Spectrami aiming to fill VAD gap

With consolidation in the distribution market taking out some of the VADs and those remaining specialists facing pressure to become bigger there has been a gap in the market for those determined to bring start-ups to the channel.

That has been the view of Spectrami's management as they moved from a base in the Middle East into the UK and there are ambitions to become a support for resellers looking for fresh options to take to customers.

Anand Choudha, CEO and president of Spectrami, said that after it had identified ambitions to expand internationally the initial plan was to acquire someone to get a UK presence, but that had been put on hold after it failed to find a suitable candidate.

"They were either too expensive or there were too young," he said explaining why it then took the decision to go with its own efforts.

The firm has appointed a UK management team led by managing director Sean Fane and Grant Tiller and Will Brooks, who have all come with CVs including plenty of channel experience.

Choudha said that it had ambitions to grow the company and would be looking at acquisitions, particularly to grow its footprint across Europe, and it was set on growing revenues.

But he said that it would continue to operate with a model that added value to emerging vendors, including the likes of AppViewX, Datera, illapa, and Peer Software.

"VAD is an abused term and we want to be a vendor exchange model were we can customise the shape of the business and the support for the vendor and the reseller," he added "We will go to users and create demand and go to resellers and excite them and there is a role there to work with the channel."

"We have a model that is based on the solution landscape, with cloud and security, and we can define what is required for that business unit and create the model. Other big guys cannot do that, they have become an elephant," he added.

The plans for its operations here are fairly ambitious: "We understand the UK and will be trying to get more customers in the UK".

Fane said that the aim was to help provide more options for resellers navigating disruptive technology that was taking advantage of the cloud and it would give those trying to pitch against incumbent brands something different to talk about.

"A reseller can come along to a customer and talk about a technology that is disruptive and not just pitching something that might be a bit faster and a bit cheaper," he said.