Magirus seeks to convert 300 resellers for Cisco

Cisco has tasked new distributor Magirus with converting 300 resellers to its cause over the next 12 months, as it takes the battle to HP in the datacentre channel.

Cisco last week made the first major change to its western European distribution line-up for seven years by adding Magirus as a Specialty Data Centre Dist­ributor across the region.

The partnership will focus on Cisco’s recently launched Unified Communications System (UCS) server platform and Nexus switches.

Dominique Vanhamme, head of European Distrib­ution and Resellers, World­wide Channels at Cisco, said: “All the products we have released in recent months warranted a specific go-to market strategy.”

Magirus predicted the deal would boost its €300m (£260m) turnover by 20 per cent within two years.

The EMC and VMware distributor has already drawn up a list of 300 target partners, 65 of which are in the UK. It has also created a new Data Centre division to support the partnership and will be offering resellers use of its datacentre assembly facility in Strasbourg.

Chief operating officer Christian Magirus said: “We have seen huge interest from our current partners to look into the Cisco opportunity. [UCS] will help them escape out of the price-performance discussion with their end users and start an architectural discussion.”

Cisco has appointed Avnet to carry out the same task as Magirus in the US.

Jon Pritchard, executive vice president of rival Cisco distributor Comstor World­wide, said he was surprised that Avnet had not been preferred in Europe too.

“I am sure Cisco has gone through due process to identify the right firm, but Magirus is a strange choice,” he said. “It sold its [HP and IBM] enterprise business [to Avnet] a few years back and that is exactly the space Cisco is endeavouring to get into with UCS.”

Aad Dekkers, chief marketing officer, at pan-European systems integrator MTI, said: “It is nice to see Magirus going in the same direction as MTI from a technology and partnership point of view. We are both very focused on VCE (VMware, Cisco, EMC).”