In a bid to meet local channel demand, security vendor RSA has appointed its first local representative.
Francois Marais has joined the company as information security specialist, based in Auckland.
Australia and New Zealand country manager Mark Pullen says Marais, who recently migrated from South Africa, brings many skill sets to the role.
“He is a certified ethical hacker and security consultant, so rather than just employ a salesman we wanted to add value to our channel partners.”
He says the channel isn’t looking for a better channel programme, but technical support from the vendor.
“Vendors always try to push sales guys when the channel partner already has a good relationship with the customer.”
Pullen, who hails from Christchurch, adds that he had always wanted to recruit a New Zealand-based person.
“It’s just taken time to build up the business where we could make that appointment. It also took nine months to find the right person.”
The company wants Marais to spend time training channel partners.
“We’re rolling out the RSA Certified Security Professional programme, so we’re going to train channel partners in RSA technology at our cost. We want to try and solve the skills crisis ourselves, by not putting the financial burden of training on our partners.” The training will begin in August.
Pullen adds that RSA does not want to appoint too many partners, but is looking to cross-pollinate with parent company EMC. “For example, EMC has local partners who could work with RSA’s data centre. There will always be competition between partners, but we want to build a system where partners will complement each other.”
