Eaton powers into New Zealand

With a new channel program launching in Australia next month, Eaton has set its sights on expanding its channel   presence in New Zealand next year. Michael Mallia, GM for Power Quality for Eaton ANZ, said that Eaton is  distributed by Ingram Micro in New Zealand, but it doesn’t have a very strong channel presence in the country.  Because Eaton has an established set of partners in Australia, its channel programs will be offered in New Zealand next  year, in order to increase local partners.

“What we’ll basically be doing next year is taking all of those programs we’ve developed in Australia, in terms of the  channel partner program, the support program and so on, and deploying them here,” he said.

Part of Australia’s new program includes a training aspect so that resellers know how to specify and excel at selling  UPS solutions. An online system will also include areas for technical support, marketing support and lead registration campaigns. Mallia said that Eaton’s focus in New Zealand has long been on big data centers, and the company now  wants to enter the reseller channel because power is a growing concern and therefore a growing market.

“We’re increasing our dependence on IT, which depends entirely on power, yet power reliability is going down and  power quality is going down, so there’s a really strong market for power protection and backup power supply,” he  said.

Eaton is distributed by Synnex and other bigname players in IT distribution in Australia, and while Mallia said that  Eaton would probably partner with Synnex New Zealand, he said there would also be a lot of focus on local distributors.

Mallia said that Eaton would be introducing new products in the near future, with a number of ‘channel-friendly’  products. The company plans to push into the New Zealand market in the first half of next year in a gradual expansion,  though by ‘gradual’ he means months, not years.

The Eaton Power Advantage Partner Program will launch in Australia next month and is expected to come to New  Zealand in February next year