Infrastructure VAD Arrow ECS has unveiled ArrowSphere, a cloud services aggregation and brokerage platform for the European solution provider community, system integrators, independent software vendors and service providers. Through ArrowSphere, Arrow ECS is adding new growth opportunities for enterprise and midmarket business solutions for the channel. ArrowSphere, which is managed by Julien Perronneau (VP Services and business transformation) and Eric Gourmelin (CTO), will enable the Arrow ECS European channel network to resell aggregated cloud services, such as infrastructure-, platform-, storage- and software-as-a-service solutions, from most of its vendors (including BlueCoat, Citrix, Colt, EMC, IBM, McAfee, Mitel, Mozy, NetApp, Opsource, Symantec, Symplified, Trend Micro, VMware et WebSense). ArrowSphere brings new dimensions to cloud delivery by facilitating access to more than 60 cloud services (90 more to come in the next months), in addition to adding flexibility with white-label webstores; increasing simplicity by centralizing billing and provisioning (in all European currencies and languages); and improving reliability through trusted single-sign-on solutions.
« By offering turnkey webstores that address the needs of today’s and future businesses, we bridge the gap between cloud service provider innovation and solution provider market reach, » said Laurent Sadoun, EMEA president for Arrow ECS. « This approach represents the catalyst that can drive significant cloud adoption through the channel over the next five years.«
ArrowSphere is available to the IT community in the United Kingdom (beginning immediately) and will be available on September, 20th in Denmark/Iceland, France, Germany and Spain, with other countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Luxembourg, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland to follow later in 2013.
« Migrating legacy IT systems to the cloud, connecting cloud solutions to existing on-premise infrastructure and supporting these hybrid solutions are complex undertakings for small and midsize enterprises. Solution providers are the trusted advisors that routinely help businesses integrate IT services securely and efficiently, » said Sadoun. « Arrow ECS is proud to offer the IT community a unique opportunity to enter into the cloud. This strategy of investments toward added value and the channel will guide innovation forward for our partners as well as the entire IT industry.«
Like other distributors, Arrow ECS mainly enters the aggregation market. Like them, it will, sooner or later, face issues like security and national compliance, which will make it difficult to offer true pan-European cloud services. Also, it will be important to see how Arrow ECS deals with the integration of third party cloud services it does not distribute (including, for example, Microsoft offer).
