By Paul Kunert
6 November 2008
APC has dumped its vanilla flavoured channel programme in preference of one that focuses on solving the energy efficiency crisis facing many firms all of sizes.
According to a study by Forrester Research, co-location data centre prices have soared 75% in London over the last 18 months due to rising energy bills and demand outstripping supply.
“IT managers are becoming more pressed to improve efficiencies within their operations at all levels, not just UPS but power, cooling and even how racks are positioned,” said Francesco Quero, APC director of channels EMEA.
The UPS market was worth $7bn worldwide but the data centre infrastructure including housing devices, power distribution, cooling systems, software management and services amounted to $22bn, he said.
Resellers will be given access to the Partner Online Destination which profiles their business, aligns them to a specific market and product set, provides online training, sales and marketing tools and fosters collaboration between partners.
“We are providing competencies around how to sell power and cooling, and how that relates to major industry trends like virtualisation and server consolidation,” said Quero.
All resellers in the four tier programme – Registered, Select, Premier and Elite - can accrue rebates but only the two top classifications can attain special bid pricing and MDF.
The desperation of customers to solve power and cooling issues suggested the reseller channel was not effectively tacking their problems, said Euan Davis, principal analyst at Forrester Research.
“In the last 18 months customer complaints have arisen from nothing and it seems to be down to energy costs…the channel is not giving customers the value proposition they need,” he said.
Organisations were starting to bang the heads together of the IT, data centre and facilities managers as they had realised that a more joined up strategy may help to curb the problem, David added.
Abdul Terry, marketing director at APC partner Quadnet, said the channel programme was in need of updating, “this is APC playing catch up but it is good they have recognised the need to step up.”
