Exclusive Networks' acquisition of UK and global services firm ITEC is the next stage in its continuing role as disruptive to distribution, says Barrie Desmond COO. “Our vision is to develop more services as a SuperVAD – providing value on a local then regional and global levels, adding services we think the market needs. Customers are looking to work on larger global deals and they need one-stop partners, even into markets where we are not currently active.”
ITEC is 50-strong firm with offices in Europe, the Far East and the US, specialising in technical and project support and with a white box approach to managed services, but focused on interworking security and data centres. It has representatives in 90 countries, he says
“It gives us that capability – resellers also want to be able to deliver on bigger expectations from their customers – to expand their footprint. More of our vendors are growth vendors, adopted by more of the global businesses and need to have a one-stop partner to do the logistics and support. That is what we are trying to do, with this.”
Managed services is an interesting term, he says as “More and more we see the need for proxy services, particularly in security because of the intensity of cybercrime; they need to be able to add resources easily. It is not a step into managed services, but is a way into that as we continue, from a vision perspective, to bolt on more services.”
The main one is global delivery and global project management and holding local spares in new regions while offering a four-hour response – these are the basics, he says. “The ability to roll out global projects where we have had to work with other partners in other regions; this takes away a layer of complexity; ITEC is used to doing this work.”
In the foreseeable future, it will operative independently and Exclusive is working on operational transparency – it will be acting as as sister company that can plan and offer support under the umbrella.
ITEC has deals with other global distributors, but he does not see this as a problem: “Working for other disties? There is more co-opetition these days anyway, but I don't see it as an issue. Because of our products and vendor portfolio we don't have an overlap with the others such as the Cisco distributors. I don't see any impact there.”
“It is a nice business that is growing. They can expand to meet demand through relationships with individuals on a global level. We think we can accelerate that growth – our vendors want to work with one point of contact on global delivery, we are just putting a turbo on it.”
“We are continuing to look at all sorts of services that we can wrap round the business model,” he concludes.