Brocade are taking steps to strengthen its partner programme in New Zealand.

“Brocade relies on the channel and we will focus on three key areas to strengthen our partner channel in New Zealand,” says Andy Miller, sales director Brocade New Zealand.

These include launching a new partner programme into the New Zealand market, identifying capablilities required for partners in New Zealand to meet the needs of customers, and to ‘engage in a predictable manner’ with partners to assist in meeting their customer needs.

“We have created the Brocade Dev Op’s group to empower the channel partners to transition away from volume sales of hardware convert, or what many perceive as ‘box’ experts, to high level policy and control implementers,” says Miller. “Again all about ensuring the IP and storage networks deliver maximum business value and agility to the end customer”.

Miller says there are several key challenges facing the New Zealand channel, with many customers now looking to move application and storage loads into the cloud (and many already progressing down this path). “The partner community has to transition from supplying kit in a classic CAPEX fashion to one of a rental (OPEX) based hybrid model – this transition, while difficult on many levels offers huge opportunity to those partners willing to take advantage of the change,” he says..

Gary Denman, senior director Brocade Australia and New Zealand, says New Zealand has the opportunity to continue to move faster than other geographies, with that they need access to skills, understanding and partners to assist with that change. “The key requirement is open communication and a propensity for change, these are strong attributes of New Zealand business”.

Miller says the networking market is at an inception point, where virtualisation and Software Defined Networking are becoming true drivers, cloud and mobility are changing the application and storage landscape, and open standards being an absolute must.  “New Zealand has always been an early adopter market,” he says, “and over the next two years I expect change and advancement in networking to be as disruptive as when mainframes were challenged by client service apps, or token ring was ousted by Ethernet — there is a cusp point in networking and New Zealand will lead the world in this change.”

Denman continues, “the technology is changing with the shift to the third platform, and Brocade has a clear picture of the role it plays with its partners in this shift and New Zealand customers are looking for a more agile and commercially responsible way of moving in the new world. These three things are aligned and mean that we are able to have impact by re-investing in New Zealand.”