VCW to relaunch itself after management overhaul

Distributor admits it has not been active enough in the market for past couple of years

Distributor VCW Security is relaunching its business under fresh management after admitting it has been "too passive" in recent years.

Following the departure of managing director Graham Fox, the VAD will be run by newly appointed commercial director Simon Jackson and VCW owner Mike Harris.

Talking to CRN, former Packeteer director Jackson said Harris' decision to become actively involved in the business once again was enough to persuade him to make the leap from vendorland.

Jackson spent nine years at Packeteer before it was acquired by Blue Coat in 2008, latterly as EMEA director of systems engineering. He will start his role at VCW on 1 July following a 20-month stint as director of sales engineering at Exinda Networks.

"Mike has been a distributor of my products for 25 years so this is a good opportunity for me to step the other side of the line and into the world of distribution, but bring in my knowledge of what vendors want from distribution," Jackson said.

"I think VCW as a brand has not been as active in the marketplace as it may have been in the past couple of years. We want to get out there and raise our activity levels."

VCW parted ways with vendors Fortinet and Xirrus in quick succession a couple of years back, the former under acrimonious circumstances.

Although these brands have been replaced, Jackson conceded that VCW had not been sufficiently aggressive in positioning its new signings with its reseller partners.

"Although I am the commercial director I will be focused very much on the technical side, looking at how these products fit together and how we can add value to partners. I need to understand how we can combine these products and potentially verticalise them," he added.

A relaunch of the distributor – which counts Cyberoam, Blue Socket and Adtran among its key vendor partners – will occur around September.

"We have approval from Mike to expand the team. We have a cheque book for hiring the right people so we can achieve our aims," said Jackson.

Grahame Smee, managing director of rival VAD Cohort Technologies, said: "I agree that VCW seems to have been quiet over the past couple of years. It is a difficult task launching and growing niche technology, especially when you do not have the support of a large technical department to back up sales activity."