Tech Access scales up Sun channel resources for the year ahead

Sun and Tech Access hosted 70 members of their partner family at the bi-annual Partner Sales Corner event, held at Dubai's Royal Mirage hotel, and those in attendance were keen to hearing what was in store for the coming year.

Both companies shared with the reseller crowd their forecasts for the storage market in 2005, and explained in depth their strategy for capturing market share across the fastest growing verticals. With the latest quarterly results on display, Sun's senior management stressed that the vendor was primed and in position to capitalize on the rapid pace of development in the Middle East IT market.

'Sun's revenues are healthy, as are our profits. Our development pipeline is full of exciting new solutions that offer technology at its best, as well as compelling total cost of ownership costs,' said Mehmet Iyimen, general manager, Sun Microsystems MENA. 'Following management restructuring, the team has all the main industries in the region covered, and together with Tech Access we are looking forward to providing partners with even more sales opportunities this year.'

Complimenting Sun's storage emphasis was a comprehensive overview of software releases, including the much anticipated Solaris 10 platform and identity management solutions. Sun emphasized to resellers the various value-add benefits of bundling separate hardware and software solutions together.

'There is a unique selling point to our product portfolio when partners combine various solutions into a turnkey offering for clients. We lead the way on storage hardware - the industry acknowledges this - but what the channel doesn't realize is that our software is also cutting-edge. Resellers should look at this package proposition to maximize their margins while providing outstanding value to their corporate and small to medium business clients,' explained Bruno Haubertin, channel sales manager, Sun Microsystems MENA.

Highlights of the day were delivered by Tech Access' new channel sales general manager, Kamran Hussain. He briefed Sun partners on the distributor's plans for expansion and how Sun's Middle East CDP would be allocating extra resources to build up partner skills.

'Even though I only arrived in Dubai several weeks ago, it is already obvious that the potential of this market is staggering. My remit is to empower reseller partners through education and enable them to achieve more revenue. The Tech Access team will be pushing hard and completing the ground work on a number of initiatives for 2005 that will significantly increase the sales opportunities out there for partners,' said Hussain.

At the top of the Tech Access to-do list will be the establishment of facilities in Saudi Arabia. Previously handled out of Dubai, operations will soon be handled out of an office in Riyadh by a team of sales and technical experts.

'This is a huge commitment from us to our Saudi partners, and one which we believe will reap major rewards in the near future. Tech Access is all about value-added distribution for Sun solution providers, and with feet on the Saudi street we can provide technical know-how to partners and their customers on a constant basis,' Hussain added.

Tech-Access has already successfully completed this year marketing and business development initiatives from its offices in Cairo and Casablanca catered to those specific markets.

Tech Access will also be assisting partners to align towards Sun's vertical business development strategy. The shift will allow partners to take advantage of the vendor's sector-centric sales model and scale up in step with Sun.

'Switching from a specific geography focus to a vertical vision lets resellers enlarge their potential customer base. We will be hammering home the message to the Sun partner family over the next few months that this will yield much more business for them. They can rest assured that Tech Access will always be there to deliver any technical expertise or knowledge they require to make a sales,' he explained.