The distributor has poached Kevin Markwick from rival Avnet to the new role of general manager for IBM software. He has been tasked with building a six-strong team, which will focus on pushing IBM and Cisco’s joint unified messaging proposition to resellers.
Andrew Shepperd, director of Azlan UK, said: “Over the course of the year, I see us interacting with another 50 to 75 resellers, as we will see partners that want to leverage our increased investment in this area.
“We are the only distributor carrying both Cisco and IBM and the only one that can fulfil their dual strategy around unified communications and messaging.”
Shepperd added that Azlan would be gunning for Avnet’s reseller base following its rival’s merger with the IBM arm of Magirus
“Inevitably, the Avnet and Magirus merger has caused many resellers to ask where else they can buy the product. They may have seen two separate credit lines reduced
to one, which has reduced their choice,” he argued.
However, Matthew Gower, vice president of sales at the UK and Nordic at Avnet, claimed that Avnet and Magirus shared very few resellers and that queries around credit had been minimal.
“Avnet is looking to grow all areas of its IBM portfolio, including software, by creating solutions made up of products from vendors complementary to IBM,” Gower added.
In related news, Avnet scored a major victory last week when IBM Premier partner Triangle began buying its system i servers through the distributor.
Heidi West, marketing manager at Triangle, said: “For 20 years we have always bought our System i servers direct. However, IBM does all its fulfilment from Bratislava and procurement cycles are much shorter in distribution. This is definitely something other resellers will look at this year.”
Magirus division sale completed