Tech Data Canada president Rick Reid said the recent signing of EMC Canada is going to be just one part of an on going series of deals to boost the Xalyx, the distributor’s storage division.
The EMC partnership will centre on distributing the company’s entry-level network attached storage
(NAS) systems, mid-tier networking storage systems and storage and information management software throughout Canada. The EMC products involved are Clariion, NetWin, Navisphere and Snapview.
“The whole area of storage with security is a very important growth area for Xalyx. Storage has always been a strength of Tech Data, but we need to combine that with servers, server storage and security. It is a great growth area and a renewed focus for Xalyx. EMC is a key ingredient, for sure, along with HP’s Storageworks and IBM and you will likely see us add other lines to the mix this year,” Reid said.
Besides storage, software was a big growth area for Tech Data, Reid added.
Tech Data Canada realized more than 40 per cent growth, year over year, in software. “A lot of that is security and Microsoft, for sure. The costs associated with (software) licensing is less than other traditional product sets and so we grew this business with the thought we would not incur a lot of incremental costs associated with the revenue,” Reid said.
Another growth area was Tech Data’s systems business, which saw the distributor gain a 20 per cent up-tick. “We saw a lot of that transition from desktop to notebooks. Notebooks have a higher selling price and there was some good growth on servers with HP and IBM,” he said.
Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s PC division (PCD), Reid believes, will bring more opportunities than anticipated.
“I believe there will be more opportunities for Lenovo (in Canada). I left IBM’s partner conference very impressed with Lenovo and their plans to not just hold on to IBM’s PCD business, but to grow it. We distribute HP’s product line and I hope they are successful too, but it will not come at the expense of Lenovo,” he said.
Reid added that Lenovo will not negatively affect Tech Data’s partnership with Seanix or its market share. “The Seanix piece is very unique and very niche. It is not a big part of our business and no one is going to get excited from Lenovo over our line of Seanix products. I believe there will be room for a higher end tier two product, Lenovo is definitely a tier one and I think they will continue to grow quite nicely.”
