One of the world’s leading IT distributor and solutions aggregators, Tech Data Corp., believes that it is increasingly helping its partners gain expertise in some of the newer technologies so they can be sold to customers.

Company execs think one of the ways to go about it is to sometimes provide experience centers and customer immersion programs, where the customer actually comes in with the partner to work through the complex process.

“They come to us, and we help them deliver that technology,” said Reza Honarmand, senior vice president of cloud hyperscalers and transformation at Tech Data.

Honarmand spoke with John Furrier and David Nicholson, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed how IT vendors scale as data and increasing complexity become must-haves for the enterprise. (* Disclosure below.)

Distributor and customer working more together

“What we do is support the partner to have the knowledge, the expertise, the services, the solutions that they need to have to deploy those technologies,” Honarmand said.

He believes there are three main motions that his mammoth IT company (#16 in the Fortune 100) is seeing. They all, broadly, involve increasing contact with the customer. One is where Tech Data Corp. does a “sell-with.”

“[Our] partner knows what they want, they’ve worked with the customer, they’ve established a need, they come to us, and we help them deliver that technology,” he explained.

Another, more immersive motion is where they are helping the partner actually “land the technology” in a “sell-with.” And then the third is the aforementioned “sell-for” where the customer comes in along with the partner. That’s best for longer sell-cycles that are more complex.

Interestingly, Honarmand reckons there’s confusion at the independent software vendor level when it comes to AWS.

“What  many of the ISVs out there don’t have is the ability to understand all of the AWS programs,” he said. “So we help them understand that, understand how they can get the most optimal cost and program with AWS.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Tech Data Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Tech Data nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE