Fujitsu looks to channel to double market share

Off the back of a global channel push, Fujitsu has energised its channel engagement with the announcement of a formal partner program.

The program is for the vendor's product division and establishes official recognition to system integrators, hosting providers and IT resellers that focus on servers, storage, virtualisation and business office applications.

It also signifies Fujitsu's push in small business with the program specifically catered for sub 1,000 users.

Fujitsu's global Select partner program, announced yesterday, saw Australian reseller partners categorised into one of two tiers, either Partner or Select partner, opposed to the three tired option seen overseas.

Select partners can benefit from sales and business development resources including account management, pre-sales support, special logos, and joint-marketing activities.

Select partners, however, require certification in Fujitsu's Primergy server range and the completion of a business profile. Fujitsu will provide pre and post technical certification for the Primergy product as part of the program.

Certified Select partners will also be supported by dedicated northern and southern region channel sales managers.

Meanwhile, Partners will have first access to pre-certified solution offerings and technologies from Strategic Alliance Partners such as Cisco, Citrix and EMC.

"Partners are unmanaged resellers that traditionally worked with our distributors Westcon and Multimedia Technology. They have a strong core focus and fill demand as required," said Phillip Lay, southern regional channel manager at Fujitsu strategic products group.

"On the other hand, "Select partners are our managed partners that we engage. We build a business profile with their go-to-market and develop a solution offering around their core practice," said Lay.

Lay said the program has also levelled out prices for Select and Partner tiers, "it's the same price point," he said.

The move to launch an official partner program came from Fujitsu's global initiative to double market share by 2011, Lay added.

"Before this launch there was no real partner program. Last year we acquired a joint venture with Fujitsu-Siemens (now Fujitsu Technology Solutions) we were seeing a lot of offerings and moved to formalise it," Lay told CRN.

"We want to provide a framework to make it profitable for partners and we can help them differentiate in the market," he said.