Magirus fills datacentre gap with SolarWinds

Distributor Magirus has signed a deal with network management vendor SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) to offer its 6000 resellers the vendor’s complete portfolio of network, application and storage management tools.

Magirus is a key Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) partner and became the first speciality datacentre distributor earlier this year. The agreement with SolarWinds gives the distributor a credible management platform to replace the lacklustre CiscoWorks suite and also neatly fits its other key partnerships with VMware (NYSE:VMW) and EMC (NYSE:EMC) which are both integrated into the SolarWinds management platform.
Competition
Although SolarWinds already has Interactive Ideas as a distributor in Europe, “They are an unknown distributor and not known in relation to Cisco partners,” claims Christian Magirus, executive vice president and COO of Magirus. “SolarWinds have Interactive [Ideas] and some other smaller players in some territories, but we never come across them.”

SolarWinds also sells all of its products directly to end users via the web although in the view of Magirus, “It is my understanding, at least in EMEA, they are looking at two tier [distribution] cutting out tier 1 relationships wherever feasible,” he says.

The COO is unfazed by SolarWinds direct sales channel, “Having started in EMEA with a small footprint, if they don’t build partners, they won’t build in EMEA.” Magirus points to its strong relationship with EMC that also sold direct but he believes that a mixed model won’t affect the sales cycle. “I would always advise any vendor to be clean and decide on what you want to do and it is a bit on us to convince them,” he adds.
Compelling option
As Magirus is focused on the higher-end datacentre market which is still channel-led, he envisions SolarWinds as a more compelling option for partners wanting to offer a unified solution instead of recommending HP OpenView or IBM Tivoli from a different distribution source.

The addition of SolarWinds to its Cisco, VMware and EMC portfolio adds credibility to the distributor’s ability to offer a complete end-to-end product portfolio for datacentre and private cloud computing.