Mississauga, Ont. – Distributor Tech Data Canada (Nasdaq: TECD) yesterday unveiled its expanded Advanced Technology Solutions Centre (ATSC).
While the ATSC demo and training centre is not new, there are certain components to it that are.
Greg Myers, vice-president of marketing at Tech Data Canada, said although ATSC has been available for the past four years, at the time, Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) was its only feature vendor and everything was housed in one room. What’s new this year is the addition of 17 other feature vendor partners including HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Lenovo, Microsoft, VMware, Avaya and more and the addition of a second room, to form what Myers calls, ATSC 2.0.
“We look at ATSC as one solutions centre with two physical rooms,” Myers said. “What used to be 900 square feet has now expanded to about 1900 square feet. Everything in ATSC was done in-house by Tech Data employees including the design, configuration and installation work. Resellers are encouraged to come in and see everything out on the floor and they can be hands-on with (what’s there).”
The idea behind the new ATSC is to offer its resellers and sales team a vendor-agnostic demo and training facility where end-users can be brought in to see the hardware and solutions working in fully operational environments.
Among some of the vendors and solutions on display in the centre include Microsoft’s cloud environment as well as its recently launched hosted PC-management service, Windows Intune and Xerox‘s print station solutions which allow users to print, scan, fax, e-mail and store documents right from the printer itself.
Resellers can book the centre online for in-person demos or they can conduct demos remotely using the centre’s voice and audio capabilities, Myers said. In addition to using ATSC, resellers can also take advantage of Tech Data Canada’s catering service and rooms to host customer events.
While Tech Data in the U.S. has a similar demo and training facility in Clearwater, Fla., Myers says this one is the “first of its kind” in the country.
Follow Maxine Cheung on Twitter: @MaxineCheungCDN.
