Horizon UK has unveiled plans to open its Horizon Technology Centre which will allow resellers to showcase existing and future technologies to their customers.

The distributor, which has recently been targeted by Avnet (CRN Online, 18 April), will base the centre at its Basingstoke office, but will link the two facilities via a WAN, which will showcase technologies from vendors such as Sun, EMC, CommVault, Nortel, ShoreTel, F5, Microsoft and Tandberg.

Resellers will be able to run proof of concept projects, which include virtualisation, Microsoft exchange, backup & recovery, archiving, video conferencing, database security, voice over IP and Unified Communications.

Simon Welch, marketing director at Horizon, said: “This is a very exciting time for Horizon. The last 18-months has seen us consolidate our position as the leading distributing integrator in the UK by attracting new channel development contracts with Oracle, EMC, Symantec and Tandberg visual communications.

“Added to our existing relationships with the likes of Sun, and Nortel, we now feel the time is ready for us to provide the channel with showcase centres where they can bring their customers and prospects to see solution demonstrations in a safe and knowledgeable environment provided by a trusted distribution partner.”
Other services which will be available include: technology integration; benchmarking; application and platform testing; partner project rooms: presentation theatres and training facilities.

Welch added: “We aim to provide facilities for in depth investigation with our partners to either find suitable technology solutions to meet specific commercial opportunities or to discover new strategic directions, future opportunities and market sectors.

“We will work with partners on pilot projects to ensure that proposed solut ions will actually deliver the intended business objectives when deployed, de-risking the solution for the end user. Partners will also be able to utilise our facilities to hold 'on-line' remote application trials prior to live deployment of an e-business application,” he said.

Mark Betteridge, lead infrastructure specialist at Serco, said: “The SAN proof of concept that was carried out at the Horizon Technology Centre proved to us that consolidating our storage onto a single modular disk array will provide Serco with improved performance and greater flexibility. It also demonstrated the environment worked effectively and improved performance.”

Kosta Totkov, technical director at UKN Group, said: “The advice and support provided to us by the Horizon Technology Centre played an important role in kick-starting the development of our ultra thin-client solution and was a milestone for UKN Group’s technical innovation. There is a tangible business benefit to know we have a distribution partner able to deliver this kind of support and which has made a significant internal investment on behalf of companies like ourselves.”