Magirus strengthens data centre team

by Stuart Wilson, Thursday 25 March 2010

Mel Wilks, data centre sales director at Magirus

VAD outfit Magirus has strengthened its UK data centre division, appointing Mel Wilks as data centre sales director and Barry Body as data centre sales manager. Magirus’ entire UK sales team has now completed Cisco certified sales training and the distributor has signed up its first UK data centre resellers – MTI and ANS Group.

Magirus signed a European distribution deal with Cisco earlier this year and launched a dedicated data centre division. The latest recruits to the Magirus data centre team will focus on assisting resellers to drive sales from the new data centre distribution model, which blends virtualisation, storage and networking technologies to deliver a unified data centre solution.

Magirus reckons that by combining kit from Cisco, EMC and VMware with complementary vendors, it can offer a total solution and supply resellers with broad data centre expertise. These technologies will also form the basis of future data centre and cloud deployment, according to Magirus.

Wilks, who moved internally at Magirus to his new position, commented, “Magirus is hitting the ground running. Our goal is to open up new high-value, revenue-earning opportunities for resellers, equipping them with future-proofed data centre technologies.”

“We appreciate that not everyone is ready to jump feet first into the unified data centre space. It’s a journey and we aim to be there at every step of the way, giving resellers what they need now but with one eye on the future,” he added.

Body’s appointment sees him return to Magirus, following the sale of Magirus’ HP and IBM enterprise infrastructure division to Avnet where he was sales manager, IBM hardware and services. More recently he was sales manager serving the financial services sector at Computer Systems Integration.

Data centre reseller MTI serves more than 1,200 customers across EMEA with storage, virtualisation and networking solutions and services. “The market is really beginning to wake up to converging these technologies to create unified data centres that offer greater density and cost efficiencies,” said Aad Dekkers, MTI chief marketing officer and head of business development.

“Until now, what’s been missing is a single distributor that offers the know-how, technology and services to be a trusted pair of hands in this space. Magirus fills this gap, just as we do in the integrator space, by realising the virtual computing environment, not simply in the UK but Europe-wide,” Dekkers added.

Also, engaging with Magirus is the ANS Group which specialises in the provision of hardware, software and managed support. ANS Group’s managing director, Paul Sweeney, said: “Magirus enables us to pass on better delivery times than if we went to Cisco direct and provides a real value-added service. This is vital when penetrating any new high-value market.”