ATIO and Stratus Technologies sign reseller agreement

Stratus Technologies has announced that it has signed a strategic reseller agreement with ATIO’s IT Services Division, to provide its server platforms and support its solutions in the local market.

According to Craig Munitz, Managing Director of ATIO’s IT Services Division, the company has been looking for a specialist vendor that would further enhance and grow its current server solution offerings.

“At ATIO, we don’t take strategic partnerships lightly because it costs money, time, resources as well as reputational risk. After a rigorous evaluation process of Stratus Technologies’ product offerings, technical expertise as well as company culture, we  are confident that ATIO and Stratus are a good fit and together we can provide a very strong solution to the local market,” he says.

Dick Sharod, Country Manager for Stratus Technologies, says the agreement paves the way for greater market share in South Africa.

“We offer domain expertise that not only includes continuous availability, but also industry know-how and consulting services. Through ATIO, we can serve customers businesses and organisations that must have failsafe availability, whether they need uptime during time-critical periods or 24/7 reliability,” says Sharod.

Munitz says that for many companies today, high-value functions also include e-mail, manufacturing data collection, customer-facing Internet services and just about any application that, if unavailable, interrupts the flow of commerce or compromises data integrity.

“Stratus Technologies has a reputation for delivering quality solutions as well as a track record of providing excellent service. Supporting its products makes it a lot less intense for us,” he says. “We are putting our support staff through the Stratus Five Nines Certification Program so that we can be a valuable and active service provider  in the support of our Stratus customers.”

Sharod says: “We work best when we take time out upfront to really understand and customer’s business. Only then can we truly address their business risks in terms of availability and then work together to remove the risk of downtime. ATIO have that same willingness to help their customers find the ‘truth of the problem’ and this leads to a greater level of openness and strengthens the relationship, as well as finding the right solution to underpin their business critical needs.

Munitz says there is enormous potential to sell into its telecommunications customer base through its Interactive division, which offers mission-critical solutions to the call centre industry.

 “Bringing Stratus into the ATIO fold will give us access to a broad spectrum of fault tolerant solutions, including virtualisation, that will supplement our current activities in our customer base and help further secure and broaden our customer base in South Africa.

“Stratus is a very passionate organisation and our team is as well, and I believe that will drive the partnership forward. I am looking forward to the synergies this agreement will yield,” he concludes.