HDS renews its channel vows
Vendor creates two business-generating teams to drive indirect growth as it welcomes back former UK vice president
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has vowed to continue strengthening its commitment to its indirect business in 2013, despite claiming that the UK market is more competitive than ever.
HDS, which has created two new business acquisition teams this year in order to win new customers and grow its market share, claims it has already signed up about 28 new customers through the channel in the last half year.
The firm's vice president of channels and alliances, Neill Burton, likened the UK market to a "knife fight in a phone box", but said that HDS was ready to compete.
He told ChannelWeb: "The UK is a flat market; it is not a case of you sit back and people just buy from you - it is not Russia or Africa. It is a knife fight in a phone box in the UK; you are taking other people's business, and it is [about] turning up for a fight. We will continue to go out there and try to partner with new customers."
When Burton joined HDS earlier in the year from Computacenter, he said he wanted to up the firm's marketing strategy by shouting about the brand more, but told ChannelWeb yesterday that customers are now doing this on the firm's behalf, which is more "the Hitachi way".
He said: "It is not about being aggressive, we are very humble.
"We are finding ourselves being asked to participate by clients when they run their RFPs, and not just in storage. We are being asked to come and play when before, we were not. If you are successful, it breeds success. It is not about spending money on marketing."
HDS also announced the return of its former UK vice president Steve Murphy, who left for what he describes as "a brief spell" at HP.
Writing on his LinkedIn page, Murhpy said: "I've decided to re-join the family at Hitachi Data Systems. It's great to be back." Murphy will be responsible for the Sub-Saharan Africa region on his return to the firm.
Burton added that HDS was pleased with the business coming in from its two distributors Avnet and Zycko, claiming that the latter had really "turned on" in the past two quarters in terms of business generation.
He added that Avnet's acquisition of Magirus has meant HDS can offer a fuller solution to its customers.
He said: "It was an interesting acquisition and Magirus had access to Cisco UCS whereas Avnet did not, for example. [There were also] some VMware licences that Avnet did not have, so the acquisition has meant we have a single partner for that."