Access Introduces New Business Structure At Conference

Anna McDermott, president and CEO of the Westminster, Colo.-based distributor, said she expects much of the conference, held this year in Colorado Springs , Colo., to focus on opportunities for solution providers from a number of vendors who recently signed to work with Access, including Basking Ridge, N.J.-based IP telephony vendor Avaya.

"We're looking at high-growth trajectories and high-margin opportunities," McDermott said. "On Tuesday, we'll tell them what and the why and how we will execute with them. It's not like we discovered the Theory of Relativity or anything. We're just looking for ways to help partners grow."

Access also plans to give its solution provider partners information about specific markets it thinks will help them improve their business and how to approach those markets, McDermott said. "We'll help them take a tactical approach to new business," she said.

McDermott said she expects about 1,000 non-Access people to attend the conference, including multiple attendees from about 250 unique solution provider organizations.

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Access on Monday unveiled a new business structure that will help it offer services, processes and vendor solutions based on whether the vendor is an established entity or a newcomer.

Mike Hurst was named vice president of mature technologies. He will oversee vendors in such markets as servers, storage, services and software that have established programs with technologies have reached critical mass.

Scott Zahl was appointed vice president of Access' new Emerging Technologies business. He will help Access provide turnkey channel programs to vendors with up-and-coming technologies that are expected to outpace mature technologies in growth and profitability, including network security, VoIP, wireless technologies and network forensics.

Access on Monday also launched two new channel programs for its largest vendor partner, Sun Microsystems.

Under the Competitive Edge Program, Access will provide a dedicated internal team to help its Sun solution providers meet sales goals, with new tools to help them sell more Sun equipment, increase sales into educational and government programs, and break into international markets. The program also supports rebate and discounts via Sun's opportunity registration program, and offers solution providers on-line training tools.

Access also unveiled its new Services Scorecard for Sun solution providers that brings together service and sales data to help solution providers identify new opportunities for hardware services as well as openings in Sun software businesses. The program also brings solution providers information about customers' software renewals that will help them find additional software sales opportunities.

Access on Monday said the company also signed up two new vendor partners.

The first, Milpitas, Calif.-based ConSentry Networks, is a developer of secure LAN solutions. The company's LANShield product line is aimed at gaining control over who has access to a customer's LAN with such capabilities as admission control, visibility, access control and threat control.

The second vendor is Crossbeam Systems, a Concord, Mass.-based provider of solutions for unified threat management. Crossbeam's X-Series and C-Series lines were designed to offer flexible and scalable network security in perimeter, core and data center architectures, and consolidate the functions of multiple security devices.

Mark Teter, CTO of Advanced Systems Group, a Denver-based solution provider, said he will be at the conference to watch how any organizational and strategy changes at Access might affect his business.

"With all the dynamics in the industry in the past six months or so, it's a good opportunity to get information from Access on new partners and on their go-to-market strategies for working with those partners," Teter said. "It's important to ASG to understand their new strategies and partners."