NEC Targets Channel in Enterprise Server Push

After years of selling its infrastructure, server, and storage products through large OEMs such as EMC and Unisys, NEC Corp. of America is once again embracing the channel to grow its enterprise server business in the United States.

NEC’s goal is to expand revenue and build brand-name recognition by broadening its market penetration through select distributors and VARs skilled in enterprise server sales, said Mike Mitsch, general manager of NEC’s enterprise server division.

Recently, NEC struck a partnership with Sysix, a national VAR with mid-market and Fortune 1000 enterprise clients. This June, the vendor signed a broad distribution agreement with Synnex, underscoring its intention to reach out to diverse VARs to sell its extensive product portfolio.

While the company reported worldwide sales of $40 billion last year, less than 3 percent was generated in the United States, prompting a shift in sales strategy that began about two years ago, said a NEC spokesperson earlier this year. NEC’s goal is to drive up to 90 percent of U.S. sales through the channel within a year, said the spokesperson at that time.

“That is still our goal, but we are in no rush to sign up VARs,” said Mitsch. “Before we sign up any VARs to sell our enterprise servers, we want to ensure they meet our criteria for excellence in selling, support, and product knowledge.”

Sysix is the first VAR to pass muster for enterprise servers. Mitsch said Sysix is an ideal partner for NEC because of the company’s strong track record of providing technology solutions to large and mid-size organizations in a variety of vertical markets, notably financial services, manufacturing, education, health care, and retail.

"Our partnership with NEC will enable us to sell some of the best enterprise servers on the market, as well as NEC’s outstanding line of IT and network solutions," said Bill Laflamme, Sysix’ vice president of technology solutions.

NEC’s Intel Xeon^-based NEC Express5800 enterprise server recently achieved the fastest performance on the TPC-E benchmark, an industry standard designed to be broadly representative of OLTP systems, according to company officials.