‘We do one thing, and we do it well’: Penguin EMEA MD talks rebrand and mission
Greg Hookings describes the renamed company as “differentiated, under-distributed, and profitable”
Stratus is dead. Long live Penguin Solutions.
As computing and edge infrastructure provider Stratus has today rebranded to Penguin, CRN caught up with Greg Hookings, EMEA managing director, to understand what this its relationships with partners, and how it intends to deploy its news wings across EMEA.
Following Stratus’ 2022 sale to SMART Global Holdings (SGH), the holding company rebranded to Penguin Solutions last October.
The current, and final, stage of the rebrand is simply an alignment of all remaining brands, including the customer-facing Stratus logo to Penguin.
Hookings tells CRN his main channel focus post-rebrand is on the UK and Germany, followed by Spain, Italy and France.
“The company is also “still trying to figure out what [it is] doing in the Middle East.”
“We’re still figuring out the best approach in the Middle East, but we definitely want to be there.
“Saudi Arabia is obviously a big opportunity.
“We want to get involved there, but it’s not going to be a simple one-size-fits-all solution.
“It’s not about finding one partner who can handle everything; we expect to work with multiple regional partners.
“Our solution isn’t something that sells itself off the shelf.
“It’s a consultative sale - it takes effort and understanding, so the distributors we work with out there need to be up for that kind of approach.”
The company currently counts 15 employees in the UK and between 30 to 33 across Europe.
Away from the channel and back again
The MD of EMEA tells CRN that beyond 90 per cent of its revenue comes from the channel.
The only part that isn’t is some of the company's legacy banking business, which has historically been done directly, often on a project basis.
“All new business is 100 per cent through the channel.”
The company, although channel first now, has “had a bit of a journey. “
“If you go back to the beginning, we were very focused on IT broadline distribution.
“We made a deliberate shift and decided to focus more on industrial partners, because our product has quite an industrial form factor.”
But while the company started working with non-IT channel partners, which saw some success, it didn't reach the profitability it had aimed for.
This led to the decision to go back to broadline IT distribution.
“We’ve just signed with Exertis, and we’re working actively with them.
“We’re also working with Arrow, and more specifically with Arrow Intelligent Solutions (AIS)s as they’re focused more on the general IT side.
The company also works with Westcon.
This follows its established approach of having three active partners in each region, for two main reasons.
“The first reason is a strategic one; they all serve the market in slightly different ways.
“Second reason is risk; if one partner underperforms or something changes in their business, we’ve still got two more solid routes to market.”
Beyond disties, the vendor also works with an array of resellers and is trying to build a two-tier model.
Because of its customer base, it doesn’t consider all resellers in the same way.
“Not all resellers are equal, because of the kind of customers we serve, where uptime is critical.
“We want to work with resellers who really understand that value.
“Our key verticals are energy, oil and gas, transportation, life sciences, military, and water.
“We’re dividing up our focus based on the markets they serve.
“Retail, for example, isn’t as strong a match.
“In some regions, we do okay, but in general, retail is more price-driven and less worried about uptime.
“If you’re running a small supermarket and your system crashes, you can often just use your phone to reconnect to a cloud backup. That’s not our play.”
Read on to find out about the vendor’s streamlined partner programme and how it views the competition.
Humble partner track
When it comes to its partner programme, Penguin goes by the motto of simpler is better.
“We’re not a complicated company, and our product isn’t overly complex, so we want our partner programme to be easy to understand and not too onerous.”
“The key thing for us is enablement.
“We want partners to understand the product, where to position it, and how to talk about it.
“While other vendors might have elaborate rebate or MDF programmes, we’re focused more on making sure that our partners can represent us well.”
It also isn't planning on making changes to neither its partner programme nor MDF in the future.
“We generate MDF from the revenue done through distributors.
“We keep back a percentage of the deal value to fund joint marketing activities.”
On competing with Dell, HP or Nutanix
The vendor could not name a like-for-like competitor, but singles out Dell and HP as being the closest thing to a rival.
“Nutanix would be another, depending on the use case.”
“We’re all approaching the same problems, but in different ways.
“Our technology is designed for environments where there’s little or no IT skill on site - it’s plug-and-play, self-contained, and self-healing.
“If you’re running a water treatment plant or an oil and gas platform, our product is ideal.
“If a component breaks, we ship a new node, it gets plugged in, and it just carries on working - no special IT skills required.
“That’s a big differentiator for us compared to the incumbents.”
The vendor is also aware of its own niche and potential limitations.
“What’s really interesting for partners like Westcon, Exertis, and Arrow is discovering that we’re under-distributed.
“You won’t find us in 30 different places.
“We have a unique value proposition, and there’s healthy margin potential for our partners.