CV_Spring_2021

NetApp announced a major sales restructure across its global opera- tions, which will affect its channel and direct go-to-market strategy. Among the changes, Alex Wallner, NetApp’s EMEA boss and senior vice president of worldwide enterprise and commercial field operations, takes on a newly created role as senior vice president of the vendor’s entire inter- national business. The new role will include leading and executing against all go-to-market activities in EMEA, APAC and Latin America. Meanwhile, NetApp’s senior vice president of global sales, verticals and pathways, Rick Scurfield, has been appointed to another new position, chief commercial officer. Scurfield will be responsible for build- ing a go-to-market strategy including direct and channel sales. Former Adobe executive Maxwell Long becomes a senior vice president at NetApp to lead its North American business. Long has more than 30 years of experience in building sales teams and leading business transformations. ProjectLine Solutions Inc., a provider of ERP solutions for small and mid-sized businesses in Canada, announced that it has joined the Oracle NetSuite Solution Provider Program. With NetSuite, Project - Line will help its customers take advantage of a powerful cloud ERP platform to gain the visibility and control needed to adapt to change and build business resilience. NetSuite partners can leverage every aspect of the suite, including ERP, human capital management (HCM), inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM) and ecommerce. As part of the program, ProjectLine is also joining the NetSuite SuiteLife initia - tive. SuiteLife helps accelerate partner onboarding and provides multiple layers of engagement and support, as well as access to NetSuite best practices. Coolwave Communications, a global provider of voice and messag- ing solutions, has launched a global partner program that enables local service providers to extend their reach globally and capture new revenue streams from the global growth in cloud communications, unified commu - nications and hosted contact centers. Coolwave said its partner program provides flexible services that are tailored to the needs of individual partners and supported with expert advisory and insights. The Coolwave’s partner program supports all kinds of channel partners, including service providers, carriers, value-added resellers and system integrators. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Coolwave operates globally with points of presence in Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, London and Singapore. The EMEA managed services market is continuing to rebound from its pandemic low, according to market watcher Information Services Group, which measures deals across the region with an annual contract value of above $5 million. The as-a-service and managed services deals tracked by ISG hit $6 billion in Q1 2021, up by one-fifth year-over-year but down 5 percent from the record fourth quarter of 2020. The managed services market, in particular, saw a second straight quarter of growth, with ACV growing 23 percent year-over-year to $3.5 billion, ISG said. The strong managed services figures were driven by growth in both IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, and robust results in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, it added. Four “mega deals” with an ACV of more than $100 million were reported by ICS in the first quarter of this year, bring - ing the two-quarter running total to eight. “You have to go back to early 2017 to find a two-quarter period in EMEA that had more mega-deals awarded,” said ISG EMEA president Steve Hall. uCloudlink Strengthens Partnership with Shore Access in Asia uCloudlink, a mobile data traffic sharing marketplace, has signed a distribution contract with Shore- Access Marine Consultancy Co. Ltd., an international communica- tion service provider based in the Philippines, to distribute its products and connectivity services in Africa, Australia, Japan and the Philip- pines. The alliance will increase uCloudlink’s sales and distribution channels in these markets, while expanding its partner ecosys- tem and paving the way for new business opportunities. Shore Access is already a global distributor of uCloudlink’s flagship GlocalMe device, which offers reliable, high-speed mobile data solutions for international and domes- tic travelers. As part of the expanded partnership, Shore Access also will distribute uCloudlink’s customer premises equipment (CPE) router device and data connectivity services. A substitute for traditional fixed-line broadband, uCloudlink’s GlocalMe devices and CPE lever- ages uCloudlink’s patented Cloud SIM technology, which enables users to use mobile data connectivity services provided by different service operators without being restricted by geography, carriers or roaming agree- ments and will provide users in with fast, safe and convenient access to the internet domestically and abroad. Shore Access also will distrib- ute uCloudlink’s data connectivity services, which use uCloudlink’s PaaS and SaaS platform to integrate and intelligently allocate resources of data service suppliers, terminal suppliers and application developers to enhance the user experience. NetApp Reshuffles Global Leadership Team ProjectLine Joins NetSuite Solution Provider Program Coolwave Launches Global Partner Program EMEA Managed Services Market Rebounding INTERNATIONAL AGENTS 16 CHANNEL V ISION | May 2021