Brocade knits together new channel

Storage area network infrastructure provider Brocade is looking for UK master resellers after appointing 11 reseller partners in Europe, Middle East & Africa.

Storage area network (San) infrastructure provider Brocade is looking for UK master resellers after appointing 11 reseller partners in Europe, Middle East & Africa.

The 11 resellers include six direct resellers of Fibre Channel fabric switches and software, covering Germany, Italy, France and South Africa.

Master resellers were also signed up to supply fabric resellers with the SilkWorm family of products in Germany, France and the Nordic countries. Extra fabric resellers, to supply entry-level switches bought from Brocade master resellers, have also been signed in Holland and Belgium.

Brocade, which sells switching infrastructure to most of the major vendors, wants to appoint a number of master reseller partners in the UK over the next few months to improve its two-tier channel base.

Paul Trowbridge, European marketing director at Brocade, said: "We reach 65 per cent of our infrastructure market though our original equipment manufacturers [OEMs], so it's predominant in our business. However, the market is demanding a more heterogeneous solution for storage, so we are looking to appoint what we call our independent channel."

Andy Norman, managing director at existing partner Sagitta, said: "Brocade's products have a lot of OEM adoption, so its technology is widely accepted in the industry." He declined to comment on how the addition of master resellers to Brocade's UK channel would affect margins for existing resellers.

Trowbridge added that the market is continually growing. "The [take-up] of Sans among end-users has not begun to become saturated," he said. "Only 30 per cent of end-users currently use a San, so there is more opportunity left."