Brocade merges OEM arm with channel

Vendor claims move will double its brand awareness in the market

Brocade has said its recent move to merge its channel with its OEM business will see awareness of its brand skyrocket.

At the start of this month, the firm's EMEA and APAC OEM businesses were merged with its channel arm under leader Kristian Kerr. The US business continues to operate its channel and OEM units separately, but Brocade's EMEA vice president Marcus Jewell said US chiefs will be "watching closely" to see how the move pans out.

He added that the decision will be a windfall for the channel.

"This year we've combined our channel business and OEM business into one... Our SAN products are [sold] by EMC, HP and so on, [but] we make them for them," he said. "So by combining those two businesses we are effectively going to be pushing hundreds of millions of dollars through the channel – it is a big year for us in channel.

"We are going to be a name that is going to be seen. Obviously, this isn't net new business; it is business which already happens which will now start to be transacted by our channel partners."

Last summer, Brocade's chief executive Lloyd Carney told CRN that his company was suffering from a branding issue because its heart was in technology and engineering and not marketing. But since then, the firm has pushed hard to be heard more.

Jewell said the OEM-channel merger will only help its brand-awareness campaign.

"If partners are interested in growing revenue, they should be working with us because we have an open door for them," he said. "A number of people don't understand or realise that we are behind that technology so we are doing a lot of marketing campaigns so they realise that EMC, HP and IBM technology is based on our hardware."

He added that since last summer, brand awareness had doubled and is set for "exponential" growth in the coming months.

Brocade has thousands of reseller partners across the EMEA region, about 200 of which it works with actively and regularly. Jewell said the UK, Germany and some areas of the Middle Eastern region are stand-out performers.

"The key [technology] trends across Europe are the same though," he said. "Clients are demanding a new way of [doing things] and certain incumbent providers lack innovation and the networks are too expensive to run – we see that theme across the region."