Emulex in bullish mood for 2011

Storage and networking vendor is on a partner recruitment drive as demand for its 10Gb Ethernet products mushroom

Emulex is on the hunt for networking-focused VARs in the UK as its 10Gb Ethernet products gain more traction in the market.

The storage and networking vendor is feeling confident for 2011 and has also launched its own software, with plans to launch encryption technology in the first quarter of next year.

Craig Skelton, director of EMEA channel sales at the vendor, said it had been working hard to get its channel structure right.

“Most of our business is sold via the tier one OEMs – so we are fairly embedded with the likes of IBM, EMC, HP and Cisco – and have put a lot of effort into understanding our partner business,” he said.

“If we go back a few years, we had a channel team and an OEM team which worked independently of each other. We have been working hard to get these working together to recognise and reward partners that are selling OEM-branded kit.”

The vendor, which was recently shortlisted for the Storage Vendor of the Year category at the CRN Channel Awards, also sells through distributors Avnet, Azlan and Hammer in the UK.

Skelton said Emulex, which divides its resellers into Platinum, Gold and Silver levels, is well positioned as 10Gb Ethernet becomes more mainstream and is looking for more networking resellers to partner with.

“We have always been a Fiberchannel/HBA company but we are now also a networking company with a portfolio of 10Gb Ethernet products, with 65 design wins for our product set,” he said.

“As we look at the convergence of storage and networking, we see that 10Gb Ethernet adoption is more widespread, particularly with the growth of cloud and hosting.

“The market is now at a real tipping point in terms of 10Gb Ethernet adoption,” he added. “The technology itself has been around for a long time, but the price has been prohibitive. Now it is becoming more mass market. Next year is going to be a really strong year for us.”