Brocade to double Foundry partner base

The vendor told CRN it would retain and "bring into the fold" all the existing Foundry Networks partners in Australia as well as add to the ecosystem to support the company's growth plans locally.

"In the past, Foundry have operated under a single-tier channel structure," said Brocade's VP for Asia Pacific and Japan, Deb Dutta.

"With the scale we expect the Foundry business to grow [under a Brocade banner], we need to institute a more robust channel model. We want to make sure we bring all these channel partners into the fold and build some more capacity to address the market opportunity."

Dutta said the extra capacity could include equipping existing Brocade OEMs to rebadged and sell Foundry Ethernet switches and the appointment of a series of new partners.

"They might not have sold Foundry products in the past but want to now [because of Brocade's presence]," Dutta said.

The move to incorporate a tiered channel structure is a new one for Brocade, which has traditionally sold through OEMs such as Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp and Sun.

Both Dutta and Brocade's country manager A/NZ, Graham Schultz, did not foresee any issues with the expansion, saying its systems, materials and methodologies used for OEM relationships had been designed with other partner types in mind.

"We've had a [partner] methodology where we've had OEMs as the primary point of contact but also covered their distributors and larger partners," Dutta said.

"We're just doubling down and adding more capacity now to address the SI and VAR communities."

Schultz said backend systems and materials would ramp as Brocade pursued growth in its partner channel.

He also said that Brocade had retained all six of Foundry's A/NZ staff.

"One of the wins from the acquisition is that we now have the Foundry office in New Zealand, where we didn't previously have an on-the-ground presence," Schultz said.

"Now we're represented there permanently which is fantastic."

Dutta is in Australia as part of a 16-city regional roadshow presenting the results of the Foundry acquisition to partners and customers. The show rolls into Melbourne on March 31.