Express Data locks down CA Technologies

Express Data has solidified a long-time partnership with CA Technologies, scoring a spot as the software vendor’s sole distribution partner for its data management and recovery portfolio of products. 

The agreement coincided with the end of CA's data management distribution agreement with Ingram Micro.

"As part of CA’s channel strategy, its focus has been on working with a fewer number of the right partners. In line with this, it reviewed its model and made the decision for ED to take the reins as the sole distributor for that portfolio," a CA spokesperson said.

Ingram Micro confirmed the partnership had ended four months ago after several years. The distributor's cloud and software business manager Lee Welch told CRN the split had been amicable.

“It's not going to have any impact on us from a bottom-line perspective. Our software business is going well, and we’re focusing on scalable vendors that have really good solution sets," he said.

"We’ve got a very broad range of vendors covering many solution sets, and we’re really focused on those vendors that can drive incremental revenue year on year."

“As part of that we’re focusing on signing new vendors which we’ve done this year," he said. Ingram Micro sign new deals with GFI Software and SilverPeak Systems locally in 2012 and will announce further partnerships early next year. 

Express Data and CA have been in partnership for around 14 years, selling CA’s data management range. The new official agreement makes Express Data CA's second local official distributor, and will include CA’s ARCServe and Erwin products.

The software vendor earlier this year announced the extension of a New Zealand partnership with distributor Westcon to Australia, working on CA’s enterprise solutions. That agreement allowed Westcon to offer its first cloud service distribution agreement, delivering the vendor’s network performance management products virtually.

Express Data said the ‘several hundred’ specialised CA Technologies resellers would now get access to better licensing and quote support, faster order turnaround and access to value-added services, via purpose built sales programs. 

It said together with CA it will work more closely with customers to assist partners with sales, marketing and technical consulting.

CA introduced a new channel program earlier this year, aiming to redress the perception it is a less-than-channel-friendly company and expand its cloud management software business. Currently about 40 percent of CA's ANZ revenues flow through partners.

It replaced the gold, silver and platinum tiers of its partner program with 'advanced' and 'premier' levels, overhauled its MyCA Partner Portal to include upgraded sales tools, training and marketing support, and added new technical support and resources, online forums and communities, marketing tools and resources, and sales and education benefits.

It also improved financial incentives, such as marketing and business development funds, and brought on two new channel-focused executives. 

CA has spent about $US2 billion globally in the last two years on acquiring a number of cloud computing management software developers, including Nimsoft, Interactive TKO (ITKO), 3Tera, Arcot Systems and Oblicore.