Computerlinks relaunches Australian business

IT security distributor Computerlinks has relaunched its Australian business and plans to add a number of global security vendors to its line up.

In line with its new approach, Computerlinks has replaced the management and staff of its Sydney-based office and appointed Lee Reynolds as managing director in Dubai and a sales director, Matin Kaddour.

Reynolds, who also manages the Middle East, Africa and now the Asia Pacific, said the changes are part of the company's global strategy to focus on new territories and emerging markets. Despite an existing presence here, Computerlinks considers Australia an emerging market.

The company's focus is "to have a footprint in areas we don't have a footprint in", said Reynolds.

Asked if Australia's strong economic conditions were a deciding factor for the re-focus, Reynolds said: "It's not based on economic climate. We're late in the market here and we're also late in developing the office the way it should be." Australia came under Reynold's management six months ago and he intends to fully take on top ten [security] vendors the distributor has partnerships with elsewhere in the world, he said. "I'm here talking to them now." 

Reynolds is one of 20 shareholders in the privately-held company. After his recent takeover of the Australian business he let go of everyone in the local office except one person.  "You can't have legacy staff," he said.

Computerlinks has 30 offices around the world and its current partners in Australia include Sourcefire, Check Point, Lumension and Crossbeam. Globally it has partnerships with Blue Coat, Websense, RSA, Citrix and more. 

Blue Coat dropped Computerlinks as a distribution partner in Australia in July last year because of what Reynolds said was a "low activity level". With a number of incumbent security distributors in the country already, Reynolds is confident vendors and partners would engage with it because of its product focus. 

"We care about product management, we don't have territory managers. If [sales staff] are selling Check Point, they're [only] selling Check Point. I'll have one guy doing Check Point data leakage and I'll have one guy selling firewalls and that's the way we play," he said.

Reynolds said the company was flexible with its approach. Every local office has the control to take on or drop vendors as they please based on their local conditions. "As a security house we'll never do Cisco," he said.

"IT security is all we do, we don't do anything else."

Cloud

Reynolds said that while the company does offer cloud services elsewhere it won't sell them in Australia. Computerlinks is "heavily in investing in saturated territories such as Germany and England for the cloud but in emerging markets it's a no," said Reynolds.