Sequent begins alliance-building
Jerry Rosa
Beaverton, Ore. -- Sequent Computer Systems Inc. is making a move
to partner with large-size systems integrators to break into new
markets.
The company is seeking to position its Numa-Q 2000 platform as an
alternative to mainframes in Unix and Microsoft NT enterprise
environments, where business-critical applications are the
mainstay of a company's data center.
To lead the company into brokering channel partnerships that are
application- and integration-driven, Sequent named Joe Moye as
vice president of its Global Business Alliances.
Moye said the Beaverton-based firm is turning to the channel to
help it grow revenue faster. The company, now at $800-million in
sales, is pushing to hit $1 billion. "We are going toward a
business model that focuses our infrastructure and resources [on]
pulling through local integrators and application players," Moye
said.
The company has partnered with developers at the application level
but now is reaching out to integrators to help drive platform
sales, which are on average about $500,000. Sequent has customers
in the telecommunications, manufacturing and financial areas but
wants to develop channel partners to bring it further into
accounts in those vertical markets.
Its products are used as database servers for large online
transaction processing and data warehousing applications, along
with relational database management system software. The Numa-Q
2000 is a mainframe-caliber open-systems platform.
The Numa-Q system stands for nonuniform memory access
architecture, and contains four Intel Corp. Pentium Pro
processors. Sequent's designs allow for multiple four-chip boards
to be connected, scaling up to 252 processors in a single node.
Moye said about 87 percent of current Sequent revenue is derived
from direct sales. The company has rewired its business plan to
offer its direct-sales staff financial incentives to work with
resellers and to pull them into the selling cycle.
For its fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 4, Sequent posted revenue
of $207.3 million and net income of $10.3 million, up from revenue
of $148.8 million and net income of $1.3 million in the year-ago
period.
The company recently completed a secondary stock offering in which
it raised $150 million to partially seed its new campaign. "We are
investing properly to make it successful and to build the infra-
structure," Moye said.
"We have global account teams, sales and technical support people
who are dedicated to driving the relationship with these partners,
and we are incenting our force to work with the partners," Moye
said.
"We created sales and marketing programs to drive our sales into
new market opportunities," Moye added. The company will seek to
court channel players such as CompuCom Systems Inc., Vanstar
Corp., GE Capital IT Solutions, EDS Corp. and others to bring it
into new markets. He said the company will work closely with
resellers to ensure they have easier access to Sequent's marketing
and technical divisions. The push also includes market development
funding.
Moye concedes that Sequent faces a challenge with competitors such
as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc., which are
seeking the same goal.
"The biggest challenge is creating a level of brand awareness of
our solution," he said. "We've developed a pretty solid level of
experience in the enterprise, and our challenge is to take that
experience and apply it through the channel."
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc. |
