Hummingbird swaps C2000 for Wick Hill

Wick Hill has replaced Computer 2000 (C2000) as the sole UK distributor for connectivity vendor Hummingbird

Although it is still unclear why Hummingbird ended its relationship with C2000, Rod Desmeules, vice-president of technology EMEA at Hummingbird, was bullish about Wick Hill’s appointment.

“We see Wick Hill as the ideal partner to support Hummingbird in the UK. It has 25 years’ experience in the host-access market, and knowledge and skills in the sale and distribution of host-access technology,” he said.

Lee Perkins, director of C2000 subsidiary Azlan UK, said: “We have worked with Hummingbird for a long time, but our business is no longer focused in that space. There is no issue between us and Hummingbird and it was a joint decision. We had been talking about ending things for some time.”

Under the terms of the new deal, Wick Hill will distribute Hummingbird’s full range of connectivity and security products across the UK.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill, said Hummingbird’s appointment will enable Wick Hill to capture the market’s growing thirst for connectivity and security peripherals.

“Hummingbird picked us because of our experience in the space. This enables us to further invest directly in VARs and generate demand creation through resellers. Being the sole distributor is a definite advantage,” he said.

Kilpatrick added that the two key drivers in the UK market will be end-user product consolidation onto a single vendor, and continued investment in security. He also pledged to strengthen Wick Hill’s technical support team for connectivity and security products.

Last month Wick Hill also signed prime UK distribution deals with French vendors Netask and SkyReco. It now offers Netask’s range of unified threat management appliances and SkyRecon’s StormShield software through its channel partners (CRN, 19 September).