Jewell purpose
ChannelWeb catches up with Brocade's new channel chief Marcus Jewell
Since acquiring Foundry Networks in 2008, Brocade has worked to build its standing in the network space. Last month, Mitel executive Marcus Jewell (pictured) became its latest IP specialist recruit.
Shortly afterwards, Brocade's UK and Ireland country manager spoke to ChannelWeb about his plans for the networking and storage vendor.
ChannelWeb: What are your plans for channel recruitment?
Marcus Jewell: [There will be] a significant ramp-up in the number of channel partners we need to attract to working with us. But we know that we have to paddle our own canoe to start with. I am not just going to have a push strategy: sign up four distributors, and they will [take care of] the lower end, and we do the higher end. I am in the build phase of the channel, getting our brand into the market and being with end users.
What kinds of partners are you looking for?
There are three layers. We will continue our push into the systems integrators (SIs). We will then work very specifically with large VARs - specialised, data-centric integrators. We will then sign smaller niche players, because that is where our biggest growth will come from.
How many resellers do you want to have?
We will not over-distribute. We are talking about tens of partners that we will work with, as opposed to hundreds. We do not wish to play in broad distribution.
SCC and Computacenter signed up as SI partners last year - how are the relationships developing?
SCC is doing a great deal, and we have some large projects going on. With Computacenter, we are seeing where we sit in the hierarchy of relationships. We can only work with it if we know that we will not be a third-class citizen. We will resolve this within the next six to nine months.
Will you be tinkering with the UK distribution line-up of Avnet and TDAzlan?
We will be looking for more specific distribution around the application acceleration space. F5 dominates that market, but our device is hundreds of times quicker than F5. The question is whether application organisations are better suited to sell that than hardware companies.
How much have your network and storage channels converged?
They have not, if we are honest. There is still a disconnect between SAN specialists and IP specialists. We are going to run a programme around the convergence of SAN and LAN. We are going to enable our SAN channels.