Huawei signs two new disties

Huawei is set to announce the signing of two new distributors at its Melbourne partner conference Tuesday afternoon.

CertaOne, which was in the headlines last week for becoming one of the foundation members of the CenturyLink cloud channel, and Madison Technologies will be named as new distributors for Huawei at the Federation Square event.

"They'll be offered the full catalogue," Huawei Australia enterprise channel sales director Leo Lynch told CRN, although both distributors have specific focus areas.

"CertaOne, which is a new company, will concentrate on the energy and UPS side of the catalogue. That area has become big enough for one distie to be devoted to," Lynch said. "While Madison Technologies, which has been around for 21 years, is a specialist in gigabit passive optical network, GPON. That's essentially fibre optic networking infrastructure."

Existing distributors Synnex and iCITA remain in their mainstream and cloud channel roles respectively.

Lynch, who joined the vendor at the start of 2015, said that the channel is rapidly taking over the Australian enterprise sales.

"In 2014, enterprise sales were 65 percent through the channel. That went up to 80 percent in 2015 after I joined. This year we're aiming for 88 percent."

The former IBM channel executive will also announce to partners at the Melbourne conference new incentives and discounts. This includes rebates that were only previously available to a select "tier 1" circle, which will now be expanded out to gold-level partners.

Company-level and individual programs that can earn partners rewards such as mobile phones, cash and travel will be revealed. New deal registration and demo program arrangements will also be unveiled, according to Lynch.

The Huawei Enterprise Partner Conference rolls into Sydney's Darling Harbour on Thursday. Last month, the vendor posted its best global results in seven years, upping its revenue 37 percent and net profit by 32 percent.