Comstor, the dedicated value-added distributor of Cisco products, today announced that is has entered into an exclusive partnership with Presidio Inc., a provider of cloud-driven managed services and a top-tier Cisco partner, for the delivery of cloud-driven managed services relevant to a Cisco-centric data center. Comstor is a business practice of Westcon Group.
While the entire menu of cloud managed service offerings has yet to be determined, David McNicholas, U.S. director of strategic business development at Comstor, noted there would be about six to nine unique Presidio cloud-driven managed services offerings in the general areas of operating systems, virtual machines and file systems, for starters. More details should emerge in about two to three months.
The integrated Presidio and Comstor solution is supported by Peak's Cisco-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) technology, which provides access to the hypervisor and to a customer's backup and security platform of choice, without requiring an upfront investment, McNicholas said. Comstor partnered with Peak for IaaS in September 2013.
This is an opportunity for partners to offer cloud managed services and fill a current gap in the marketplace.
Paul Burnspresident, Neovise
"With the addition of Presidio managed services for Peak, partners can now white label managed services," he said.
Add to that Comstor's Executive Relevance Selling methodology, available since 2009, and Cisco partners have a powerful solution and go-to-market strategy, according to McNicholas.
"The real relevance of today's announcement is that when you put all the pieces together for our Cisco partner base, they get to leverage everything that they've invested in their Cisco practice into a ready go-to-market, hybrid cloud play and we can get them there in 90 to 120 days," he said.
The new offering is good for customers and good for managed service providers (MSPs), according to Paul Burns, president of Neovise, a cloud computing consultancy.
"A lot of IaaS is marketed as a self-service, 'give us your credit card and have at it' type of service, but we're seeing managed services becoming more popular, because customers don't have the time or expertise to put anything on top of the cloud or manage it," he said. Without management, no one knows how many resources are consumed, for example. "This is an opportunity for partners to offer cloud managed services and fill a current gap in the marketplace," Burns added.
Just last week, Presidio announced that it met the requirements for Cisco Cloud and Managed Service Master Partner recertification. The top-tier services provider also achieved multiple Cisco Powered Services designations for both the Managed Security and Business Communication categories.
