There were plenty of new initiatives launched and partnerships struck across the channel over the past week.
Leading the celebrations was Dell, which marked its first year in the Australian channel with newly signed partner, S Central. The services player will now be on-selling the vendor’s PC, storage and server products. Dell also announced plans to bring its Enterprise Architecture certification into the local market.
Ingram Micro was also busy building business after joining forces with financing provider, Moneytech. The pair will provide new credit terms to the distributor’s smaller reseller base. Also making a new connection was Westcon Group, which expanded its New Zealand presence by acquiring distributor, Datastor. The purchase is part of a regional growth plan that has seen Westcon set-up a presence in three South-East Asia countries in the past four months.
Meanwhile, IT integrator, SkyWire, decided to join the honours partner program from supply chain vendor, Intermec. The company said the new relationship could trigger a multi-million dollar increase in revenue.
While others were making new friendships, AMD was finding ways to keep track of its existing ones. The components vendor launched a global channel program this week in an effort to consolidate its current offering. The new AMD Fusion structure will see more categories and subcategories created to organise over 2000 local partners.
One that is certain to be under a few Christmas trees this year is the Amazon Kindle e-reader, which will finally be available to international customers on October 19.
Also hoping for future growth through the silly season and beyond was IT integrator, Communications Australia, which completed a Siemens healthcare communications deal worth $2 million. Melbourne’s largest independent hospital group, Epworth Healthcare, selected the Siemens HiPath 4000 systems to support a new IP communications platform designed to reduce costs and facilitate future growth.
Making moves on the notebook side was niche distributor, Tegatech, which set-up its first overseas branch in Kosovo last month. Tegatech principal, Hugo Ortega, said the move was a logical choice, with exports amounting to 15 per cent of its total revenue.
At the same time, a new industry consortium was announced in Queensland to overlay a Fibre-to-the-Home network solution in preparation for the National Broadband Network. Participants said the alliance between Utilibill, Telcoinabox and Universal Communications Group should prove to be a lucrative business opportunity across existing and new sites.
- Stay tuned for next week’s edition of ARN Fightback ‘09.
