Chinese equipment maker Huawei has signed distributor Simms International to help it go after Cisco and other rivals in the Australian enterprise market.
It marks a significant step for Huawei as it seeks to transition from the consumer market to the enterprise.
“Huawei’s enterprise products will be a key focus for the company’s global growth this year, and our success in the A/NZ markets will play a pivotal role in that,” said South Pacific regional vice president of Huawei enterprise, Tony Zhang.
Huawei already has access to the local enterprise space through relationships with major telco operators, Zhang said. The Simms deal was expected to present important opportunities.
It comprises three phases: the first covered Huawei’s routers and LAN switches, storage, unified communications and telepresence.
Phase two would see Simms distribute Huawei’s network security, IP microwave and wavelength-division multiplexing solutions; phase three was for Huawei’s blade servers, cloud and storage solutions, WiMax network and its solutions for contact centres.
“Huawei has been seeking the right distributor to help establish and grow its enterprise business," Simms managing director Danny Moore said. "And with Simms' focus on our SMB, corporate and enterprise/government resellers, we are in an ideal position to introduce the extensive range of Huawei products and services into Australia’s growing enterprise market.”
Moore said, however, while Huawei’s has an impressive story in the retail space, it was an unknown quantity in the enterprise where it would compete with companies like Cisco, which owns most of Australia’s $900 million market for switches and routers.
“It’s a big risk for someone like us to invest in a new category against a dominant player [Cisco] which is extremely entrenched in the Asia Pacific market,” Moore said.
He said the channel would be key to Huawei’s enterprise success, and it "will need to be aggressive while building a solid channel structure that is properly tiered and with investment in training programs”.
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