New chiefs at Linux Warehouse

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 02 Jul 2009

Linux Warehouse, a distributor of Red Hat and other enterprise OSS, reined in two local directors to lead the company in bringing renewed operation focus to its go-to-market business strategy.

Johnny Martins has been appointed as managing director of Linux Warehouse, and Shannon Moodley as its channel and marketing manager.

Martins says Linux is looking to boost open source's market share in the IT industry. “In order to achieve this, we are working very hard at securing distributor relationships with more open source related vendors who complement each other with their respective products. It will enable us to service the southern African market with an end-to-end solution.”

Changing mindsets

According to Martins and Moodley, Linux Warehouse will refocus its marketing strategy to drive awareness of open source so the end-user is better informed.

“There is a perception in the market that open source is an inferior solution compared to the proprietary offerings available today,” says Martins. “Our aim is to change that as we firmly believe open source is the way to go in the future.

“At the same time we are looking at expanding our existing client base. We have already hosted a number of events this year to introduce product offerings to our resellers and we will increase the tempo from here on out.”

Martins points out that enterprises are moving towards mobile Web-based solutions to reduce the cost of infrastructure and to increase productivity.

“We are currently in talks with a number of established open source vendors from across the world to secure distributor rights for Linux Warehouse,” says Martins. “These will include a collaboration solution, a database package, and a backup offering. We are also planning increased focus on the Red Hat middleware solution, JBoss.”