Channel Post MEA spoke to Shane Mahney, the General Manager at EMT Distribution to talk about their entry into the UAE market, the company’s plans for its channel partners and plan of action for the months ahead.
Shane Mahney, General Manager at EMT Distribution
Why did it take so long for EMT Distribution to enter the UAE market?
Over the past 15 years, EMT has been focused mainly on the APAC market. Initially we started in Australia and over this time we have expanded into markets such as Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, and India.
As you can understand, these markets are significant, and we wanted to ensure that if we were to enter these markets, we should do so in a manner where we can appropriately represent our vendors and service the requirements of our resellers. Ultimately it came down to attention to detail.
We now feel that we are ready to continue our growth plans and we see the UAE as the logical next step. Once we have the UAE operations up and running, we will focus on the European market which also represents a significant opportunity for us.
Having said that, we have always had Middle East on our agenda. However, we were doing business In the UAE market from our offices abroad, working with few local partners. So the main reason is we wanted to focus, grow, and expand the business perfectly in few regions and then when it was stable enough, we wanted to expand into other markets.
Which markets will the Dubai office cover?
The Dubai office will cover whole of Middle East and Africa. Similar to other regions where we operate, we might establish a local operations team in performing countries. However, the MEA headquarters will be based in Dubai.
Which brands / products will the company focus on initially?
For our MEA operations, we work with the following brands currently:
- Kaspersky Lab
- Secunia
- IKARUS
- 2X
- DeltaTSL
- ESET
- CatBird
- RadarServices
- RSA ECAT
These are products that we started with in phase one and we have many other products that would be added in next phase.
Has the company set up a proper channel community or is in the process of doing so?
We have currently few channel partners for some of our products. However we have an attractive Partner Program which will immediately add more channel partners to our network.
What sort of ICT trends does the company foresee in the MEA region?
Our main focus would be in three areas that we believe can help MEA market. These are Security, Cloud and Virtualization. Anything around these three solutions is what we are focusing on right now. Moreover, we are working on some education programs for the channel and customers, which will be launched before the end of this year.
Is the company participating at GITEX? If yes, please share the details of your proposed activities at GITEX.
Yes for sure – GITEX being the biggest ICT event in the region is very important to us and we have already arranged to participate with a few vendors at this event. We have indirectly participated with a few vendors at GITEX in the past. In regards to specific activity, we are yet to finalise that. However we will have attractive promotional activities for both customers and partners in this region.
Will the company offer partner programs and certification programs to regional channel partners?
As EMT is 100% channel oriented company, we have designed a great partner program from the beginning and kept it updated based on the market trends, comments from our partners and so on. We have a great structured program for partner motivation and growth.
