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Brocade Signs Aptec as Value Added Distributor for MENA Region
Published Sep 8, 2014
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Brocade announced that Aptec has joined the networking vendor’s Alliance Partner Network (APN) as a Value-Added Distributor (VAD) covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in an effort to grow the company’s regional footprint and market share. Initially Aptec will focus on promoting and distributing Brocade’s products through its vast reseller network, but in time as the distributor completes the requisite trainings and technical certifications, it will also offer implementation and technical support services.
“We believe that Aptec, with the backing of its parent company Ingram Micro, is well poised to help Brocade garner a larger market share, especially in the IP space and consolidate our company’s position as a leading networking vendor in the region,” says Yarob Sakhnini, regional director, MEMA at Brocade. “Signing Aptec on as part of Brocade’s APN programme is more strategic rather than tactical. We are not looking for short term wins, but rather building on our vision of what our distribution landscape needs to look like, how it will operate and what it needs to deliver.”
Brocade undertook a rigorous recruitment process over a period of six months to ensure that Aptec had the right profile, credentials, reseller network and technical capabilities in place and could align with the networking vendor’s overall business objectives. The distributor’s wide regional geographical coverage, extensive customer base and vendor portfolio that complements Brocade’s products and enables ‘solution-based’ sales, made it a perfect fit. As part of the process, Aptec had to undergo training and certification to ensure the right level of technical and sales proficiency.
The companies have charted plans for a formal training program that will run for the next six months so that the Aptec team gains thorough knowledge of Brocade’s products and can properly position the company’s solutions to end users as well as its reseller network. Brocade will also provide Aptec with demo kits so that the distributor can conduct Proof of Concepts (POCs) as well as train its partners.
The two companies will jointly identify and recruit resellers that have expertise in emerging networking technologies as well as experience in industry verticals like government, telecom, financial services, education and hospitality – sectors that Brocade is focusing on and already enjoying a high degree of success in the region. Reseller enablement ranks high on the priority list. Joint training sessions will be held once a month in Riyadh and Dubai in order to get partners enabled and up to speed as soon as possible.
Aptec will enable Brocade data centre solutions to be financed through the revolutionary Brocade Network Subscription package, which gives channel the edge in negotiations by offering subscription based financing and offers customers the ability to pay for technology investments through OpEx rather than CapEx funding.
“Brocade has established itself as a leader and pioneer in data centre Ethernet Fabrics, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) - technologies that are transforming the networking industry. We already carry some of Brocade’s key OEM partners like IBM and HP in our company portfolio and the addition of Brocade now enables us to sell a bigger and more comprehensive solution and create an incremental revenue stream,” says Ali Baghdadi, President, Ingram Micro Technology Solutions, META region.
“We are confident that with the combination of world class technology and activities including partner enablement and targeted marketing campaigns aimed at raising Brocade’s profile, the market will respond favourably and we will be able to grow the vendor’s market share in a short span of time,” Baghdadi concludes.
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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