CDW is “upsetting” the established supplier pecking order in the Ministry of Defence space, one of its execs claimed as it kicked off an RAF managed services contract.
The global VAR giant was last year picked to run the managed service that supports the RAF’s submarine-hunting capability – named AirCHAN (Air Content Hosting and Access Network).
The award of the contract – which sees CDW provide a managed services involving around ten staff at an unnamed RAF station – was only announced today after going live in April.
The London-based outfit is understood to have seen off VARs including at least three members of the Oxygen 250 top 10 – as well as defence organisations – to land the deal.
The service is backed off to technology vendors including NetApp and Fortinet.
“Five years ago, we didn’t have a business in the MoD,” Nick Garland, Head of Secure Government at CDW UK, told IT Channel Oxygen.
“Now we’re displacing a lot of people and upsetting the marketplace. We’ve got a mature business now in this environment, where we can be trusted to deliver capability that previously wasn’t considered to be VAR activity.”
CDW UK generates an even third of its revenues from the enterprise, midmarket and public sectors, respectively, MD Penny Williams told IT Channel Oxygen last summer.
With Williams having pledged to invest in its local services business, CDW in January appointed former Computacenter, Daisy and Digital Space exec John Holt as Senior Director of Professional & Managed Services UK&I.
CDW’s RAF managed services deal covers AirCHAN, a critical end‑to‑end information management system that enables the rapid processing and sharing of intelligence collected during maritime patrol missions.
Garland characterised it as a “stepping stone” in its secure managed services capabilities.
“This is a leap forward in acknowledging CDWs investment in our secure capabilities by providing a real-time technology-enabled managed service to the Ministry of Defence,” he said.
