Justin Tye - Managing Director, Exeed
Exeed has signed a distribution agreement with Huawei Technologies, as the distributor deepens its enterprise offering across New Zealand.
Reseller News can confirm that Exeed will take on the Chinese vendor’s consumer and enterprise portfolios, joining Atlas Gentech as a national distributor across both offerings.
“We’ve already launched the consumer part of the business which covers Huawei’s tablet and watch product range,” Exeed managing director, Justin Tye, said.
“Commercial will follow within the next few months because it takes time to get systems up and running, and ensure that we have the correct platform to trade on.”
Speaking exclusively to Reseller News, Tye said the enterprise range covers the entire Huawei solution set, which includes switches, servers, routers and WLAN Access Points.
“It’s a comprehensive range covering everything that is required by enterprises in New Zealand,” he said.
“Unless you have a local flavour or feel to your brand, you’re going to struggle in this market because Kiwis want to see that you can offer more than just the products themselves, but also the ability to sell and support them.
“We’re seeing this come through with Huawei and this was another key factor in our decision to partner.”
Enterprise expertise
Aside from the vendor’s carrier business - which is served by the telecommunications industry in New Zealand - Tye said the full Huawei package now allows Exeed to expand its enterprise potential across the country.
“We assessed our options around the enterprise space a few years ago but have so far refrained from taking an opportunity with a brand that competes within that space,” he said.
“But it’s reached the point where there’s enough change in the market through cloud - and the impact it’s having on our traditional hardware business - that we reviewed our options.”
In short, Tye believes the move “adds another string to our bow” from an enterprise perspective.
“We’ve spent a lot of time developing the retail business during the past two years and we’ve added a lot of agencies, and they all contribute to the ecosystem and making the retail proposition viable,” he added.
“It can be a tough business but we’ve got that right. We haven’t fully invested into our enterprise business as yet, but the business area we’ve covered during the past 18 months is bringing on board Microsoft.
“That’s been huge for us and we’ve been extremely happy with the relationship and the results. But what we lacked was another brand that we could point to within that enterprise space.”
Triggered by reseller demand, Tye was quick to downplay the impact of Huawei on the distributor’s other vendor business, with the tech giant going head to head with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a longstanding Exeed partner.
As reported exclusively by Reseller News in February, HPE selected Exeed, alongside Ingram Micro and Sektor, as the vendor’s distribution partners in New Zealand, following a much-publicised channel review.
As a well performing HPE distributor, Exeed regained its position within the market along with Ingram Micro, with new entrant Sektor taking over the company’s Aruba Networks portfolio.
“We’ve enjoyed a long and rewarding relationship with HPE and will continue to do so in New Zealand,” Tye added.
“But there are occasions when opportunities arise that the customer doesn’t always want to address with a particular vendor solution and this gives us the opportunity to still engage with those resellers.
“But it’s important that we have clear delineation between the resources applied to the HPE business and those we apply to Huawei.”
Operating across New Zealand, Exeed’s headquarters and distribution centre are based in Auckland, with offices also in Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.
