Avocent targets EMEA for market expansion
Software vendor wants to drive sales through the channel
Ambitious software vendor Avocent is planning to invest more in the EMEA market as it looks to drive sales through the channel.
The firm, which acquired security and process management vendor LanDesk for $400m earlier this year (CRN Online, 6 September), has signed Stephen Daly as senior vice-president of corporate strategy for the LanDesk Software Division. A major part of his role will be to oversee the integration of both companies’ channel partners and product development.
Speaking to CRN, Daly said: “Avocent is a channel-focused organisation with all revenue generated through Premier partners and OEM deals. LanDesk has a very similar philosophy. One of the reasons it was chosen by Avocent for acquisition was because of its established channel presence.”
Daly added that Avocent is in the process of investing in programmes and training to help bring both sets of channel partners together. He said the firm’s combined product offering will give its resellers a good margin opportunity.
“There is a trend towards consolidation in the security and configuration management markets, which is why Avocent and LanDesk fitted so well together,” he said. “Firms are looking for a more layered security model and we see a good opportunity for managed services, particularly in the SME market, which is an area where we are helping our partners.”
However, Ash Hussein, sales manager at reseller Axial Systems, said Avocent faces a lot of competition in managed services.
“A lot of larger vendors such as Hewlett-Packard have similar offerings to Avocent, but nobody has quite pulled off a truly integrated solution,” he said. “Time will tell whether Avocent will be able to deliver a solution that customers want to tie into, but it seems confident enough.”