Vendor Brocade has trebled its UK channel team in the past nine months and is investing a further £2m to help boost its networking presence.

Networking industry veteran Amanda Giddins was brought in as Brocade's EMEA channel director almost a year ago. On joining, the vendor had “two or three” channel account managers and now has nine.

She also revealed an extra £2m is being ploughed into the UK to fund further headcount increases and marketing funds. A vertical pricing programme giving partners extra discounts for sales in the media, finance, healthcare, government, education and service provider markets was also recently launched.

Brocade entered the networking arena in late 2008 through its acquisition of Foundry Networks. After recently reporting a lower-than-expected outlook for its current fiscal year, Brocade admitted it had struggled to build its Ethernet business “to the levels we expect”.

Giddins claimed the firm recognised the acquisition had not provided “the momentum” it had hoped, but also said: “We have had interest from SAN partners in selling into the IP space. But the IP partners are much more proactive.”

Mike Darbyshire, Avnet’s business unit manager for open storage, said: “We are making good progress. But the majority of the partner community is still segmented, so Avnet and Brocade have a little more work to do to help them embrace the business opportunities out there.”