Cisco UK channel boss eyes video and server growth

Recently appointed Richard Roberts tells ChannelWeb about his plans for 2012

Cisco's recently appointed UK partner boss Richard Roberts is targeting more channel growth in the video and datacentre markets next year.

As revealed by ChannelWeb, Roberts (pictured) was appointed in July as leader of the UK and Ireland partner organisation, replacing Bernadette Wightman, who left to take on a role in the US. Roberts previously served as Cisco's operations director for distributed government, and has spent well over a decade with the vendor over two separate spells.

He claimed that Cisco has identified five priority areas for the coming year, including collaboration, datacentre virtualisation and business architectures. Also on the list is refocusing on the vendor's core markets of routing, switching, wireless, security and related services.

But it is the fifth piece of the jigsaw – video – that Roberts singled out as being of particular importance. He claimed Tandberg channel partners have bedded in to the Cisco channel scheme nicely.

"It does take a while to assimilate, but I think we are there. There is a real positive energy around [the video channel]," he said. "Dollar for dollar, Cisco has put more resource around video than more or less any other technology."

Cisco's UCS range of servers and related technologies will be another growth market for 2012, claimed Roberts. He added that the networking giant has no problems winning over channel partners that may have relationships with more longstanding server vendors, such as HP or IBM.

"Those relationships are long but not deep; they can move, and innovation moves those relationships quite quickly," he explained. "We are still new to the market and we are in a great place. We have some fantastic partnerships.

"As the market grows, there is more and more room for partners. But the number of partners [we currently have] is not hindering our growth," he said.

Look out for a full write-up of our chat with Roberts in an issue of CRN, and on ChannelWeb early next year.