Microsoft appoints Altech as distributor of the year

Altech’s national marketing manager, Kevin Hartin, told CRN the distributor was ‘over the moon’ about the win.

“It’s a formidable achievement and endorses Microsoft’s decision to appoint us as a third distributor,” he said.

Hartin claimed the victory over Ingram and Synnex will “spur Altech on to do bigger and better things”. He believed Altech’s win was partly due to the distributor embracing resellers big and small.

“I haven’t spoken to the people who made the decision, but I think our win as Microsoft distributor of the year was partly due to embracing all areas in the channel. I think small independent builders and resellers are being left behind by the big distributors and they too need a personal approach,” he said.

Hartin said decisions made by two of Australia’s largest distributors to drop small resellers helped Altech to be seen as a distributor that took in large and small resellers.

“When distributors dipped small resellers; we said bring it on and come to us. We understand that the Australian channel is unique in that there are a large number of independent resellers building lots of systems and the need to source applications and components locally was vital,” said Hartin.

He told CRN that it was important for distributors to get behind resellers at a time when hardships are being attributed to broader economic difficulties.

“Businesses going under can’t all be attributed to changes in the IT market,” Hartin said. “There is a broader issue in that the overall economy is going through changes. Altech is trying to also work out a way to relieve resellers of the pressure from delivery fees.”