Synnex is particularly strong in Canada, a market where Silver Peak is not as strong as it would like, and recruitment of strong partners in the Canadian market is a priority.
Michael O’Brien, VP of Global Channel Sales at Silver Peak
SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak has announced a reworking of their North American distribution, as part of a global restructuring of their distribution networks. SYNNEX and its Westcon/Comstor subsidiary will now handle Silver Peak product in the United States, Canada and Latin America. It comes on the heels of an agreement last October which saw Silver Peak engage Synnex for their business in Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific.
“In the past, we have had a hybrid model in North America, where we did both single-tier and two-tier distribution,” said Michael O’Brien, VP of Global Channel Sales at Silver Peak, “What has become obvious is that we needed a value-added distribution model that would help partners distribute faster and more efficiently. That began a process that led to the selection of Synnex.”
O’Brien indicated that Synnex wasn’t chosen simply because they were already newly in place in the other key global markets.
“We did an exhaustive RFP process,” he said. “We looked at where the industry is moving from a channel perspective, with an emphasis on cloud-based capacity. Can a distributor put a service provider in SP in cloud mode to give them full self-service capability?. Does the distributor have the capability to offer managed services on a platform? Can they support both pre-sales and post-sales? Pick pack and ship was a given, but it’s those other things that help grow and scale the channel quickly. Synnex’s cloud-based and managed services capabilities made it easier, because a margin stack is very difficult when you have a distributor, service provider and VAR to account for.”
Westcon was a networking and security focused distributor before its acquisition by Synnex, and those particular capabilities are important here, particularly as Silver Peak already had a Westcon relationship in Latin America. However, O’Brien said that legacy Synnex brought significant pieces to the table as well.
“The Synnex capabilities were important on their own,” he stated. “The managed services and CloudSolv I worked with before even before they bought Westcon. They also have complementary products, like Palo Alto and CheckPoint, that we can be sold alongside.”
Silver Peak channel partners will have access to a broad range of support and services from Synnex. These include pre- and post-sales services, Access to pre- and post-sales engineering resources, proof of concept and demo gear access, enablement, training and education programs, co-marketing funds, programs and events, and traditional distribution logistics, integration and financing services.
“Silver Peak is not a startup, but we are faced with overwhelming growth in the SD-WAN marketplace,” O’Brien said. “We have garnered the attention of premier accounts. We have Fortune 100 companies coming to us. Partners are seeking help with all the services around these. My job is to build out a portfolio of offerings – high quality and readily available – to give partners options. Synnex will be able to support partners with a broad set of pre- and post-sales services, including CloudSolv and their managed services portfolio.”
Silver Peak is also looking to Synnex to introduce them to a significant number of new channel partners.
“Significantly increasing the partner base is part of the mission,” O’Brien stated. “We are looking to expand our partner base. We have spent the last few years perfecting a product that has had some fantastic success. Now it’s time to take that more broadly to market. We are in recruitment mode and adding new partners almost every day.”
Expanding the business and partner base in Canada is a key part of this.
“We needed a relationship that could expand us in markets where our coverage isn’t as much as we would like,” O’Brien said. “Canada is one of those markets. Synnex is very strong in Canada. In the U.S., Synnex has also attracted some of the marquee partners we use, so we knew that we weren’t going to lose any partners around the switch.”
