Telefónica announced today its first ever, but highly anticipated U.S.-based Channel Partner Program at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami 2013. The announcement is significant, and will provide Telefónica resellers and partners the opportunity to offer a significant array of new capabilities.

These will include connectivity, cloud and machine-to-machine (M2M) platform services.

The Channel Partner (News - Alert) Program aims to assist partners through all stages of platform deployments, and will range from implementation to post-sales services. Most importantly, partners will have full access to an online portal that will provide marketing materials, training and tools to enhance the sales and service process.

The company is also aiming for significant flexibility; there will be multiple levels of partnerships defined from which to choose from and each program will provide a unique compensation structure.

Partnership levels include:

• Full technology partners
• Becoming an agent
• Serving as a referring partner

Telefónica itself is a huge entity, with over 314 million corporate and domestic customers across North America, Europe and Latin America. The company primarily provides services for the Fortune 500 in the U.S. and is itself a member of the Fortune 100. Even so, its brand recognition is not as visible as it can be in the U.S., and building brand recognition is one key business objective the company has for launching the program.

As part of the announcement, it was noted that more specifically it will be Telefónica USA and Telefónica Digital, Telefónica’s digital innovation arm, which will work with resellers and partners to make the services a reality.

Through the program, it’ll become significantly easier for potential partners to find their way to Telefónica’s services.

Telefónica Digital is a global business division of Telefónica. Its mission is to deliver research and development, venture capital, global partnerships and digital services that include cloud computing, mobile advertising, M2M and eHealth.

Just as important, it is also targeting the delivery of innovation in over the top (OTT) communications under a new umbrella brand called TU, and in big data through Telefónica Dynamic Insights.

Miami, as it happens, is where Telefónica’s major USA data center is based, and it is from here that its cloud services – which can be provided to companies operating in both North and Latin America, will be delivered from. Telefónica’s “Instant Servers, which are now being installed in Miami,” provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service, which in turn delivers on-demand, high-performance cloud computing for developers, digital businesses and large enterprises.

The service is of course optimized for mobile, enterprise and M2M applications and – critical for partners and resellers – is backed by Telefónica’s world-class infrastructure management and service capabilities.

Telefónica USA CEO, Marcelo Caputo (the gentleman on the right in the image below) notes that, “This is one of the few programs that will allow our partners to sell our wide range of telecommunications and value-added solutions, from International Services to Data Center and Cloud Solutions, on a worldwide basis. Together with our dedicated innovation arm, Telefónica Digital, we are constantly evolving state of the art services in high demand areas so our partners have attractive and differentiated offerings.”

“Being able to offer the full program in such an important market as the U.S. allows us to significantly expand our footprint.” 

Tim Marsden, global cloud services director for Telefónica (on the left in the image above), who delivered one of ITEXPO Miami 2013’s keynotes, added, “Our data center in the United States is a category 5 facility hardened against any possible weather or other natural disaster possibilities. The facility is directly cabled to Latin America – which we believe is a unique offering – and connected to Europe, and we see the Miami data center as a perfectly positioned global hub that connects to numerous Latin American and European data centers.”

“It is truly a global reach that we are now able to extend to our rapidly growing partner ecosystem,” Marsden said. “We are fully positioned to help our partners deliver solutions – including global M2M solutions – they can offer to SMBs as well as to major multinationals.”

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