Opennet plans channel expansion

During Gitex this year, the company will be meeting with and explore the possibilities of building strong alliances with potential business partners throughout the region.

"We have such a strong commitment to Linux business that our entire business model is focused only on Red Hat products, solutions and training," said Tewfik Zitouni, MD, Opennet MEA. "We already have several key alliances in the region including a recent tie up with Bahwan in Oman."

According to its Operations Manager, Emil Shaya, Opennet MEA provides its partners with all the tools necessary to offer open source to their customers.

"One of our prime objectives is to ensure that the enterprise end user is educated on the advantages of opting for Linux, including its economic and technical advantages," said Shaya. "We have the skill sets to provide support for Linux and Red Hat and will be providing training to our partners and their clients."

For the past six years, Opennet MEA has been successfully representing Red Hat Linux in North Africa and has successfully introduced Linux to government agencies and businesses and helped them take full advantage of Open Source Technologies. Opennet MEA is not only the master distributor but also Red Hat's certified training & education centre. Established in late 2003 in Dubai Internet City FZ, the company intends to work closely with companies and organizations through its Channel Partner Network.

"We are looking for companies who are willing to invest time and resources for a strategic alliance with us," continued Shaya. "We will work with our partners to help them understand their clients needs and present competitive and practical information on TCO (total cost of ownership) and ROI (return on investment) for migrating existing infrastructures to open source."

In addition to product and technical training and certification, Opennet MEA will help its partners plan successful migrations, deploy Red Hat solutions, and prepare technical resources for first level support through training.

"In short, we will help them ride the Linux wave," concluded Shaya.