Exinda Networks, a developer of unified performance management (UPM) software, has decided to commit 100 per cent to the channel in a worldwide effort to grow its reseller base, especially within North America.
With its research and development offices located in Melbourne, Australia, U.S. headquarters in Boston, and corporate offices in Frankfurt, London and Kuala Lumpur, the company seems to be in good shape when it comes to its global reach. Con Nikolouzakis, chief executive officer at Exinda, said most of Exinda’s business has previously come from the Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle Eastern regions. He said up until recently, Exinda solutions were scarce in North America.
“We launched into North America only about six months ago,” Nikolouzakis said. “Our strategy worldwide and in North America is to focus 100 per cent on the channel. We’re currently investing a lot of money with channel directors and with lead generation.”
To help boost its North American presence and to expand on its U.S. and Canadian partnerships, Nikolouzakis says the company is actively going out and seeking partners.
The company recently announced its 1,000th customer worldwide. “We rely on the channel to provide support in the sales cycle,” Nikolouzakis said. “We expect them to provide first level technical support to customers. From a technology perspective, we’re the first vendor in this space to unify all of the WAN optimizations onto a single platform. What we give to partners in these partnerships is the opportunity to be able to operate in this space.”
While Nikolouzakis said Exinda’s customers include enterprise, government and other service providers, Exinda also places focus on the middle tier market with their UPM solutions which include four main components, application acceleration, WAN optimization, application visibility and application response time management.
Depending on the status of the reseller, the solution and situation, Nikolouzakis said margins can range anywhere between 25 to 30 points. In addition to financial rewards, Exinda also offers partners a partner portal, certification and training programs to also take advantage of.
“We want a limited amount of partners in each location and we want them to be highly specialized,” Nikolouzakis said. “We’ve put something together that we call the Perfect Partner. These partners are generally a small or medium type VAR who generally carry products similar to Exinda’s. We’re looking for the best of breed and not just market leaders. We want them to have expertise in security and networking products too.”
In a renewed effort to expand its U.S. and Canadian reseller community, Exinda has announced Derek Donahue as the director of channel sales for the U.S. and Canadian markets.
Exinda also announced Dallas-based ABP Technology, a VoIP and IP Communications product distributor as their most recent distribution partner.
“We were attracted to them because they focus on VoIP,” Nikolouzakis said. “As a VAR, they have good technical resources to match us. We’ve been educating their partners and we also have an aggressive marketing plan. We’re doing lead generation and we’re passing them to partners and are also getting partners engaged with us to help offer solutions. What we’ll be doing is creating a footprint of partners as an extension of Exinda’s own team. We’re looking for partners to become accustomed to our technology and who could be our local representation in the market.”
What Nikolouzakis wants to convey to Exinda’s reseller community is to look to Exinda for a less expensive and better product with support from a 100 per cent channel based company that offers opportunities with lots of leads as well.
“Our commitment is to the channel and to them succeeding,” Nikolouzakis said. “We put our money where our mouth is and we look forward to seeing the channel continue to thrive and be successful.”