ChannelLife Australia - Industry insider news for technology resellers
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This week's hustle and bustle in the Aussie channel
Fri, 17th Mar 2017
FYI, this story is more than a year old

The channel in Aussie this week was slightly more settled than last week (perhaps everyone was out celebrating St Paddy's Day), however there was still a lot of action.

Locally, Microsoft announced they're expanding their channel program right across Australia for Surface Hub, “working with more specialist partners to ensure customers of all sizes, in all sectors get the best experience and value from the technology.

Staples sold its Australian and New Zealand businesses to private equity firm Platinum Equity, with the new owners promising ‘substantial' investments to optimise the business' digital and systems capabilities.

Ingram Micro's cloud referral program hit the Australian shores, enabling resellers to earn additional commissions on Office 365 subscriptions.

Dimension Data won the contract for Frucor that will see it help the drinks company transition to the cloud.

Certus Solutions announced the appointment of IBM Smart Commerce expert Michael Vulcan as Victorian state manager.

And in Asia Pacific, Microsoft's cloud push is paying dividends, with the tech giant continuing to hold a clear lead in the burgeoning enterprise software-as-a-service market although Oracle and Google are growing fast.

Alcatel Lucent EnterpriseHitachi Data Systems and F5 Networks all announced the expansion of their senior leadership teams in Asia Pacific (APAC) with the appointments of Pierre Samson, Adam Judd, and Michael Zutenis, respectively.

Negotiations are continuing for Datatec – the parent company for Westcon Comstor and Logicalis – in a ‘significant transaction' first flagged in January.

Genesys recognised its top performing partners at its annual APAC conference, with Dimension Data coming out on top.

Tech Data announced a distie deal with Zadara Storage to make their solutions easily accessible to channel partners worldwide through its Avnet Cloud Marketplace.

Dell EMC bolstered its Cloud Service Provider partner program and added a solutions engineering practice as it gears up for ‘significant' scaling of its partner ecosystem.

While Telsyte released a report that revealed touchscreen desktops are set to boost the sluggish APAC market, Futuresource Consulting found the APAC LED display market to be growing, but the days of huge profits are numbered.

So another week full of acquisitions, deals and appointments bites the dust. We'll see you back here for more action next week – provided you've overcome the hangover from St Paddy's of course.