Celebrating the channel’s finest
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HP 3PAR StoreServ, powered by Intel® Xeon® processors Intel Inside®. Powerful Solution Outside. Based on HP analysis of estimated street pricing from publicly available sources and 4:1 compaction ratio. Based on HP analysis of estimated street pricing from publicly available sources and HP analysis of publicly available specifications for HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450c vs. Pure Storage FA-4xx and EMC XtremIO. Subject to the terms and conditions of the HP 3PAR Get 6-Nines Guarantee Program: hp.com/storage/get6nines. Based on publicly available information on Pure Storage FA-4xx and EMC XtremIO. Based on HP analysis of publicly available specifications for HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450c vs. Pure Storage FA-4xx and EMC XtremIO. © 2015 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. EMC is a registered trademark of EMC Corporation. Pure is a registered trademark of Pure Storage, Inc.
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Stars of the channel Reseller ME hosted its fourth edition of the mostcoveted Hot 50 Awards last month
Hot 50 Awards turn the spotlight on 50 IT companies that have gone beyond their business objectives to achieve excellence in the channel business over the course of the year. The gala event that took place at the Al Thuraya Ballroom, Grand Millennium, Al Barsha, gathered key players from the channel ecosystem ranging from distributors, resellers and systems integrators to vendors. The attendees of the event constituted the creme de la crème of the regional channel industry. During the course of the lively evening, 50 winners chosen by Reseller ME’s editorial team were applauded for having demonstrated leadership and commitment to enhance customer experience and partner support. “An annual event, Hot 50 awards aims to honour those channel brands that have done exceptionally well despite market challenges. Our objective is to recognise the efforts and hardwork put in by IT companies to enhance and enrich their business by working closely with channel partners,” said Rajashree Rammohan, Publishing Director, Technology and Finance Division, CPI Media Group. The award’s headline sponsor was Dell Middle East and other event sponsors included HP Enterprise, Mindware, Business DNA, Bulwark Technologies, Westcon Security, Al Jammaz Distribution, Blue Coat and Fujisoft. Read on to know more about these stars of the channel business.
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HOT 50 2015
HOT 50 2015
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tor
ves by a distribu
iati velopment init Best channel de ion ut Al Jammaz Distrib
Saudi-based VAD Al-Jammaz Distribution has been doing a number of channel enablement and development initiatives over the past year. Recently the distributor concluded its channel meet in Turkey, where it encouraged partners to keep up and evolve with market trends. Delivering advanced solutions in areas such as networking, data and voice communications, security, servers, storage and infrastructure and broadband access to name a few, the company operates through first and second tiers targeting retail, SMB or commercial mid-market and enterprise segments. With a host of vendors in its portfolio such as Cisco, Linksys, Symantec, EMC, VCE, Veritas, Honeywell, APC, Fluke Networks, Ruckus Wireless and Lenovo, the distributor has been doing business successfully for the last 14 years
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HOT 50 2015
and covers about 85 percent of Saudi’s market. Following a policy to serve its partners as a trusted ally, the company provides them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. This way the partner community is assured of the distributor’s support all throughout the business cycle. In order to get new business and maintain existing clients, the company ensures the development of a strong sales channel including partners and IT pro-community and combine it with its product marketing initiatives to offer comprehensive channel fulfilment. Partners can also take advantage of all the added benefits that come working with a value-added distributor such as obtaining genuine value through demand generation activities and services offering.
Best pre-sales support Bulwark Technolo gies
As a value-added security regional distributor, Bulwark Technologies has had a positive 2015, having achieved around 40 percent growth in revenues. It has also launched two distribution entities – Bulwark Distribution, which focuses on channel growth and development for fast-moving security products and Bulwark Technology looks after delivering advanced corporate security solutions through regional systems integrators. For the distributor, it has been a year of bringing on board new vendors such as Varonis and Jacarta, strengthening its information security product and solutions portfolio. Serving the regional market for over 15 years, value-addition has been at the core of the distributor’s operations. The company attributes its success to its
ability to introduce niche security technologies, which address customers’ challenges that keep evolving in a highly dynamic marketplace. Its key strengths include providing value-added services such as pre-sales consulting, training, channel enablement programmes, post-sales implementation and technical support, and adding value at all stages of a product’s life cycle. Channel development and growth into focused territories across GCC and Middle East have been the distributor’s focus. It offers a range of end-to-end established channel programmes in order to achieve this and enable partners to be the trusted advisors customers are looking out for. It works towards creating mutual growth opportunities for its vendors, partners and customers.
HOT 50 2015
7
tions provider
Best retail solu Business DNA
A fairly recent player in the regional systems integration space, Business DNA was formed in 2013, as a subsidiary of NCC Group. The technology solutions provider has been operating in the market with the primary aim to provide fresh and innovative approaches that can aid businesses to tackle the increasing number of challenges within the industry. Over the course of last year, the company has launched Souq Planet, the first digital supermarket in the Middle East to offer a more personalised shopping experience and has won several projects, which include providing mobility solutions for companies in the oil and gas sector.
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HOT 50 2015
The success of the company can be attributed to its focus on understanding what current and potential clients aim to do and what are the strategies that they want to follow. Through its 24/7 customer service call centre, the company ensures there is regular communication with customers. Over the next few months, the solutions provider aims to focus on mobile solutions and facilities management solutions. It is working towards leveraging opportunities in Internet of Things. It is also looking into developing and manufacturing its own mobile device. These plans are aligned with its aim to provide comprehensive solutions for the regional market.
Best enterprise
The 28-year-old UAE-based Computer Network Systems (CNS) offers business solutions, systems integration and managed services to customers across various sectors such as finance, telecommunication, governments, education, energy, healthcare and enterprises across the country and Oman. The systems integrator largely focuses on mobility, private cloud and security. From reselling hardware, servers, storage and security, the SI has now revamped its offerings into packages. It believes these enhancements will have an impact on products and solutions to partners. Managed services offering is core to the SI and it has already invested significantly in its service delivery centre. The company makes sure it is
solutions provid
er CNS
highly engaged with its enterprise customers by suggesting different options for their business goals through dedicated sessions, workshops and advisory engagements. The company has won several big government projects over the course of this year including Dubai Customs desktop virtualisation project, Smart Government private cloud and Dubai Healthcare city’s complete infrastructure project. It has a database of over 300 customers with a wide range of technology partners. Over the next year, the company aims to be the preferred option for the superset of cloud-based solutions through its internal skills and with its partners.
HOT 50 2015
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ectivity vendor
Best SOHO conn D-Link
D-Link, the regional networking vendor has been operating in the market for the last three decades. It provides entry-level to high-end solutions, for consumers and businesses alike. With products that are manageable through apps such as home automation, the vendor remains a leader in designing and manufacturing superior, affordable networking technology. The company has recently introduced the ‘Home Connect’ series, which will see more products using 802.11ah, Z-wave and Zigbeebased technologies to have end-to-end smart home solutions. Through these solutions customers can enjoy remote connectivity and management using the vendor’s cloud services. The home series include simple-to-use,
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HOT 50 2015
app-enabled cloud products such as power management devices, home sensors, cameras, smoke or water detectors, door or window alarms to name a few. Another highlight for the company has been the alliances it has created to offer different solutions such as industrial networking, Wi-Fi offload, longrange and wireless solutions, for niche verticals such as transport and oil and gas. In the past year, the company has enhanced its portfolio with new products such as the 802.11AC routers, the 10G web smart series, hybrid IP telephony PBX solutions, unified wireless controllers, PLC IP cameras and baby camera. It has also grown by over 20 percent in the MENA region.
Best channel
Offering broad solutions in infrastructure, software and services, Hewlett Packard Enterprise debuted in November, post the split of HP into two equal companies. The company believes it is important to have both vision and technological agility to respond to market opportunities and threats. Today, the industry has evolved from a costcentre to focusing more on value creation. According to the company, to succeed today, more than technology itself, partnerships are important, which is why it has been focusing on building the right relationships. We will see the vendor focusing largely on four transformation areas – transform to a hybrid infrastructure, protect customers’
development
initiatives by
a vendor HP Enterprise
digital enterprise, empower the datadriven organisation and enable workspace productivity. Hewlett Packard Enterprise can enable organisations to act rapidly on ideas by creating, consuming and re-configuring new solutions, experiences and business models. It works towards making IT environments more efficient and more secure as it bridges the gap between the traditional and the new. The company will also roll out extensive channel development initiatives that are in line with its overall business plans for the region. It believes the Middle East and Africa represents huge growth opportunities, which it plans to leverage over the next year.
HOT 50 2015
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anagement Best project m Intertec Systems
Intertec Systems has had a number of achievements in the field of technological enhancement and supporting the UAE Government on various initiatives. One such major achievement was implementation of inspection and compliance management system for Dubai Smart Government. In this regard, today more than 400 RTA traffic officers carry hand-led devices that have Intertec’s software specially designed for their needs. The regional systems integrator has also opened an office in the UK, keeping in sync with its growth story. The company will officially announce the opening in early 2016.
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HOT 50 2015
The company has also done a core network revamp project for one of the top universities in UAE for a better performing and secure network. Under this project, it has deployed service provider class firewall, which controls all traffic between the students, faculty and the internal servers. Also as part of the project for the ease of communication between students and faculty, a new integrated instant messaging, voice and video communications solution was implemented across the campus. Despite market challenges, the systems integrator has performed better when compared to 2014 and has won many big projects across verticals in UAE, Bahrain and India, over the last year.
Best SMB net
working vendo
Linksys, the regional networking vendor, has had a year of milestones. The vendor recently celebrated selling over 100 million routers since its inception in 1999. Another highlight has been the introduction of the first MU-MIMO device to the market with the Linksys Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router – EA8500. The vendor will be releasing a new addition to the EA series before the end of 2015. It has also enhanced its WRT1900AC Wi-fi Router by launching its successor, WRT1900ACS. The vendor’s core focus has been to deliver excellence in products and solutions. It has demonstrated this in the past year by enhancing wireless connectivity to meet the high demand within the home and SMB networking environment. It has been able to stay ahead of the
r Linksys
demand through highly developed technologies such as Smart Wi-Fi and Spot Finder offering, which has helped it to differentiate in the home networking space. The company’s focus has also been on building a strong partner channel. The company believes it is important to educate and support the partners in order for them to successfully deliver its products and solutions to the market. Through the company’s Partner Advantage Programme, partners are given access to sales tools with extensive resources, which helps to grow their business. Through pre and post-sales support, marketing support, sales incentives, resources and training, Linksys builds a strong mutually profitable relationship with its partners.
HOT 50 2015
13
tives
neration initia
Best demand ge Mindware
The regional value-added distributor Mindware has played a key role in developing the market for its roster of vendors. Last year, the distributor had revamped itself by launching a fresher looking logo and also had launched its own mobile app, with the objective to help partners be updated on the latest trainings, events and market developments while on the go. Having grown more than 30 percent in the last year, the distributor has signed up with some big brands in 2015. At GITEX this year, the company has joined forces with Unify Communications to deliver the vendor’s Unified Communication solutions across different verticals and
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different market segments. Through its value-added services that include presales, channel and trading capabilities, the channel partners can create demand for the technology within the market. It also highlighted its partnership with Biostar, the Taiwan-based motherboard, graphics cards and industrial computing systems manufacturer, at the ICT technology event this year. It has also recently partnered with VCE, the global converged infrastructure player, to deliver its expertise across the vendor’s portfolio. The partnership extends across all Gulf regions, excluding Saudi Arabia and includes Pakistan.
tor
lutions distribu Best storage so StorIT Distribution
The specialist value-added distributor, StorIT Distribution provides expertise in segments such as data storage, data protection, data management, high performance computing and data analytics solutions and services. With a unique model of reseller channel development in place, the distributor continues to focus on bringing in value services to the region. It offers partners a holistic value services model based on turnkey solutions, ranging from demand generation, needs analysis, consultancy, solutions design, Proof of Concept to project implementation and technical support. The distributor boasts a wide range of vendors in its portfolio such as EMC, Quantum, Unitrends, SAS, QLogic, Mellanox, Huawei, Quanta and Cumulus Networks to name a few.
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HOT 50 2015
Over the last year, the company has had a number of milestones such as being the first distributor to introduce SDN solutions based on open platform technologies and the only distributor in the Middle East to have achieved certified technical skills to implement cloud computing solutions, converged infrastructure and high performance computing solutions. It has also signed up with vendors such as Unitrends, Quanta and Cumulus Networks over the course of this year. Another highlight for the company has been completing sales engineer certifications for EMC, Mellanox, Huawei, Unitrends, Quantum and QLogic. In addition to that, it has achieved over 20 percent growth in SME and enterprise reseller partners in 2014.
Best partner
The regional distributor, Westcon group, has been enhancing its security division over the last year. Westcon Security has been evolving itself to become more specialised in the security distribution space. The company’s go-to-market model has been successful in developing real value for its customers. The distributor aims to strengthen its recently launched Comstor EDGE initiatives and define it more within the Westcon practices over the next couple of months. The company has also signed up with
collaboration
initiatives Westcon Securit y
new brands such as Aruba and Palo Alto Networks from its security practice perspective while also completing its regional footprint with F5 Networks. In this regard, the company got global recognition by being recognised as F5 EMEA distributor of the year as well as the Palo Alto EMEA distributor of the year. We will see the distributor focusing more on services and channel enablement over the course of next year. And in terms of technologies, it is seeing a growth in mobility and security around that mobility, which will be the kind of initiatives we can expect from the distributor in the coming year.
HOT 50 2015
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novation Best product in st TP-LINK Middle Ea
Even under unstable market conditions, TP-LINK Middle East was able to grow its SOHO and SMB networking and wireless solutions business in 2015. Also over the past year, it has been able to strengthen and develop its channel base and has managed to ramp up marketing initiatives with resellers, retailers and service providers in the region. All these activities are in line with its broader initiative to become a truly multi-facet networking and wireless solutions vendor. For the vendor, innovation is an important element when it comes to what it does. In this regard, it has launched the first touch router in the market to help customers to get more benefits of the
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HOT 50 2015
router technology capabilities through a simple access LED touch screen. Considering that it has only set up shop in 2011 in the Middle East, the vendor has done a commendable job in developing a solid two-tier channel strategy, which focuses on product portfolio from a training, marketing, co-op marketing and market development funds, webinars, regional road shows and other channel incentives and rebates perspective. As a wireless and networking solutions manufacturer, the company also ensures that it assist distributors to conduct regular channel training programmes which are readily available to resellers and power retailers at its regional headquarters in Dubai.
Best product
Oki Europe is the printing arm of Oki Group, which is a 130-year-old business-to-business organisation, dedicated to creating high performance products and solutions. The printing vendor challenges traditional printing processes, thereby offering end consumers and channel partners’ the flexibility to take printing to a whole new level. The company endeavours to provide only the most robust and professional solutions to remain the reliable market choice for relevant businesses. This is demonstrated in its use of quality materials to create a cutting-edge portfolio comprising colour and mono printers, multifunctional devices, as well as serial dot matrix printers, faxes, specialty printers and managed print services. The parent company
leadership Oki Europe
has also recently acquired Seiko’s widely recognised wide format printer business, not only the tools and technology, but also the resources for relevant sales channels. Priding itself in technological excellence, its printers come with a three year extended warranty, to ensure ease of mind for partners and end customers. To provide a holistic overview of the company’s product offerings to its channel partners, it has developed Oki Academy, which is an online platform assisting partners to strengthen customer relations. The system is also effectively able to recommend to channel partners which mix of the vendor’s products and solutions truly addresses the end customer’s needs. The vendor’s Middle East office recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.
HOT 50 2015
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Best channel management by a vendor Dell Middle East Dell Middle East has continued its focus on enabling channel partners to optimise the opportunities in the current trends in the regional ICT space. The company is focusing on solutions growth while also delivering end-to-end support to its customers and channel ecosystem. Earlier this year, Dell has brought together its businesses in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa to create one new business region – META (Middle East, Turkey and Africa). It has created a more scalable organisation where its specialist resources can operate across the entire region to provide a richer experience for customers and partners. The company is also working towards taking a consulting approach to the channel and resellers can expect extensive training and certification in this regard in 2016. With its business being 100 percent driven by channel, the company has seen significant growth across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa.
Best network security vendor Dell Software Over the last year, Dell Software has expanded its channel in the emerging region by onboarding 32 distributors in 80 countries. It has also created a strong channel enablement programme that included partner enablement, technical training, sales product training, MQL leads distribution, sales spiffs and webinars. The vendor has recognised 24 regional partners for network security excellence and security solution excellence over the last year. It has carried out 59 channel enablement activities in the first half of the year – 28 in Middle East, eight in Turkey and Africa and 23 in Central Eastern Europe. The company mobilised demo equipments and trial license to support partners and customers in Proof of Concept.
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HOT 50 2015
Global Solutions Network has emerged to become a pioneering solutions distributor in the MEA region. It has built a comprehensive technology solutions product portfolio to address the challenging requirements of highperformance data centres and Best solutions distributor IP-based CCTV solutions with over 15 Global Solutions Network top vendors. In the past year, it has worked towards driving channel awareness of the importance of flash storage for modern data centres along with its strategic vendor Pure Storage. It aims to continue its focus on delivering end-to-end solutions for the reginal customers.
Pure Storage forayed into the Middle East market with its distributor, Global Distribution over a year ago. Identifying the market demand and opportunities for flash, the vendor opened a direct office in the region, earlier this year. In the first half of 2015, the company enhanced its channel strategy with the Pure Storage Partner program (P3), which delivers the tools, training and support for its channel Best partner in centives progra mme partners. Pu re St orage The benefits from P3 are expected to work in H2 of 2015, thanks to an increase in Marketing Development Funds (MDF), which has been committed to the channel alongside the programme as well as new marketing on demand tools, Pure Demand, which partners can utilise and take advantage of to support their push to market.
HOT 50 2015
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Almoayyed Computers is a well-known systems integrator in the region for a number of reasons. It has an elaborate portfolio of offerings through key technology partners. For example, it boasts eight gold competencies and a number of silver competencies for Microsoft and is also a cloud accelerator and cloud deployment partner of or at gr te in tructure Best infras the vendor. It is a gold partner with many vendors such as rs te mpu Almoayyed Co Cisco, HP and Oracle. And it is a leading partner for global brands such as EMC, Citrix, VMware, Avaya, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks, Fire Eye and Riverbed to name a few.
Aptec – an Ingram Micro company has had several milestones in 2015. It has set up an office in Casablanca, Morocco to cover North African French speaking countries. Over the course of last year, it has signed new distribution deals with global vendors such as Microsoft, Dell and IBM for North Africa, Levant and Pakistan. It has also added Emerson to its vendor portfolio. It has been certified as Microsoft ves ti ia it in t men er empower Cloud Service Provider (CSP) for META and also Best partn ny pa m gram Micro co received awards for best distributor from brands such as Aptec - an In APC Schneider Electric, VMware, Veeam and NetApp in 2015. The distributor has also launched Ingram Micro flagship partner programme, ‘FlyHigher’ for Cisco. It has focused on enabling over 300 partners on advanced solutions selling though solution forums in Gulf countries.
Arrow’s enterprise computing business in EMEA has captured strong growth in nearly all portfolio products during the third quarter. The valueadded distributor’s sales have increased 15 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2015. If considered on a quarter-over-quarter basis, the company’s sales were above normal seasonality. The regional distributor had a robust growth in technology areas such as support es al -s st Best po software, networking, storage, services and servers S EC Arrow on a year-over-year basis. The company expects its sales in core European value-added computing solutions business to be below seasonality in the fourth quarter.
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HOT 50 2015
Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company’s Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture unifies wired and wireless network infrastructures into one seamless access solution for corporate Best partn er program headquarters, mobile business professionals, remote me by a ve ndor Ar ub a Networks, an workers and guests. HP Company In the last year Aruba signed EMW as a new partner and recruited Westcon as a new VAD and together with its existing VADs, Oxygen, METRA and FVC, the company has seen historical growth and success.
The regional distributor has been in operation close to 30 years. Largely catering to the SMB segment, the company has had some important highlights in the past year. It has been focusing on going back to basic distribution model in order to maintain its revenue. And it has also been increasing sales of components in a competitive market and reinforcing its focus on solutions.
Best SMB di
stributor Asbis Middle East
Avaya has built on its networking heritage to create a compelling and competitive offering in the contact centre, unified communications, and mobility space. The vendor sells solutions that enable Governments and businesses be better at what they do. The vendor’s partner enablement programmes are designed to ensure that partners realise new Best partn er engagem revenue streams and are able to raise their ent initiati ves value proposition to the customer as well. Through its Avaya extensive partner engagement initiatives, the company has built a partner ecosystem based on value and outcome. The outcome-based engagement approach means that Avaya and the partner have the opportunity to configure the exact same mix of offerings into a different solution for each customer.
HOT 50 2015
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Citrix Systems has driven several channel growth initiatives in the region over the last year. It has evolved its CSA programme to introduce the specialisation track, which was rolled out to all the partners in order to get more commitment into the technology. The vendor has also enabled tives ia it in th el grow Best chann partners by having multiple training tracks executed s Citrix System and carried out by the company along with its distributors to countries such as Kuwait, UAE, KSA, Turkey and South Africa. It also increased the demand generation activities that drove incremental business to its partners and strengthened the ties and commitment with the sales teams.
on support
er educati Best partn Commvault
ery
es deliv Best servic EMW ME
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HOT 50 2015
In the last year, Commvault created a new division committed to the channel headed by Wael Mustafa along with dedicated channel sales and pre-sales, which will continue to grow over 2016. It has appointed a second value-added distributor, Tech Access for the Gulf, Levant and Egypt, which has helped the vendor to double its reseller base. The company has enhanced enablement with existing alliance partners as well as added capabilities with Nutanix and Pure Storage. Its enhanced partner programme has benefits for all level of partners.
The regional systems integrator, EMW Middle East has achieved a 50 percent CAGR among best performing companies. The company’s average employee retention rate is seven years, making it as one of the top places to work in its business category. It also has 90 percent enterprise customer retention rate, outperforming its competitors. The SI ensures it is first to market, sell, implement and support new technologies in the region. It has been recognised by Aruba as its highest growth partner of 2015.
ESET has launched its online store to engage with the new breed of online shoppers and to provide easy and instantaneous access to its comprehensive range of best-in-breed antivirus and IT security solutions. The online store caters to both business and Best consu mer securi ty vendor home customers in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, KSA, Kuwait, UAE, Jordan and ESET Yemen. The company also introduced phase-2 of its partner programme. An extension of its global programme, it enables the vendor to extend benefits to all registered partners.
Terming itself as a ‘superVAD’, the regional security distributor brings customers and partners, the reach and volume of a broad line distributor but with the added value and services of a specialist distributor. The company offers access to established, innovative and disruptive technology that returns increased margins, incremental revenue and differentiation, backed by presales consultancy, professional services and 24x7x365 support. The distributor provides partners a host of additional support services such as marketing support and expertise to name a few.
Fujitsu’s ETERNUS storage portfolio balances storage capacity, performance and costs for the complete lifecycle of data from production, business analytics and Big Data to backup and long-term archiving. The comprehensive ETERNUS DX storage family comprises one system management from small to high-end, same hardware building blocks and data mirroring or replication and system failover between different model sizes. ETERNUS excels in ‘business-centric storage’ by synchronising storage resources with business priorities while reducing costs. Over the year, the vendor has enhanced its storage offering to become a force to reckon with.
Best techn
ical suppor t Exclusive Net works ME
Best storag
e solutions
vendor Fujitsu
HOT 50 2015
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Network visibility vendor Gigamon has spent the last year building its brand within the region. It provides active visibility into physical and virtual network traffic enabling stronger security and superior performance. Gigamon’s Visibility Fabric and GigaSECURE, the industry’s first security delivery platform, deliver advanced intelligence so that t or pp su er sales Best partn security, network and application performance management Gigamon solutions in enterprise, government and service provider networks operate more efficiently and effectively. In 2015, it has gone about to increase its partner sales support within the region and offer the channel end-to-end resources.
Granteq Distribution is a fast-growing distributor of integrated AV, control and IT technologies. The company continues its aim to bring unique and innovative technologies to the Middle East and African markets and deploy these technologies through its strong local channel partners for the benefit of end-users. According to the distributor, its technologies help partners differentiate r to bu distri astructure themselves from the competition and offer Best AV infr ribution innovative products and value to their clients. With over Granteq Dist 10 years of operations, the company has grown 30 percent yearon-year and has bagged large projects in retail, education, healthcare, government and oil and gas industries.
In 2014, the regional systems integrator Help AG achieved 70 percent growth and is expecting to close this year on a positive note as well. It attributes its success to incremental business with existing customers, which it believes reinforces its position as the Middle East’s trusted security advisor. The company has increased its headcount from 65 to 135 employees in this ider year. It has also increased office space in Abu lutions prov so ty ri cu Best se Dhabi, Dubai and Doha by three times and boosted Help AG business in Qatar by 120 percent and tripled country staff. It has signed new partnership agreements with Bit9 + Carbon Black, Elastica, OPSWAT and SafeNet, Beyond Trust recently.
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HOT 50 2015
Huawei Middle East has played a crucial role in bringing together key emerging technologies to drive efficiency and enhance productivity. It has reinforced its commitment to the partners by strengthening its channel network offerings Best ICT in frastructure and organising elaborate training and technical vendor programmes to help its partners go to market in a Huawei Middl e East more strategic manner. It has extended the availability of its specialised training and technical knowledge programmes, while empowering its enterprise partners to identify new opportunities for growth.
In the past year, Infoblox has increased its revenues by 50 percent and tripled the number of employees. The security vendor has opened offices in Saudi, South Africa and Turkey over the last 12 months. The company has launched ‘Big Bet’ partner programme, where it is going to bet and invest heavily in 20 main partners across Middle East and Africa. Investments involve free training and certification, Best chann el marketin g initiative seeding opportunities together, MDF and drawing s Infoblox up commitments from both sides. The vendor has also created ‘Partner Exchange Forum’ across 10 top countries in the region. It has a quarterly enablement and progress tracking with key partners and has now established a dedicated channel management and marketing team.
ixtel Technologies has had several highlights over the course of 2015. To begin with, it has grown its annual sales over the last year by more than 250 percent and is rapidly approaching yet another landmark – 10,000 customer devices managed across UAE and some other GCC countries. It has pioneered the launch of the region’s first cloud-based managed and technical Best manag ed security support service platform. It has also unveiled services pr ovider proactive security platform, which allows customers ixtel Technolo gies to continuously analyse, visualise and improve their existing network security infrastructure. The company has won major managed services contracts across airlines, banking, defence, government, retail and conglomerates.
HOT 50 2015
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Juniper Networks continues its aim to focus on enhancing and securing high-performance networks in the coming year. With in-depth understanding of the critical challenges faced by customers on a global level, the company works through dedicated partners within the vendor region. The vendor’s Rising Star programme for focus g n ki or w et ntre n Best data ce partners have been running for the last two years and has orks Juniper Netw been helping distributors and managed partners to double their revenue year-on-year. It has also introduced rewards and rebates for the Rising Star partners to recognise them for solution selling and commitment to the company’s portfolio.
Kodak Alaris has grown its business significantly over the last year. In order to support substantial customer demand for production scanners in Saudi Arabia, Kodak Alaris opened dedicated service centres to provide fast local support throughout the country for organisations using both Kodak branded as well as third party scanner equipment. The vendor has invested considerably to grow its presence in Saudi s ve initiati er support Arabia over the past few years and now employs Best partn both sales and technical teams. The company has had 30 Kodak Alaris percent revenue growth in the MENA business. It has also been investing heavily into its partner ecosystem and ensuring it houses all the resources the channel needs to deliver its solutions to the market.
The regional systems integrator, Nanjgel Solutions considers its achievements in the oil and gas sector has one of the key highlights of 2015. It believes cyber-security is not only the largest, but most critical safety challenge that an oil and gas company can face. Understanding that updating, securing and pin-pointing a cyberweakness in a corporate information security platform and ICS is both timely and costly; tegrator in ty ri cu Best se the company has been developing a framework ns tio lu So Nanjgel dedicated to showcasing innovative approaches to mitigate risk and threats. Its framework for securing ICS includes technologies from multiple vendors such as IBM, McAfee, Toffino and Tipping Point.
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HOT 50 2015
Octagon International has added big brands into its vendor portfolio this year, such as Ricoh, Acer and Haier. Through these recent partnerships, it has been able to have a more strategic business in 2015. Diversifying its business into gaming and mobility space and Best partn er innovatio effective financial reengineering to swerve ahead n provider Octagon Inte in a challenging business environment have added to rnational its topline. It has also acquired local and global recognition for business acumen and ethics. Through efficient resource optimisation, the distributor has been able to maintain its market position.
Palo Alto Networks is focusing on fundamental change in the principals to prevent today’s cyberattacks. The company is dedicated to providing localised intelligence on the cyber-threat landscape in the UAE to its customers so that they can identify and focus on the most relevant challenges. Through its Zero Trust concept, the vendor is able to provide single pass analysis Best next-ge n firewall ve that reduces traditional duplication of effort ndor Palo Alto Net and changes the security model. At GITEX 2015, the works company unveiled the UAE Chapter of FUEL user group, as a part of its commitment to the region and to empower and educate security professionals across the Middle East.
Red Hat has carried out several partner enablement initiatives in the past year. In the Middle East, it has introduced Certified Cloud Provider (CCP) programme with the on-boarding of its first CCP partners. The vendor has signed up with regional distributor Spectrami to focus on middleware solutions in the region. It has also launched Best partn er enablem deal registration for the first time in the Middle ent initiati ves East recently and certified the first RHEL Openstack Red Hat Platform administrator in the region at GBM. The company’s META team has grown exponentially over the past year. It has also revamped its EMEA partner programme to help partners differentiate their service and solution offerings and be more successful.
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Redington Value will continue to focus and drive solution selling into the next year. Within the security umbrella, it has added brands such as Fidelis, Niksun and Shavlik, earlier in the year. Fortinet has also signed the distributor as its new VAD for the Middle distributor East region recently. The distributor has announced a by e m m r progra Best partne the launch of its new cloud business unit, RedCloud to the lue Redington Va region. Over the coming months, we will see the VAD setting up a full-fledged solutions centre in Dubai, consolidating its robust portfolio and becoming an authorised training partner for many of its vendors.
Riverbed Technology has undergone a transformation from being a mono-product company focused on WAN-optimisation to the provider of the most comprehensive application delivery platform delivering visibility, optimisation and control. The company has launched the Riverbed Authorised Training Partner (RATP) programme in the METNA region in this year. The vendor me m ra og pr ation er accredit also introduced a new portfolio of professional Best partn nology consulting services to help customers maximise the value Riverbed Tech of the company’s solutions. The 100 percent channel-driven organisation will continue to invest heavily in programmes to educate its partners and help them grow their revenue streams.
SAP MENA’s general business and ecosystem business have been EMEA’s fastest growing in the last two years. The vendor has a strength of 125,000 global partners and a market of $230 billion in 2015. The company has been able to enable its channel partners even further post the recent release of the SAP S/4HANA next generation business suite, with 1,300 customers worldwide. The company’s SAP iatives Startup Focus, SAP PartnerEdge programme and pansion init ex el n an Best ch MENA Co-Innovation Lab are teaming up with the business SAP leaders to drive innovation. According to the company, channel partners will play a key role in the development of public-private-people partnerships and in boosting the skills of analytics, cloud, mobility, and social media.
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Sophos has a robust distribution channel in the Middle East post the acquisition of Cyberoam. Leveraging mutual strengths of Sophos and Cyberoam, complementary technologies, proven domain expertise in network and endpoint, leadership positions and well-developed combined partner network in the Middle East, the vendor now has an entrenched presence in the region. It boasts a formidable partner network that specialises in selling nextgeneration security technologies across a broad spectrum of businesses.
Best UTM ve
ndor Sophos
The regional distributor of information security solutions and services, Spire Solutions attributes its success to bringing in niche solutions to the market that solve customers’ challenges without creating other issues. The distributor helps consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. The company works with a selective range of technology partners, Best securi ty services provider while leveraging its channel partnerships to help Sp ire Solutions organisations build and maintain a secure, compliant and more confident operation. The company’s focus will continue to be on anticipating and identifying challenges faced by organisations and proactively provide effective solutions that help improve their security posture and simultaneously enable them to optimise their resource utilisation.
Think Software Services (Think SS) has expanded and created business verticals in the ICT segment such as security, infrastructure, networking and cloud. Despite challenging market conditions, it has grown across its business lines and has achieved an overall growth of Best conve 56 percent year-on-year. It has created rged IT prov ider Think Softwar leadership role for expanded services business e Services such as professional services, AMC and consulting. It has added surveillance as a vertical and has won the Sharjah Safe city project. In 2016, the company is aiming to achieve a top line growth of 100 million in UAE.
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TransSys Solutions has developed and launched an enterprise mobility framework, TransMobile, which is focused on mobile enabling ERP services to customers. It has also developed a car rental vertical solution as an embedded extension of Oracle ERP solution in the past year. The cloud er id ov pr s solution Best cloud solutions provider has bagged several big projects, tions TransSys Solu where it has developed a revenue accounting solution using standard ERP solution for a low cost airline carrier in the Middle East. It has expanded geographically within the Middle East and Africa region and expanded its service offering to cloud advisory consulting, Oracle PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS offerings with IBM Softlayer.
The regional distributor Trigon specialises in the distribution of well-known IT products and peripherals throughout the UAE and GCC countries. Its vendor portfolio boasts of names such as Samsung, LG, ViewSonic, Dell, Netgear, Philips, AOC, Xerox, 3M, Acer, Creative, D-Link, Elo Touch, Ergotron, AVM, PenPower, Power Products-Kiosks, BenQ, Mustek and Transcend. Although the company will continue to focus on r to bu ri st di Best retail expanding all four business units – reselling, retailing, Trigon corporate and regional – it will emphasise more on the retail business and build its retail-related lifestyle product line. It will also look at expanding products for the B2B segment in 2016.
As a 100 percent channel-driven company, Veeam continues to add value to its channel by constantly updating its products and channel programme, to ensure partners make the best possible margins. With just four years of operation in the region, the vendor has had a steady growth over the last year. The company’s total number of new ProPartners in the Middle East has increased by initiatives 25 percent in H1’2015 over H1’2014. The vendor’s er training n rt pa t es B are ongoing success in 2015 has been fueled by the strategic Veeam Softw strengthening of its channel. One of the biggest channel initiatives was the launch of the VMCE certification training programme that has enabled channel to fulfill end-to-end transactions with minimal support from the Veeam team.
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HOT 50 2015