Chris
Richardson
Role: MSP Hosting
Programme Manager
Brand: Hosting (Citrix, CommVault,
Intel Security, Microsoft, Veeam and
VMware)
Bio: Having been in the ICT industry for 10 years, I have
gained a wealth of experience not only in the hardware
and software markets but also from having been heavily
involved in driving ‘cloud adoption’. My career in market
spans all sectors - service provider, distributor and even
vendor. Having performed the role of Business Development Manager as well as Partner Account Manager, I
understand the values, synergies and relationships that
are required in order to develop a profitable business.
An Overview of Your Brands or Products, and Their
Inherent Strengths and Features
As we know, the word ‘cloud’ is a topic widely used in the
ICT market. The power of the brands First Distribution
offers makes accessing the cloud and providing solutions
that much easier. It also gives our partners the ability to
offer the best-of-breed technology to their customers at a
fraction of the cost.
What Sets First Distribution Apart
First Distribution is a company that values the service we
deliver, not only to our partners, but to our vendors as well.
With the diverse technologies on offer for enterprise as
well as small medium business, we have solutions that fit
on-site and in the hosted environment. This is what makes
First Distribution a forward-thinking company.
Where Do You See Your Brand in the Next 12-18
Months?
Cloud adoption is still a maturing market in South Africa
and service providers using the First Distribution portfolio
of hosting products can only go from strength to strength.
First Distribution offers the best products in the hosting market and my goal is to assist partners to provide
the best Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions, as well as helping
existing partners. I would like to ‘spread the word’ and
get more new partners benefiting from the use of these
hosting technologies.
FIRST DISTRIBUTION
Grant Robertson
Riverbed Product Manager
Grant
Robertson
Role: Product Manager
Brand: Riverbed
Bio: I’ve been involved in varying aspects of the channel
over the past seven years, working at a vendor, a niche
IT security distributor and larger commodity distributors
as well. In this time I’ve dealt with both hardware and
software components and varying product sets, from encryption software (PGP), to wireless solutions (Aruba and
Ruckus) and WAN optimisation (Riverbed and Exinda).
An Overview of Your Brand or Product, and Its Inherent Strengths and Features
Riverbed was initially a WAN optimisation and application
acceleration Steelhead appliance that once deployed into
branches, and assisted with the WAN performing like a
LAN. In other words, it eliminates distance and location
between branches and solves the problems of latency
and bandwidth limitations. The net result of this for the
end-user is a much faster experience in sending and
receiving data between branches and using applications. It
also means that one doesn’t require extra servers at each
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