The week in channel-land: Distie deals, court action - and that $400m investment

Distie news, a big investment from Huawei and jail for one mobile trader, yup, just another week in channel-land.

The big news of the week came from a vendor, with China's Huawei announcing plans to make big investments locally, to the tune of up to $400 million over the next five years in fact. That money will include $250 million in procurement from local companies. Ka-ching!

Local distributors were busy signing up new vendors with Ingram Micro serving up NetEnrich and Nextgen Distribution following up last week's CA Technologies deal with an exclusive deal with cyber resilience platform provider Upguard.

Meanwhile, Arrow Electronics and Unify launched the Circuit mobile collaboration and comms platform to the local market, and Exclusive Networks and iGel teamed up to give us an exclusive insight into the thin client opportunities for local resellers and iGel's plans for the channel.

Also giving us an exclusive insight into a potential market opportunity for resellers was Epson.

For others, it wasn't such a good week, with the Commerce Commission's mobile trader crackdown resulting in its first jail sentence – a two year sentence for the owner of Flexi Buy Limited, after he was convicted under the Crimes Act after taking money from customers without intending to supply product.

Meanwhile another mobile trader, Bestdeals 4 You, found that ignorance was no defence, when it was fined more than $47,000 after pleading guilty to 19 charges under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and Fair Trading Act.

Those eyeing up IoT for customer experience as a potential market were given pause for thought this week, with a new  Frost - Sullivan survey, commissioned by Genesys, revealing that ANZ organisations rank lowest in APAC for IoT-enabled customer experience initiatives. While there may be reluctance to invest right now, the report did highlight the role technology providers have in helping APAC companies realise the true value of IoT to improve CX.

The musical chairs that is the tech sector continued with Avaya expanding its ANZ team with a new local sales lead and the promotion of Steve Williams to ANZ regional channel leader and Avnet announcing a new APAC president. ServiceNow appointed its first local country manager with Auckland sales representative Hamish Miles stepping into the new role.

And the channel still had time to party, with Tableau honouring local partners, including New Zealand's Montage Professional Services, at its APAC Partner awards.