EONEWS: What is you opinion regarding this year electronic market trends (electronics means not only semiconductor but also passives and information technology) globally and in particular in the European region?
SPATE: Given the economic environment, end users continue to seek excellent value for money and a return on their investment. That’s why we see continued interest in virtualisation, both server and storage, as it brings significant cost savings. We’re focusing on making sure that as organisations consolidate their operations more and more, we offer suitable solutions to backup virtualised environments, such as our RDX QuikStation product which works elegantly with Veeam software and our BizNAS SMB NAS offering which is VMWare certified.
EONEWS: Do you think that Europe could play in the short-medium period a key role in the global electronic market? If yes: in which sector?
SPATE: The EMEA region has always played a leading role in the global IT marketplace. For Tandberg Data, EMEA is a very significant portion of our business and we see many growth opportunities. The NAS sector is still growing as is the market for removable storage products such as RDX. In the area of tape, we see many European companies turning to tape automation as the only low cost, environmentally friendly way to archive large amounts of data for the long term, be it for compliance or simply long-term data retention.
EONEWS: What are the most important events that have influenced the electronic distribution in Europe this year?
SPATE: The Eurozone crisis has led to more consolidation in the distribution channel and a squeeze on margins. It’s become even more important to offer solutions instead of just products and having deep knowledge of your market and your technology space is the only way to ensure you’re adding value and maintaining margins.
EONEWS: What are the strategies you implement to support your future expansion in Europe?
SPATE: We believe 100% in the channel and in the partner ecosystem. So we are focused on expanding our reseller base and ensuring our partners have opportunities to make money selling our products. We find this is a good way to underpin our expansion, and of course, we have launched some exciting new products such as the BizNAS which gives our partners a differentiated product to sell into the professional NAS market and make solid margins that are not necessarily available from our competitors.
EONEWS: From a general point of view, in your opinion, are there still key barriers today to overcome, to improve the ecosystem (logistics, supply chain of vendors, distributors, dealers, etc.) of electronic distribution in Europe? If yes, what are them, and what are the solutions?
SPATE: The European distribution marketplace is quite mature now and the consolidation process is well underway. The SMB and SME is getting smarter in making purchasing decisions – – and new parameters are important, such as creating ways to differentiate and expanding services and support. The key is to focus on helping partners stay ahead by providing the right product mix, offering the highest quality of service and support, and evolving online initiatives in addition to the traditional face-to-face and phone business model.
EONEWS: Do you envision a particular shift in the evolution of this business model for the next future?
SPATE: Storage-related products have become bigger, cheaper, faster, more reliable, and easier to manage at a constantly-increasing rate because manufacturers are in a never-ending fight to create sustainable differentiation. It is often said that everything was invented in the mainframe world 40 years ago and this includes technologies such as virtualisation, data reduction and cloud computing. The real advancements are making these technologies valuable, usable and affordable to SMBs and SMEs.