CDW LLC (CDW), a leading provider of technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare, today announced that it has been designated a FlexPod® Premium Partner by Cisco and NetApp® to provide solutions and services supporting the FlexPod data center solution. As a FlexPod Premium Partner, CDW is recognized for its advanced competencies in supporting customers as a trusted adviser in deploying FlexPod solutions.

FlexPod is a pre-tested and validated solution that combines networking, computing and storage in a shared infrastructure and supports multiple applications and workloads to help customers accelerate and simplify their transition to the cloud.

As a channel partner of Cisco and NetApp, CDW will be able to assist customers with implementing and configuring virtualized data center solutions based on the validated FlexPod shared infrastructure, as well as help customers develop and adhere to best practices for building and managing best-in-class solutions from Cisco and NetApp. The flexible, scalable shared infrastructure is pre-tested to lower deployment risk, increase data center efficiencies and create a flexible information technology (IT) environment to build a private cloud.

FlexPod Premium Partner status certifies CDW’s excellence in providing converged data center solutions and services based on the pre-tested and validated FlexPod data center platform. With the FlexPod Premium Partner framework, CDW is positioned to serve its networking, computing and storage customers with a single, efficient infrastructure platform that helps reduce deployment risk, further accelerates deployment times, provides access to a wide range of additional services and capabilities specific to FlexPod environments, and increases efficiencies.

“CDW is honored to be a FlexPod Premium Partner, as this status demonstrates our commitment to being a trusted and highly specialized data center solutions provider,” said Doug Eckrote, CDW senior vice president, strategic solutions and services. “Customer response has been very positive to the collaborative approach we take with our vendor partners to deliver FlexPod’s converged infrastructure and networking capabilities, integrated with our other data center and cloud offerings.”

“CDW’s achievement to Premium Partner status is well timed as we celebrate the two-year anniversary of our FlexPod collaboration with Cisco,” said Todd Palmer, vice president, Americas Channel, NetApp. “This solution demonstrates NetApp’s commitment to deliver best-of-breed technologies for the unified data center through our partner ecosystem, creating more opportunities and a better alternative for our channel partners.”

Cisco and NetApp’s FlexPod is a validated shared infrastructure that features the Cisco UCS® server, Cisco network switches and NetApp® unified storage systems running on Data ONTAP® software. The design architecture has been jointly tested and validated as a Cisco Validated Design, so CDW can quickly assess customer needs and deploy integrated solutions from Cisco and NetApp that meet the stringent requirements of their dynamic data centers.

FlexPod is a data center platform that offers a unified and validated infrastructure to simplify data center transformation. The solution offers flexibility and scalability to integrate and enhance desktop virtualization, enterprise applications and Infrastructure as a Service capabilities. FlexPod also provides a pre-validated design and joint support agreement that speeds time of delivery and provides the ability to troubleshoot. To learn more about FlexPod, visit www.netapp.com/us/technology/flexpod/ or www.cisco.com/go/flexpod. To learn more about CDW’s converged infrastructure offerings, visit http://www.cdw.com/convergence.

About CDW

CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, education and healthcare. Ranked No. 31 on Forbes’ list of America’s Largest Private Companies and No. 270 on the FORTUNE 500, CDW was founded in 1984 and employs more than 6,900 coworkers. For the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2012, the company generated net sales of more than $10 billion. For more information, visit www.CDW.com.