Redington Gulf has been appointed as Microsoft’s Tier-2 partner for the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Indirect programme for the South Gulf region covering the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The partnership will see Redington integrate Microsoft’s CSP programme solutions such as Office 365, Azure, Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), CRMOnline and Intune on its RedCloud.
The Microsoft CSP programme is the latest addition to the RedCloud portal that offers a single sign-in platform for all cloud services with a unified billing, provisioning, automation and online payment option.
“The CSP programme offers end customers a cloud platform to deploy their IT solutions, which is a trend expected to accelerate in the future. The programme provides an incredible opportunity for Microsoft partners like us to build our business on top of Microsoft’s ‘cloud first, mobile first’ vision,” says Aloysius Fernandes, President, Redington Gulf.
“We are already the pre-existing Microsoft distributor for their legacy software and hardware business, and now it is a huge responsibility to partner with Microsoft to strongly drive and execute their new strategic business direction in keeping with their confidence reposed on us. It is exciting for us as collaboration partners to aid Microsoft in transforming the consumption of IT by end customers, which will eventually get delivered in the form of ITaaS [IT as a solution] through channel partners,” he adds.
Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value Distribution, said “Apart from Microsoft services, RedCloud will be able to facilitate existing partners with a bouquet of cloud services from Amazon Web Services, Oracle, RedHat, IT security vendors, IT software vendors, Managed Service Providers and many other technologies. The partners will be able to position cloud solutions and workloads in contrast to traditional infrastructure solutions. This will help them transform as they prepare for their journey in the cloud and enhance their ability to propose new related business solutions.”
As part of the CSP 2-tier partnership with Microsoft, Redington will offer the Microsoft cloud solutions via channel partners (Tier 2) such as Value-added Resellers (VARs), Systems Integrators (SIs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to their end customers or via hosted offerings. Customers will benefit from a range of Microsoft cloud offerings, including Office 365, Azure, EMS, CRM Online and Intune, as a core suite.
As a CSP Tier-2 partner, Redington Value will focus on four key areas, including value-added services, customer support, single invoice and customer management at scale.
According to Redington, the CSP programme will cater to all verticals, including banking, retail, health care, hospitality, enterprise, mid-market, telecom, government, oil & gas and education, and will provide full functionality of provisioning, metering, billing and automation of various cloud services.
“The partnership is significant as Microsoft is in the forefront of catalysing this new model of IT delivery. It also enables the entire channel ecosystem to benefit from a consumption-based revenue model of recurring nature with unlimited enriched bundled offerings by building alliances with software developers and service providers,” said Balakrishnan.
Redington Gulf also signed a similar contract that will be implemented in West & Central Africa and Nigeria.
