Cellnet has hired Aidan Fitzgerald as its IBM business manager. His first initiative will be to set up the distributor's new IBM solutions centre in NSW.

The centre will provide resellers with training, accreditation and demonstration facilities. Partners can also bring customers into the centre to demonstrate how IBM's solutions can work across their IT environment. It will launch in February.

Fitzgerald said the solutions centre was specifically targeted at resellers that didn't have IBM facilities or demonstration equipment on-hand.

He said the distributor hoped to help them close customer sales as well as open up more business opportunities as new products were released.

"We are looking at the value that we can add for resellers," he said. "It's about getting the BDMs out there and bringing technical people in to help with the design phase of solutions. We want to get that real interaction with resellers."

Fitzgerald has been in Australia for 18 months and was previously with Queensland reseller, Corpnet. Prior to that, he worked at Acal Storage Networking as a sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and spent five years with Ingram Micro in Europe in various senior sales roles.