MS seeks channel to drive growth

Despite most IT majors going slow on their partner expansion plans, Microsoft is betting big time on the same segment to drive growth for them, reports CIOL.

Sharing the learnings from last year when the company unveiled plans to tap into sub-distribution and for resellers to drive growth in India, Rajesh Kumar, director of marketing, SMB, Microsoft said:

"We have made huge strides in the reselling segment and at the moment we are witnessing a 60% y-o-y growth here. We have witnessed incremental demand with the customers and with the help of our sub-distributors we have managed to provide a unique value proposition to our customers."

Looking to strengthen relationships with its 1 400 VARs, software giant Infor Global Solutions has created a channel partner advisory council to tap into the channel's market expertise and provide resellers with information about the vendor's marketing and technology directions, states ChannelWeb.

While Infor has several other vehicles for communicating with its solution provider partners, including conference calls several times each quarter for specific topics such as product launches, the new North American Channel Advisory Council is designed to provide a more established vehicle for two-way communications, said Dennis Michalis, senior VP of global partners at Infor.

"We just needed that line of communication and means of discussion with our channel partners," Michalis said. "Frankly, we need to carry more water to help them grow."

Storage vendor StorageCraft Europe opened a new office in the UK last week and announced a push to acquire 100 new channel partners in the UK, according to Channel Pro.

The vendor provides disc-based backup, disaster recovery, data protection, system migration and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops.

The firm says UK growth initiatives in the past twelve months have led StorageCraft Europe to open a new office in London and bring three new people on-board who are dedicated to marketing and business development for the UK.