APC’s Streets ahead

Street says the job offer at APC was too good to pass up, because Gartner and IDC have been predicting growth in the data centre space and now was the good time to move into the field.

Her first task in her position is to review existing partners to ensure all had the training and skill sets required to push into the enterprise sector.

The vendor had established a charter earlier this year to expand its channel out from power supply sales towards broader networking infrastructure deals with its InfraStruXure product suite.

“I have been in this position for a couple months and there’s a really great nice vibe around the office. I have been able to take on the channel section as my own and develop the department,” she says.

“Right now there’s a data centre wave because of what is happening in the marketplace - IP telephony roll outs have increased – as this continues so does the need for our product.”

After six years of working in the channel, Street is confident her experiences will help her develop the current APC policies already set in place.

“I don’t want to change or bring in new things to APC. I want to further develop what has already been set in place and mould them to fit into the company’s strategy,” she says.

Street says the constant changes in technology have kept her very happy in IT and she wouldn’t go back to her previous career choice – fashion.

Ever since she could remember, Street always dreamed of being an artist or embarking in a career in an artistic endeavour. She chose art courses throughout high school and elected to attend East Sydney College of Fine Arts.

“I studied fashion products and custom clothing and learnt everything about small business management to designing pattern makers and even making wedding gowns,” she says. “I had to think up ideas and design patterns for clothes.

Then make and finished the clothes that I designed. So I can basically design and make wedding dresses - not that I need to do a lot of sewing now. I actually prefer to pay for clothing these days.”

Once she left college, she became a fashion buyer, rather than working in a factory or design house.

However, once she started in the industry, thoughts about glamour and fun flew right out the window.

“[Fashion] was a very rigid industry to work in – artistic - but very rigid in the approach to work. You had to be at the office from 7am to 8:30pm and you needed a doctor’s certificate to leave early at night,” she says.

“It’s interesting because I have friends who are graphic designers and they have told me it is all very time based as well. I also found the fashion industry to be very focused on spreadsheets and numbers because stores had to work out precisely what they needed to buy in terms of materials.”

At the import company, Street did some drawings but mostly “enjoyed talking to buyers more”. That’s when she started lean more towards the sales aspect of fashion.

After a year in the industry, Street had enough and started looking around at doing other things to. “I got sick of working for very little pay and with neurotic people,” she says.

“I went travelling through Europe and lived in London and Germany for a few years – it was great fun.”

When she came back from her European break, Street started looking around at other areas to work in. A family member at the time was working for a start-up company called Connect and Street talked to him about working in the ICT industry.

“My cousin was working for connect.com.au and started there in the internal sales department. It had been a few years since I had any communication with my cousin, however I wanted a change in life and my cousin was able to talk to me about working in the field,” says Street.

“In no way did he help me get my job at Connect - in fact he went out of his way not to help me. I wanted to make sure I got the job on my own. My boss at the time wanted fresh people from other industries because he felt the people in IT were lazy.”

Street claims she doesn’t like to move slowly - although she tries it doesn’t work for her, that’s why she feels the constant changes in IT was better suited to her temperament than the neurotic world of fashion.

“The change that happens in IT makes some people feel uncomfortable but I like change,” she says.

She stayed with Connect for two and half years and worked in the channel department –looking after channel partners from an internal perspective. After Connect, she got offered job at Comindico (now as trading as SOUL) - an telecommunications provider.

“It was exciting working for the company at the time. It was traditionally a wholesale company selling bandwidth to other ISPs. When I joined it was embarking on its first towards a direct sales approach,” she says.

“I certainly learnt a lot there and, after a year two other people and I set up the channel department. Initially we worked out who the best partners would be to approach and we saw as many partners as we could in two to three months,” she says.

“During my time at Comindico, Tony Haywood taught me a lot about the fundamentals of the channel and it was great to walk into a meeting with a channel partner who didn’t know what we did and then moving into transacting business month in month out.”

In 2005, she was approached by networking vendor, Juniper to set up its enterprise channel, by then Street had made connections with a few different people in the industry and took the approach at Comindico and did a similar sort of thing.

“Juniper at the time had four large partners and the company brought me and a couple of others in too grow the enterprise channel. We took it four partners to about four hundred,” she says.

“I didn’t manage four hundred, there was a smaller group of partners –six gold and twenty silver and the rest went through out distributors across Australia and New Zealand. The role at Juniper was a national role and I got to travel every state because different partners have different needs,” she says.

“It’s almost like Australia has sub-countries and a partner who is successful in QLD may not be successful in NSW. During this time I found that communication is very important in building relationships. To get channel partners to trust you do need to build a relationship which needs to continue to be positive.”

Street has been very happy and positive in the industry. She says perseverance and having a goal is pretty important in working in the channel. However it is also important too have a fun and happy working environment and also make sure there are happy partners.

“Once you have the right relationships it then becomes a matter of connecting the dots. I will then introduce my tech people to our partner’s tech people. I don’t need to have formal tech training because depending on what the topic is, a lot of knowledge comes from partners,” she says.

“Most of my focus is talking to the marketing and sales people and I don’t have to talk too much about technology.”

Being a successful woman in the industry doesn’t mean you have to act any differently from your natural self.

“I totally disagree with that bimbo like behaviour and I have seen some woman in the industry act this way. There is no reason to behave unintelligently. If you act professionally then people will treat you equally,” she says.

“It’s not my way of doing business and I’m also not as aggressive as some women in the marketplace, at the same time I don’t have to act stupidly at functions. I think if you are happy with who you are you don’t need to put on an act and try and impress others.”

Street believes any woman finding the right sort of company to work for helps them to move forward in their career. It’s important for the company to believe in the capabilities of woman and what they have to offer in the industry.

“I have worked with Sue Stokes at Juniper and she is a great person to work with. She’s been in the industry for a long time and to have a female point of view was great. Sometimes [a woman’s] approach or the way we do things is slightly different.”

Although Street has mostly worked at companies where the work force has been 80-90 percent men - except for the marketing department, she says she has become use to working live without having woman around.

“I don’t think I would like working in an environment that was a hundred percent woman. It’s all about having a good to have a balance. Women can bring different things to meetings and steer the talk away from something rather than gold and football,” she says.

Now that Street has worked in the ICT industry for the past six years, occassionally she wants to think about going back to do something with her artistic qualifications.

“If I left IT, I would look at doing something else in a very different field from the ones that I have worked in, but I still have few years left in me,” she says.

“You never know what happens in life. Right now I am happy to make channel mine own, but beyond APC, you never know what I will do.”