Sun Microsystems' and Tech Access's relationship stands out among the other channel partnerships in the region mainly because of its unique and innovative approach to the channel. Their story began in 1999 when Tech Access was just a country reseller for Sun in the Middle East. Back then, Tech Access operated as a typical reseller, pitching Sun's technology and selling its hardware. But a shift in market direction and strategy, and because of the very nature of Sun's offerings — business applications and integration — forced the company to rethink its channel structure."The whole distribution model of Sun before was around technology and the moving of hardware," says Quentin Cornelius, COO of Tech Access. "But as with other companies, Sun had to look at where the future growth of the market lay. It found that it was around solutions."
That revelation led Sun to reorganise and transform its channel organisation globally, and between 1999 and 2000, it started appointing select resellers as its channel development partners or CDPs. Tech Access became one in 2001.
"Sun moved from transactional products to solution selling. One key element of the solution-selling approach is to sell through the partners. The CDP plays an important role in changing the attitude and mentality of the partners from product selling to solution selling," says Stavros Vougas, Channel and Marketing Manager, Sun Microsystems MENA.
By being a CDP, Tech Access was given the responsibility of handling Sun's existing resellers in the region. It covered ten countries, expanding to North Africa six months later, giving the company an additional six countries to cover. As a CDP, Tech Access was tasked with managing the channel for Sun.
"We became an extension of Sun," Cornelius explains. "One of our major roles as a CDP is to focus more on developing partners who offer applications and solutions that provide an answer to the problems that customers are facing rather than just selling hardware."
"Tech Access is changing our channel for us. It is moving them away from box selling to a more solutions-focused approach, and aligning them to what Sun is doing," says Vougas.
Part of its role as CDP includes providing demand creation, marketing, planning and support to resellers, running workshops and seminars, and developing co-branded go-to-market campaigns. It also provides pre-sales technical support to them, and operates logistics and warehousing facilities as well.
"We are the channel's first point of contact for Sun. We handle both traditional resellers and solution partners for Sun. If there are solutions that Sun or its partners do not provide, we find the vendor that complements the 'total solution' that Sun offers to customers," elaborates Cornelius.
"On the traditional reselling front, we brought the order desk and logistics services closer to the resellers. We handle the logistics and fulfilment, making sure that orders and deliveries are seen right through its arrival to the city or country of destination. Before, they had to order in Europe. We simply eased the process of ordering, delivery, logistics, fulfilment and credit for the resellers," he adds.
The recruitment and evaluation of partners are also some of the major roles Tech Access play as a CDP. It takes the market's needs and Sun's focus areas into consideration when identifying the type of partners it needs. It oversees the yearly renewal of contracts, which require the partners to undergo a certification programme, and reviews the resellers' revenue targets quarterly.
As Sun's virtual marketing team, Tech Access is responsible for localising the various channel programmes that come from Sun. Together with some select partners, they decide on what programmes makes sense to bring to the region. Solution-driven initiatives, which should cater exactly to the local market, are mostly driven by Tech Access, with Sun's involvement, understanding and agreement.
Proven Concept
Perhaps Sun's and Tech Access's biggest and most successful initiative to date is the Tech Access Solutions Centre. It is the region's first Authorised iForce Ready Centre. It's a US$1 million investment located in Dubai Internet City as part of a global Sun initiative, which brings together Sun and its partners to deliver proven solutions to customers. The Centre provides customers a real-world environment and hands-on, in-person help to create architectural blueprints or guidelines for the design, development and deployment of solutions on the Sun platform.
According to Martyn Molnar, Tech Access MEA Solution Sales Manager, the idea for the Centre was conceived when Sun set up a testing lab in Menlo, California about five years ago.
"The idea of the lab was to invite big system integrators, such as Accenture, EDS and PricewaterhouseCoopers, to install their application on Sun boxes and take a look at how to build specific applications on Sun," says Molnar. "It has evolved considerably since then. What started as some applications sitting on boxes, which was very technical and lab-orientated, was transformed into a facility where customers can evaluate solutions both from a technical angle and a business prospect aspect, and have an intimate technology experience with regards to how applications run on Sun infrastructure."
Getting Sun to invest in an iForce Centre here was not straightforward. Early in 2001, Tech Access, with the help of the alliances team in Sun's ME office, had to submit a business plan to Sun's Geneva (Switzerland) office as part of a bid that took place across the EMEA region. Other CDPs, including those from Greece and Turkey, have also participated in the bid.
"Sun was actually looking for a region within EMEA where it could set up an iForce Centre. It looked at the region that had the largest ROI potential, considered the type of solutions it could develop there, and the types of partnerships and facilities it could create in that region. and on that basis made a decision," says Molnar.
Six weeks later, Sun awarded the project to Tech Access. Eight and a half weeks later after that, the Centre was built.
"I feel it was the investment that we planned to put in that won the day," Molnar says. "But there are a number of factors to consider as well. Sun, for instance, stood to gain a huge market share in this region. And it also had to do a lot with the fact that by putting a solid footprint and a solid solutions engagement framework on the table for our partners and customers, Sun would have a very robust corporate presence in the region."
"The speed of execution, the ROI, and the fact that this is a region where Sun was looking to gain significant market share were the three major factors in that decision," he summarises.
Tech Access and Sun pooled together the investment needed to establish the Centre. It was a 50/50 strategy. Mainly used for pre-sales activity, the Centre comprises a presentation/meeting area, project briefing rooms and a 'glasshouse' where the data centre is located. The Sun servers being used there are upgraded regularly. Currently, the Centre uses eight-way CPU, SunFire V880 machines.
Three architects — one solutions sales and two pre-sales solutions architects — are dedicated to the Centre. They are supported most of the time by a virtual team — comprised of people from Sun, Tech Access and its partners — when there's a client project.
The Centre runs under the "Test before you invest" concept where the result of the collaboration between the customer, Sun's software partner, its systems integrator, and Sun and Tech Access engineers, is presented as a working, fully operational prototype of the solution the client needs.
"We have the capability to do end-to-end solutions in the Centre but we don't execute high-end benchmarks," explains Molnar. "We offer proof-of-concept work. We can do full three-tier proof-of-concept projects, which can either be on high availability, clustering, storage area networks, disaster recovery, tape backups or desktop infrastructures. Of course, there are limitations on what we can do here. Obviously, we cannot string together 600 systems. We focus more on the enterprise mid-market. That is the capacity of the machines here.
The Centre is also home to some of the applications from Sun's software partners. Oracle, for instance, has about 90% of its technology running in the Centre. Since most of its products are developed on Sun, Tech Access has the privilege to get Oracle's latest technology first.
"We probably have here the most complete Oracle solutions environment outside of Redwood shores," he claims.
When asked about how effective the Centre is in convincing clients about Sun solutions, Molnar confidently claims that they haven't lost a deal yet. "The customers who have come in and physically tested the solutions have always walked away with something," he comments.
Indeed, the success of the Centre is remarkable. Tech Access's initial revenue forecast of US$300,000 per quarter, which refers to the solutions-orientated revenue where the Centre was used as part of the sales engagement, has quickly and easily been achieved. And in July of last year, the company has exceeded the target, achieving close to US$500,000 in quarterly revenues.
The Road Ahead
Moving forward, Tech Access plans to expand to other areas and markets. Already, it has established satellite offices in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco. It will also continue to add more partners, introduce a series of new offerings for the mid-market sector, and take the iForce Centre's "Test before you invest" concept across the region via a showcase initiative.
"We'd like to be doing something in Saudi Arabia. That was always been the plan," says Molnar about Tech Access's ambition to establish a similar centre in the Kingdom. "Some of our partners want to mirror what we are doing here in Dubai and take it back to their own land. We will be rolling out some small programmes with some select relationships that will allow us to take specific solutions for specific markets on board a smaller version of the iForce Centre to be established in different parts of the region."
Overall, according to Cornelius, Tech Access's targets are on expansion of its market, its partners and sun's revenues.
"Our objectives going forward are to continue to provide incremental revenue for Sun and to grow Sun's partner community, specifically on the solutions side," adds Cornelius. "We want to be in a position where we have between 20 and 30 partners who are actually familiar with Sun's technology value proposition, who have comfortable working relationships with Sun's existing partner community, and who can effectively take Sun's value proposition out to market."
Another main focus for Tech Access this year is to drive Sun's Linux vision in the region.
"Linux is extremely important for Sun because it delivers a low-cost approach in providing almost-commodity services at the edge for large companies. That's an area that Sun is focusing on, and as its partner, Sun's objectives become our objectives as well," says Cornelius.
Part of its Linux strategy was to partner with local Linux communities. Tech Access aims to elevate the status of these groups by establishing them as a forum where customers can interact with people about Linux and understand its value proposition even more.
"Linux is the core product of our volume strategy. We've announced recently a set of products on the Linux OS. The role of Tech Access is to promote this new product to our partner community. The idea is to change their mindsets, re-train them, and if they don't have Linux in their portfolios, make sure that they have solutions that tie with our Linux products," adds Vougas.
Tech Access has also recently installed a team of solutions specialists in its Dubai office who will provide Sun's resellers with access to best practices expertise in key areas such as storage, disaster recovery, Web services, networking, security and backup. The team will also assist partners in implementing support level agreements to client sites, especially in cases when there are system failures.
"We're very happy with the commitment that we have with Tech Access," says Vougas. "Nowadays, you cannot find a lot of partners who are willing to invest heavily on a specific vendor. Tech Access is a partner who feels and works for you as an extension of your mindset. Both the structure of our organisations, our commitment and mindset are focused on a common goal."
"One hundred percent of our focus is committed to ensuring that our partners perform and succeed. These are our customers. For them to succeed, they need to perform. They need to achieve their objectives. Their objectives become our objectives. If they reach their objectives and their businesses grow, by default our business increases and Sun's market share increases. By then, all three have achieved their objectives," concludes Cornelius.
