ATEN A/NZ regional director, Wesley Wong. Photo: Mike Gee
Keyboard, video and mouse switch solutions provider, ATEN, is planning to ramp up its channel play in A/NZ, according to the company’s new A/NZ regional director, Wesley Wong. He spoke to ARN about his plans for the company, since the vendor only established a local presence in Australia in July 2015.
According to Wong, the channel is vital in the company’s growth strategy.
“We don’t do business direct – it’s always through the channel. In the long-term, the only way for us to survive is for us to make some margin, the distributor to make some, and channel partners to make some. One team alone can’t cover all the market segments,” he said.
He mentioned that ATEN is looking to sign up new partners. The company currently goes to market via Bluechip Infotech and Anyware Corporation, and intends to increase this spread. Wong said it is in the midst of talking to a few partners and will be looking to sign them on in the near future.
“There are two different directions we want to take – we’re trying to find a distributor that has an established base in the professional audio-video market segment, especially with digital signage, setting up classrooms, automation, etc.
“On the IT side, we do have a plan to bring on board a partner that lets us complement their enterprise solutions. More urgently, we’re trying to find system integrators because we want to help customers to have a complete project,” Wong said.
The company’s been active in the government, education, mining, media, and telecommunications verticals and according to Wong, will be increasing its play in these markets and in a couple of others.
“As a company, we need tap into the enterprise, datacentre, digital signage, and hospitality verticals. We are looking for the right partners to take us into that space. Education is a vertical we’d like to grow even more too,” Wong mentioned.
"But, finding the right partner is better than finding more partners."
Since establishing a local presence, the company has hired four staff. It is also looking to expand that team to include a technical and pre-sales person to be based in Sydney, and a business development manager to focus on Victoria, Western Australia, and Tasmania.
“We’ve got a good team here and expanding on that will enable us to get the reach that we’re aiming for.”
Wong joined the company about 10 months ago to head up ATEN’s local operations. Prior to that, he was the Asus OP BG business unit channel SME and marketing director for more than a year. He also held on to the role of Asus OP BG senior channel and SME manager for three years before that.
Wong has also previously worked as the NVIDIA A/NZ channel manager and NSW sales manager at BlueChip Infotech.
Wong said ATEN is looking to grow its market share by 10 to 20 per cent within the next year.
