Expand Networks seeks major reseller ramp up

WAN acceleration vendor, Expand Networks, is ramping up its channel strategy and wants to significantly increase its reseller network.

The company has a two-tier system in Australia and distributes its products through 24/7 Distribution and new addition, Techplus, which it signed on last mont. Expand Asia-Pacific vice-president, Steve O’Brien, said it relied on having more skilled resellers for growth.

“Techplus is motivated around [resellers] that understand application and performance issues over wide area networks [WAN], he said. “There’s a huge opportunity for those resellers with virtualisation skills to add another revenue stream with very little effort on their part.”

The vendor’s latest release focuses on WAN optimisation, which O’Brien claimed was strong demand due to a relative lack of existing ICT infrastructure. Combined with the product range’s flexibility, this meant there was no limit on the sustainable number of resellers. He flagged skills in virtualisation as a must, but said distributors were also building technical and sales capabilities to assist partners.

“There isn’t an upper limit per se because not every customer is in the buying cycle at the same time. If they were all in the cycle at the same time then you could do simple math that would give you the optimum number,” O’Brien said. “We’re very fortunate to have a product that scales from SMB up to large enterprise. In Australia, not only are there numerous resellers but the amount of SMBs out there that need servicing are significant.”