Marathon Technologies announced the completion of a distribution agreement with IQ Sys. IQ Sys will be working closely with Marathon and Citrix to drive the availability of end-to-end fault-tolerant virtualization environments through one solution provider.

This agreement will mark that a UK distributor has been able to offer a high availability desktop-to-datacenter solution to resellers. The Citrix acquisition of XenSource, combined with Marathon’s development of the first fault-tolerant availability solution for server virtualization, has resulted in the most complete set of virtualization offerings on the market. In addition to this mix, IQ Sys brings some of the highest levels of virtualization expertise and experience of any distributor in the UK, creating an extremely compelling combination.

David Turner, IQ Sys vendor development manager comments, “Desktop virtualization has now become a viable option for companies looking to reduce costs and increase the flexibility of their systems, and this has opened up the market completely. When we were looking at where we could take our virtualization services, it made a lot of sense for us to continue our relationship with Citrix, and Marathon’s recent accolades and history drew us strongly to them also. When we saw what the products combined provided, it quickly became clear that this was a virtualization solution that was streets ahead of anything offered by other vendors.”

This announcement also marks the move for Marathon into a two tier distribution model, under which IQ Sys will distribute the company’s entire range of everRun products and managing Marathon’s current and future reseller partnerships.

Nick Turnbull, Marathon Technologies director of sales, EMEA and Asia Pacific, commented: “The announcement of Marathon’s strategic technology-based partnership with XenSource in April last year represented an industry first for two companies working to develop fault tolerant availability within a virtualized environment. In September we developed that further when Marathon was named as “Best of VMworld 2007 – New Technology” award winner for everRun for Citrix XenServer v4. This product was the first of its kind to offer fault-tolerant availability software for server virtualization, and as such it opens up a whole world of opportunity for the growth of virtualization for companies of all sizes.”

IQ Sys is now beginning the process of recruiting resellers for its VDI program and is aiming to secure around 30 quality reseller partners by the close of 2008. Turner comments, “The Citrix and Marathon combination is only going to grow stronger as we include additional aspects of the XenSource based virtualization solution into our offering. We will be working with both Marathon and Citrix to ensure that our reseller partners receive the in-depth training and support they need to be successful.”

Marathon has grown its UK and European partner base to include over 100 resellers and distributors since its UK foundation in 2005. This latest move to a two-tier distribution model also reflects the level of fast growth for the company throughout the region. According to Turnbull, this growth is both a reflection of the quality of IQ Sys as a distributor, and people’s awareness of Marathon’s everRun technology.

“To continue our expansion within the UK channel and continue to support our existing partners we spent several months searching for a distributor who offer true value add services. With IQ Sys’ approach to the channel, it’s strong relationship with Citrix and it’s training and support capabilities they became an ideal choice for Marathon,” concluded Turnbull.