Arrow ECS expands GSA Schedule to increase government opportunities 1 November, 2009 By Mark Cox

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

A GSA Schedule 70 includes prenegotiated contracts to public-sector agencies for information technology solutions that are available at a set price and have been approved by the GSA to be compliant with specific laws and regulations. The Arrow ECS GSA schedule, which had been established and managed by Alternative Technology, which Arrow acquired in 2006 and is now its' Alternative Technology Group, is in the top 4 percent of Schedule 70 contractors.

"Expanding the GSA program that the Alternative Technology Group established in 2005 across Arrow ECS' entire North American operations enables us to make the program available to all our resellers and suppliers who want to participate," said Rich Severa, president, Arrow ECS North America.

The GSA program is now open to all North American Arrow ECS resellers. The program also is being expanded to include enterprise solutions, beginning with the addition of HP. Also, the full suite of SysTrack products from Lakeside Software solutions was added to the program recently.

"The addition of enterprise solutions better enables our resellers to meet increasing demand for GSA Schedule contracts. According to Federal Computer Week, the GSA processes more than 11 million transactions each year under Schedule 70, which amounts to approximately $17 billion in annual sales. Certainly, enterprise needs comprise a large segment of this opportunity," said Severa. "We are pleased to add HP to the program and hope to add other enterprise lines from our portfolio soon."

The HP solutions in Arrow ECS' GSA Schedule program include BladeSystems, Integrity servers, iSCSI arrays, Enterprise Virtual Arrays, XP, technology services, networking, and BTO Software. Arrow can now support their reseller network with a GSA Schedule contract that has HP solutions for their customers.

"Arrow ECS has a proven record of success with supporting government business," said Mike Humke, vice president, public sector sales, Solution Partner Organization, for HP. "We are pleased to be working closely with them to help drive new growth in the government market and continue to look for new ways to provide solutions and support for the partner community."

Other suppliers in the program besides HP and Lakeside include AEP Networks, Blue Coat, DataCore Software, Fortinet, Gemalto, Novell, SonicWall, ThinPrint and WYSE. Various other service and support offerings are included in the program as well.