Over the past few months, Cloud Distribution’s trainers and qualified instructors have been through extensive preparation and guidance with A10’s US technical team to ensure that they are certified and qualified to deliver A10 training to partners and end users. This is the first ATP Centre in Europe and Cloud Distribution will become the first certified partner, enabling both resellers and end users to upskill and increase the level of recognised expertise within their organisations, while increasing their capability for pre and post-sales support. Rapid channel growth has led to the increased demand for training that A10 is now experiencing, having launched its new Affinity Partner Programme last year. Demand has grown to the extent that A10 now requires a dedicated training centre in EMEA and Cloud Distribution was perfectly positioned to deliver this.
Lee Mepsted, Western Europe Channel Manager for A10 Networks, comments: “This is a big step for A10 Networks, having previously provided all training directly. As a result of Cloud Distribution coming on board as an ATP, our technical resources will be free to deliver even more value to both our partners and end users.”
Cloud Distribution will provide training primarily around A10’s ADC (Application Delivery Controller) and TPS (Threat Protection System) products. This will enable resellers’ technical staff to be certified trainers and users, which in turn means that they will be able to provide enhanced implementation and support services to their customers. Likewise, if end users don’t have certified engineers, they can sign up for training courses as well. There will be scheduled classroom training courses at Cloud’s ATP Centre in Reading, and where required, bespoke onsite training can also be delivered.
Adam Davison, Sales and Marketing Director for Cloud Distribution, comments: “The new A10 Affinity Partner Programme, launched last year, has really built channel momentum and we are seeing increased demand for training from existing partners, who are hiring new staff to meet this growth. Equally, we have a host of new partners signing up who also need to be certified. As a distributor that focuses on value add, it was natural for us to become a training centre so that we could provide that support to the channel and their customers.”