Intel lauds local channel progress

CRN: In terms of your distribution strategy, what has been working well in Australia?

Hasan: When the business grows it is obvious that things are working well for us. We do not have any major concerns. Australia is a huge geography and one thing we are looking at is if we are reaching all the areas we need with our distributors. I talked about our tier two distribution model and we are assessing if that would work in Australia. As of right now I don’t have any major concerns as things are working well. Products are going downstream, products are selling, and Australia is leading with the key transitions.

CRN: With Intel’s Classmate PC there seems to be a huge opportunity in the emerging markets, but do you think there is an opening in Australia too?

Hasan: Yeah, why not? You would be surprised as some of the mature markets have expressed an interest in the Classmate PC. It depends on the focus of the government and how the education sector is growing. If you are looking at Australia, this is likely to go into the primary school side. It is a good point to start for new users.

CRN: What message would you give to Intel’s Australian partners in terms of what they should be looking to achieve over the next 12 months?

Hasan: The message for everybody is the same. There are a few areas we will be looking towards. The first is channel growth in transitions. History tells you that every time there is a major transition, that happens, the channel is always there. This year we have a major transition with the 45 nm and then we have Nehalem coming up. Nehalem is arriving in Q4 and is a high-end product. The channel is going to lead these transitions. One message: is make the most of these opportunities as this is the time to grow and make money.

We are also talking about the new business opportunities we have. Our products give thousands of different options for different countries. For example, Singapore is working on digital displays. Partners need to look toward different usage models and use our product to do that.

We are also looking at server growth. We feel that we really need to grow in servers and in mature market especially as they have resources in place. There are also some great margins in server sales. We have some fantastic products in this area, the functionality and ease of use is simply amazing.

Finally, we want the channel to look at online. When people buy PCs today they look for a reference. They either go to a friend who knows about PCs or they would go online and research about products. If you go online you generally don’t find a partner there and I think this is one area that we want to challenge partners to be. We are going to provide partners with tools to make their name appear when people are searching online. Advertising is expensive and online gives you a focused way of getting to market.

channel collaboration intel lauds local networking progress