Riverbed pushes education with dual NZ disties

Distribution Central added to the roster with Datastor

Riverbed hopes to increase partner education about its technology with the recent addition of Distribution Central as a local distributor, joining Datastor.

Head of Riverbed's New Zealand business, Andrew Cashmore, says Datastor has been doing a fantastic job, but there is room to expand awareness of wide area data services technologies here.

"There's a whole lot of education that needs to be done into our reseller channel," he says. "Distribution Central can definitely help with that."

Cashmore doesn't see any overlap in the channels targeted by the two distributors.

Distribution Central marketing director Nick Verykios says his company was increasingly discovering unique opportunities in New Zealand.

“Some of the resellers and the deals we were involved in were unique in those markets. We were uncovering opportunities for Riverbed and they were virgin opportunities. We were coming across more and more.”
The opportunities were mainly in education and services provision, he says.

He adds Distribution Central will “make sure it doesn’t cross paths” with Datastor.

“There’s no point and no one benefits from that. The opportunities were non-contested.”

Datastor sales and marketing manager Dave Rosenberg says he isn’t too aware of Distribution Central’s focus in New Zealand, and “we haven’t come across them in competition”.

“We just focus on what we do well,” he says.

Partner support and management tools offered by Distribution Central for the Riverbed agency in Australia, (where it is the vendor’s sole distributor), were also gaining interest from the New Zealand channel, Verykios says.

Such tools include pre-sales and post-sales support, asset management and customised configuration of solutions.

Riverbed’s local country manager Andrew Cashmore was unavailable for comment by deadline.