Unixpac celebrates 20th anniversary

Not even the mining boom could coax him to return to his former ways.

"These booms mutually exclude each other," says Piotrowski.

"When things went down with IT, mining was booming, so the interest to go back into mining was there. But I must admit there have never been any regrets. I definitely see myself continuing where I am," says Piotrowski who is gearing up to celebrate his company's 20^th anniversary this November.

According to Piotrowski, UnixPac is a different kind of distributor. He says the company tends to focus on new security technologies. So he keeps his eyes and ears open and follows developments both in the media and various conferences for new ideas.

"It's important to be aware and start talking to these emerging technologies early enough," he says.

A big part of his business involves helping vendors set foot in the region.

"Sometimes our work prompts vendor partners to establish a stronger presence here.

"For example, we brought in Alto Systems to Australia in the 1990s and in the mid-1990s they decided to open a local office. Consequently a big chunk of UnixPac's employees who were involved in the technology moved across too." Piotrowski, unfazed, says such changes are part of the business model.

"By mutual agreement these people moved with Alto Systems. We had approximately six people go with that deal," he says.

"For some people these changes could be upsetting but for us it's not. If you develop your business by keeping these possibilities in mind it just gives you a perspective around what to do next," he says.

The life-span of UnixPac's relationships varies. Piotrowski says sometimes uncontrollable events such as mergers and acquisitions change the relationship status.

But in other cases, for example with Finnish company SSH Communications, the group which invented SSH protocol, the relationship is strong after almost 10 years.

"It's a healthy relationship, it's growing and we're making room for the vendor to expand," he says. 

UnixPac has four full-time employees in sales, marketing and technical expertise.

While on assignment for BHP, Piotrowski discovered the skills to bridge his engineering knowledge with IT and his future employer Computer Vision, a Sun Microsystems related business, noticed it too and convinced him to switch companies.

After a four-year stint he moved on to Sun Microsystems where he spent over two years developing his Unix skills.

According to Piotrowski, it was the early days for the channel, a time when vendors began to realise the benefits of partners to help grow their business.

Partners could help develop software and hardware solutions and take them to market.

"I was acquainted with the Unix product for quite some time and decided it was about time to do something with aftermarket products.

"It was a very logical step and reason enough for me to talk to potential partners and resell their products.

"So I contacted my contacts and I worked towards a small distribution company," he explains.

UnixPac opened in 1989 as a predominantly Unix technology reseller, hence the name. In the early 1990s UnixPac worked in the Unix space with Sun Microsystems and Sun clones.

Industry colleagues noticed his expertise from the beginning and soon enough UnixPac commenced supplying to other resellers.

The business evolved into a distribution company and in years to come Piotrowski dabbled with a number of spin-off businesses.

"We became the distributor of one of these clones but decided to spin-off a company called Open Tec. In the end that company was sold," says Piotrowski.

Similarly in the late 1990s when Java came on the scene UnixPac was heavily involved with a lot of development work, to the point that it almost distracted the distributor from its mainstream operations.

"So we again had a spin-off company called Java Labs which became an independent company and is developing code for various organisations in Australia today."

Piotrowski noticed the Unix platform was rapidly growing and industries such as banking, finance and infrastructure were adopting the technology.

Consequently the number of resellers and system integrators also increased and soon it was time for UnixPac to evolve once again.

"When people used internet systems sufficiently the first questions were raised about security," says Piotrowski.

"I quickly uncovered that my colleagues from the industry had ventured into the space and consequently I picked up the very first vendor, a firewall called Raptor Systems. At that point of time it was one of the two or three commercial companies in the space," says Piotrowski.

"We actually brought this product to Australia and established a good user base during the course of time.

"It was sort of a trigger that took me to look at security products," he says. 

Unixpac technology partners; Bivio Products, Bluecat Networks, Breach Security, FireEye, GuardianEdge, Imprivata, Insightix, Shavlik, SSh Tectia, Solera Networks, Sourcefire, Splunk, TriGeo.