Companies across the globe are aggressively seeking the productivity gains afforded through digital transformation. As a result, innovation and time-to-market have emerged as critical success factors for gaining competitive advantage. Technology providers have responded to these business requirements by designing converged solutions that shield customers from system complexities and that facilitate support of an “always on” 24 x 7 environment.
Digital transformation is never an easy task, however. Successful deployment of digital business solutions requires a deep assessment of current systems, processes, and procedures so that goals can be set and gaps identified. Establishing partnerships helps to fill knowledge gaps and to add missing expertise when proposing comprehensive solutions.
APC by Schneider Electric has pursued a long-held tradition of forging strong partnerships in order to better address customer needs. By partnering with thousands of IT solution providers worldwide, APC is well-positioned to offer its customers end-to-end solutions across a wide array of industries.
One partnership, in particular, that has stood out as exceptional is the 25-year alliance with Tech Data, a $36.8 billion in annual revenue corporation and Fortune 100 company that has established itself as the world’s leading end-to-end information technology distributor.
Together, Tech Data and APC enable IT solution providers to bring to market products and solutions that end users require for connecting and growing their business in a stable, secure manner. APC and Tech Data supply IT solution providers with efficient solutions and expertise thereby equipping them with better tools to address the evolving needs of the technology marketplace.
New trends, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing, have opened the floodgates to many sources of new data. What were formerly “dumb” devices are now equipped with intelligence and the ability to connect to networks. Much of this new data is being captured outside of central networks across key industries such as manufacturing, retail and healthcare among others.
“With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data,” says Tech Data Director of Converged Solutions Maghen Hannigan, “it’s not always an option to rely on the data centre to bring data back and forth to manage business critical applications. We have to have solutions at the edge, in remote branch locations to support our customers’ business,” she said.
Addressing the demand for edge computingIn order to support these newly emerging edge environments, Tech Data and APC’s power and physical infrastructure specialists team up to offer their channel partners and customers innovative solutions such as micro data centres. These solutions serve as the core engines that enable the ability to bring IT close to the point of use, which is required to avoid issues such as latency.
Micro data centre solutions, with the help of Tech Data, are quickly pre-assembled, pre-tested and integrated before they ever arrive at the customer location. Since the core elements of the system already all work together, customers in edge environments, most of whom are unfamiliar with the workings of IT, have peace of mind knowing that these systems are capable of operating on their own, without any local support required.
APC’s products such as racks, power distribution units, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), and management software are often components of pre-certified partner solutions. This includes turn-key IT solutions from APC alliance partners Scale Computing, StorMagic, HPE, Dell, Nutanix, NetApp, and Cisco. Because APC racks can be shipped fully loaded in special shock packaging, Tech Data integrates and configures the IT assets enabling faster speed of deployment on arrival.
“It’s important for technology teams that craft solutions to execute their jobs quickly and efficiently. Rapid deployment on our end helps users gain maximum advantage from their digital transformation investments as quickly as possible,” said Hannigan. “This allows us to expand the support and services for our customer base in the enterprise space. APC helps us to build out better customer solutions to support data management within those remote locations and assure that customers are always on and don’t have to endure latency issues,” she said.
To learn more about how Tech Data and APC team up to provide their partners and customers Certainty in a Connected World, view a short video highlighting this partnership.