SMB-focused networking vendor ZyXEL Communications has a new channel sales leader, and he's a practiced hand in the networking channel: Steven Joe, the former president and CEO of D-Link.
ZyXEL confirmed Joe's appointment last week, and his title at ZyXEL is executive vice president of channel business, Americas. He'll be responsible for brand building and all channel activity for not only VARs and solution providers but also ZyXEL's retail, e-commerce and product management channels, too. He reports to Howie Chu, ZyXEL's president.
Joe was most recently vice president and general manager of international and strategic business at Vizio, but he's best known to channel partners for the 22 years he spent at D-Link, where Joe was president and CEO before being let go in a D-Link management reshuffling in 2009.
ZyXEL, based in Taiwan and with U.S. headquarters in Anaheim, Calif., established its partner program in 2007 and these days has about 800 partners in the U.S., according to Joe, who will focus on building up ZyXEL's strength among SMB- and cloud-focused solution providers as well as other routes to market.
"It's a very strong company overseas," said Joe in an interview with CRN. "It's a very strong, engineering-based company and it reminded me of the old D-Link and the early days there."
Joe projected that the balance of consumer and business channel sales will be about 50-50. On the business side, the company sells to SMBs up to 2,000 users but is primarily focused on the 500 users-and-below segment.
ZyXEL wants to build relationships with partners looking at cloud-based services revenue as their path to profitability. Ideally, said Joe, ZyXEL will double the number of Americas partners it has.
"I think for me there are certain channels we need to focus on and provide an end solution that's a fit," Joe said. "We're not going after the enterprise side -- not the Cisco and Juniper area. Small and medium business is the channel portion of it, and then there's a consumer flavor from us."
ZyXEL has been looking at various ways to expand its presence among SMB customers. Among recent moves, ZyXEL earlier this month announced a strategic agreement with PowerCloud Systems, a provider of cloud-based management systems for networking OEMs. The two companies will develop networking solutions for SMBs, and ZyXel will integrate PowerCloud's CloudCommand technology into its wireless access points.
