Reseller relevance upped a notch by Tarsus

When Tarsus Technologies announced that it had secured the distribution rights for RIM's BlackBerry range of mobile infrastructure solutions, it raised a number of eyebrows in the South African technology space.

After all, the Tarsus brand had, over the past few decades, become synonymous with products and solutions from the world's top hardware brands.

As it turns out, however, this move was just another addition to a long-term strategy of moving up the value chain. And according to the company's CEO, Pierre Spies, it's unlikely to be the last.

"The addition of BlackBerry to our product mix represented another step in a strategy we put in place 18 months ago, to provide our resellers with a broader range of the raw building blocks required to meet the changing infrastructural needs (both software and hardware-centric) of South African small businesses, corporates and enterprises," Spies explains.

"It's a strategy that was implemented to respond to the growing competitiveness of the hardware market and the fact that margins in this space had become more pressurised," he says.

"We know that expecting our resellers to continue basing their livelihoods on the sale of hardware alone had become an unsustainable pursuit.

"In order to remain successful, and in doing so, ensure our resellers are successful, we need to continue providing a set of complementary solutions around our hardware portfolio, which in turn allow our resellers to increase their relevance in the market," he adds.

Greg Pothitos, general manager of the BlackBerry suite of solutions at Tarsus, says resellers have already begun responding to this move extremely positively.

"It's a great opportunity for both Tarsus and its resellers because BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) were previously only available via the mobile telecommunications providers in the country," he says.

"With these solutions, coupled with the Microsoft initiative announced recently, that Microsoft and Research in Motion (RIM) have signed a patent licensing agreement that gives RIM broad access to the latest Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) for certain BlackBerry devices of RIM, our resellers can begin extending the important groundwork that's laid by our hardware, networking and Microsoft software portfolios," he says.

"BES allows them to take great care of their customers' mobile, business-grade, e-mail, calendaring and contacts (among other) needs; while MVS brings the ability to provide desk-phone type functionality to all of the BlackBerry smartphone users in their customers' businesses," he says.

"It allows Tarsus' resellers to play a more central role in their customers' strategic IT requirements and become more deeply embedded as a provider of valuable services to the business.

"And in our book, that hints at success," he adds.

Pothitos says the BlackBerry suite is available to all Tarsus resellers interested in increasing their value proposition in the market.

"And to provide them with the mentorship, training and guidance to undergo this transition to a more value-added form of technology resale, we've provided additional training internally around these product lines," says Spies.

"We've already seen valuable successes in this space and are convinced this new avenue will serve us well in the coming years. Watch this space," he concludes.