NEWS
Swiss technology provider ALSO expands to the UK The ACMP is entirely proprietary and has been developed in-house in close
Switzerland-based technology provider ALSO Group is expanding its operations in the UK, offering direct access to its ALSO Cloud Marketplace (ACMP) platform. The ALSO Cloud platform not only connects more than 100 vendors including Microsoft, Adobe, Dropbox and IBM with resellers, it also automates the processes for renewing subscriptions, managing, upgrading and invoicing licences according to the changing needs of customers. As a result, resellers can improve service quality, boost efficiency and reduce costs for themselves and their customers. “Resellers in the UK don’t want to incur high costs and put up with time-consuming inefficiencies when managing IT licences and provisioning managed services for their customers,” explained Mark Appleton, chief customer officer at ALSO Cloud UK. “The ALSO Cloud Marketplace meets this pressing need – it provides ICT resellers with an unprecedented level of automation. Its subscription renewal feature enables them to align the end-dates of customer subscriptions as a way to automate and streamline the entire renewal process. This improves efficiency for the reseller, increases transparency for their customers, decreases churn and reduces costs as well.”
collaboration with partners. It has been built from the ground up for the specific needs of channel partners, including easy onboarding, intuitive usage and white labelling. “Our platform’s open APIs allow our reseller partners to connect quickly and easily to automate their own ERP and billing systems as a core part of their own IT back-office set- up,” adds Mark. “The ACMP ensures that all relevant information is available from our system and automatically shared with the reseller for them to use for billing and reconciliation.” The platform is fully scalable so that resellers of any size can connect to and use it as part of their service provision systems. It also has the highest level of cyber-security measures in place to minimise the risk of vendor fraud. “The UK is the biggest IT services market in Europe and represents a significant growth opportunity,” added Mark. “It’s a competitive market but we believe we can establish ourselves here – and we have the expertise, experience, resources plus an aggressive five-year plan in place to do so. We’re here for the long haul and are signing up new partners to work with.”
Mark Appleton chief customer officer ALSO Cloud UK
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Westcon-Comstor launches PartnerCentral
Westcon-Comstor, a technology provider and specialist distributor, has launched PartnerCentral, a multivendor marketplace where partners can configure, quote and order complex hybrid solutions—software, hardware, services or a combination of all three. PartnerCentral is more than a marketplace, representing a transformative shift in the way Westcon-Comstor works with its partners. It gives Westcon-Comstor partners access to intuitive data insights that makes it more than a simple way to procure services and products. As part of its marketplace capability, Partner Insights gives partners the business and customer insights they need to capitalise on new opportunities and market trends. PartnerCentral is a gateway to Partner Success, where users can better understand their customers’ product lifecycles and be more responsive. Built in close collaboration with Westcon-
Comstor’s leading channel and vendor partners, PartnerCentral has been developed with users in mind and focuses on providing access to educational resources, digital tools and data-driven processes essential to Partner Success. PartnerCentral is designed to accelerate and simplify the move to cloud and ‘as-a- Service’ business models by: • Simplifying the procurement and management of recurring subscription and as-a-Service offers at scale, making it easier to provide these services to end customers • Providing a single platform for hybrid procurement, so partners can purchase hardware, software and services, with a mix of subscriptions and one-off purchases, on platform. This makes the process far simpler despite the potential for increased complexity • Making self-service easy from one intuitive interface, allowing partners to better
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