NETGEAR looks for mid-market makeover

NETGEAR’s new channel director is urging resellers to “take another look” at the vendor’s portfolio as it makes a play for the mid-market.
Despite the firm’s historical presence in the SMB, SOHO and consumer space, Jonathan Hallatt - who recently joined NETGEAR from Juniper Networks - told Channel Pro that the firm is gearing up to take on  rivals such as Cisco in the mid-market.
Hallat claims the vendor is “a reliable, affordable and simple” alternative to its rivals. He believes NETGEAR’s lower cost offering will particularly appeal more to budget-conscious businesses than its bigger rivals. He says organisation should ask: “Why spend this much money with big vendor when a NETGEAR solution is 30 percent cheaper?” he asks. “For many mid-tier organisations there isn’t the requirement for one of the major brands; our motto is more ‘smart IT, not big IT’
“Other vendors have many features which will never be used; with NETGEAR you get what you need, no bells and whistles.”
While Hallatt admits that the vendor won’t make an impact on some large organisations, “There are an awful lot of corporate mid-market companies that may not have a full-scale IT department; [instead] it is outsourced to a service provider or partner... [there are] areas we can definitely go with.”
He adds that “whether strategic or not”, a large proportion of the Top 1000 companies have NETGEAR products in them, bought probably on an ad-hoc basis.
Only being a week into the new role, Hallatt says he and his team are still working out a partner strategy for attacking the new territory, although he admits he’s “a fan of putting joint plans together with partners and closing business together.”
Last week NETGEAR launched a channel partner portal that includes Deal Registration and marketing assistance and webinars, which Hallatt describes as “a really good development for us.” He also cites investment into areas such as its public sector discount for deals registered through NETGEAR’s system.
Hallatt says the firm is also invested in other areas of the business, including storage and security. He says the storage space in particular has yielded success, with Gartner recently awarding it the number one spot in the sub $5000 storage category, “from nowhere two years ago.”
He also says describes reviews of the vendor’s UTM products as “staggering”, and says the firm wants to also reach out to security-focused partners.
“Take another look at NETGEAR,” he urges. “We all judge companies on the past, from two or three years ago; it’s good to take another look and I think people will be surprised and interested.”