence” in data centre refresh. Part of that is to make up for the lack of investment in the first few years of this decade, and part of that is due to the rise of AI as an industry megatrend.

“There’s a necessity to beef up the data centre, the storage, the compute, the network robustness,” Reio said. “All of these things are so important, and we’re seeing a lot of interest in those technologies.”

Reio said he’s focused on growing his team to support existing vendors and bring on new vendors. It’s a strategy to go deep, primarily as it supports its traditional base of SMB-focused VARs who may look to their distribution partner for more than pick, pack, and ship, particularly in more technical infrastructure solutions.

“We help them figure out how we can help them grow, whether it’s training or technical guidance,” Reio said. “Whatever that may be, that’s the role we’ll play.”

He said the goal is to help resellers build their technical bench to the point where they can take on most of the work themselves and then continue to support in the tried-and-true distribution mode of getting required gear out the door quickly and efficiently.

Reio said the Modern Solutions group in Canada currently has staff dedicated to the distributor’s relationship with Cisco, HPE, and now Lenovo, among other key vendors. The group also gets support from its U.S.-based parent as part of its loosely integrated North American model. Ultimately, Reio said, the goal is to recreate most of that coverage currently offered south of the border in-country as the Canadian Modern Solutions business grows.

Reio said the company is looking to focus more on power as a key component of the data centre refresh and will continue to focus on “doing the heavy lifting” of building knowledge around data centre opportunities in the midmarket and SMB channel.