Brocade has announced that Aptec, an Ingram Micro company, has joined the networking vendor’s Alliance Partner Network (APN) as a value-added distributor (VAD) covering the Mena region.

Initially, Aptec will focus on promoting and distributing Brocade’s products through its vast reseller network, but in time as the distributor completes the requisite trainings and technical certifications, it will also offer implementation and technical support services, said Yarob Sakhnini, regional director, MEMA at Brocade.

“We believe that Aptec, with the backing of its parent company Ingram Micro, is well poised to help Brocade garner a larger market share, especially in the IP space and consolidate our company’s position as a leading networking vendor in the region.

“Signing Aptec on as part of Brocade’s APN programme is more strategic rather than tactical. We are not looking for short term wins, but rather building on our vision of what our distribution landscape needs to look like, how it will operate and what it needs to deliver.”

Brocade undertook a rigorous recruitment process over a period of six months to ensure that Aptec had the right profile, credentials, reseller network and technical capabilities in place and could align with the networking vendor’s overall business objectives, Sakhnini added.

As part of the process, Aptec had to undergo training and certification to ensure the right level of technical and sales proficiency.

The companies have charted plans for a formal training program that will run for the next six months so that the Aptec team gains thorough knowledge of Brocade’s products and can properly position the company’s solutions to end users as well as its reseller network. Brocade will also provide Aptec with demo kits so that the distributor can conduct Proof of Concepts (POCs) as well as train its partners.

The two companies will jointly identify and recruit resellers that have expertise in emerging networking technologies as well as experience in industry verticals like government, telecom, financial services, education and hospitality – sectors that Brocade is focusing on and already enjoying a high degree of success in the region. Reseller enablement ranks high on the priority list. Joint training sessions will be held once a month in Riyadh and Dubai.

Aptec will enable Brocade data centre solutions to be financed through the Brocade Network Subscription package, which gives channel the edge in negotiations by offering subscription based financing and offers customers the ability to pay for technology investments through OpEx rather than CapEx funding.

“Brocade has established itself as a leader and pioneer in data centre Ethernet Fabrics, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) - technologies that are transforming the networking industry,” said Ali Baghdadi, president, Ingram Micro Technology Solutions, Meta region.

“We already carry some of Brocade’s key OEM partners like IBM and HP in our company portfolio and the addition of Brocade now enables us to sell a bigger and more comprehensive solution and create an incremental revenue stream,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service