Westcon "master of its own universe" with cloud IP buyout

Westcon has guaranteed it has "end-to-end" ownership of its cloud distribution strategy by acquiring the company that developed the technology underpinning its cloud marketplace.

The distributor had been working with Verecloud for the past 18 months to construct its Cloud Solutions Distribution Platform, an online portal that includes its cloud catalogue of products and services, licensing, usage consumption and billing.

Verecloud, which was founded in 2006, has developed "a robust, telecom carrier-grade, cloud services aggregation and brokerage platform with the ability to process millions of concurrent transactions in real time", according to Westcon.

Westcon Group chief executive Dolph Westerbos said: "Weston Group and Verecloud have been working together during the past 18 months and co-developed a truly differentiated cloud go-to-market capability for the channel.

"Our services distribution solution sets us apart from the industry, hence we decided to ‘in-source’ that intellectual property through this acquisition."

Darryl Grauman, Westcon's Asia Pacific services & cloud solutions director, told CRN the acquisition gives the distie full control over the cloud platform.

"This was originally developed under a proposed licensing agreement between us, but as our new CEO Dolph Westerbos took the helm, we realised the importance of the intellectual property that we had created," he said.

"At this point he made the call to acquire Verecloud, its assets and patents. The result is that we own our Cloud Distribution strategy end to end – we are masters of our own universe. 

"This means that if we want to provide innovative solutions into the channel, ownership of our digital distribution platform allows us to bring these solutions directly to the channel without relying on third-party software development or release cycles," added Grauman.

Grauman told CRN that the platform offered much more than just a marketplace for cloud apps. "We term it digital distribution because it contains our cloud catalogue but it also has a number of other functions for both the end-user as well as the cloud service reseller."

According to Westcon, the Cloud Solutions Distribution Platform offers:

• Cloud/service offer catalogue
• Solution bundling: Aggregating products from multiple vendors
• Multi-tier cloud syndication: Sales and lifecycle management for vendors, distributor, resellers and end customers
• Reseller-branded web stores
• Automated services delivery lifecycle, including inventory discovery and service fulfillment

Forthcoming included channel enablement services include:

• Billing-as-a-service, allowing resellers to bill for usage-based micro-transactions
• Up- and cross-selling
• Marketing and campaign management
• Legal contract creation services
• Contract renewal and subscription management
• Reseller sales enablement, including a cloud transformation playbook
• Return-on-investment analysis
• Technical support