Tech Data Corporation today announced that it has joined the VCE partner ecosystem, further helping its channel of over 60,000 resellers accelerate the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models, reduce costs, and improve time to market.

VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platforms bring together leading computing, networking, storage, virtualization, security and management technologies from Cisco, EMC and VMware into a pre-packaged, pre-validated converged infrastructure system. Tech Data has achieved technical certifications and partner designations for all of the Cisco, EMC and VMware products that comprise the Vblock platforms. Cloud computing, enabled by Vblock platforms, provides a more elastic and efficient utilization of an IT infrastructure, resulting in improved availability, performance and service levels.

"VCE delivers a comprehensive converged infrastructure platform, incorporating the best technologies of three of Tech Data's trusted vendor partners, and we are pleased to partner with them to increase our overall capability in the data center," said Chuck Bartlett, vice president and general manager of Advance Infrastructure Solutions (AIS) at Tech Data. "There is a large demand in the market for fully virtualized 'plug-and-play' cloud solutions, and VCE provides a scalable approach for our resellers to easily sell these solutions."

Vblock platforms are the industry's first completely integrated, tested and validated converged infrastructure offerings with end-to-end vendor accountability. Vblock platforms support a broad range of operating systems and applications that enable customers to rapidly migrate existing applications to a virtualized environment.

"VCE is leading the way in converged infrastructure solutions and we are excited to welcome Tech Data to our channel partner community," said D Martin, vice president of Worldwide Channels at VCE. "Their dedicated AIS team and continued focus on growth in the data center make them a valuable partner to help resellers and end-user customers accelerate their journey to the cloud."