Channel Post spoke to Fuad Mohammed Enaya, the General Manager at Oxygen, about the company, its products and services and its channel community in this region.
Tell us something about your company. The profile, number of partners and so on?
Oxygen is the region’s leading Secure Mobility Value-Added-Distributor (VAD), and a next generation wireless, critical communications and IT security solutions provider.
Founded in 2004, with on the ground presence and physical offices in 6 locations, Oxygen today has been recognized as a regional reference based on best secured mobility products in the market. Oxygen has helped Governments, Banking & Finance, Telco, Oil & Gas, Education, Healthcare, Hospitality, Construction and Retail sectors establish a secured enterprise-class mobility and high density wireless environment, and meet regulatory compliance standards on their wireless infrastructure to protect sensitive enterprise data and applications.
As a Secure Mobility Value Added Distributor, channel is our asset and holds a great value to us. We have around 400 channel partners who fall into our Strategic, Tactical and Resellers categories. As a VAD we consistently maximize our relationship with our channel as well as provide adequate attention and loyalty to key channel partners.
We consistently train our channel on new technologies and well as provide them with vendor certifications so as to empower them as well as support them with PR & marketing campaigns, technical presentations, product demonstrations, providing demo equipment, POC deployment, implementations, L1 support, L2 support, so as to ensure that we are merchandising our efforts to key and new channel partner continuously.
What markets are you currently present in?
Oxygen operates in the Middle East, Levant and Africa markets and targets core verticals like Governments, Banking & Finance, Telco, Oil & Gas, Education, Healthcare, Hospitality, Construction and Retail sectors.
What products, brands and services do you represent and offer in the markets you are present in?
Oxygen shares a long standing partnership with leading wireless, critical communications and IT security vendors like Aruba Networks, Vidyo, Fortinet, MobileIron, RedSeal Networks, Ascom, Fluke Networks, A10 Networks, Samgsung Knox, box, Certes, RaGaPa, Ekahua Vocera.
Our Secured Mobility Solutions portfolio is easily presented by well-structured model, which is Oxygen’s go-to-market strategy for its Channel partners and customers. In a globally connected world, companies both in the Middle East and across the globe, are readdressing their mobility strategies and Oxygen’s next generation mobility, business & mission-critical communication and IT security solutions provides a secured mobility powered enterprise of tomorrow.
What is the workforce strength of your organization?
Oxygen currently has strength of over 100 employees out of which more than 50 percent are engineers. We are present in the Middle East, Levant and Africa region with six physical offices and on the ground presence in the regions we operate in.
What is the annual turnover of the company?
Oxygen currently stands as more than $35 million turnover in business. In 2015 we intend to touch $50 million in revenue.
What are your market strategies for year 2014?
Oxygen is a Secure Mobility VAD and aims continuously towards training and certifying its channel so as to help resellers, to win new deals and grow market share especially with business becoming highly competitive in the region. Our solid training and certification schemes support existing partner relationships, while attracting appropriate and significant new resellers.
We consistently carry out on-going activities which include joint marketing programmes centered on educational seminars that showcase our latest offerings and the benefits to customers. Motivation for sales success of partners translates into growth for Oxygen and its vendors.
As channel partners long for qualified leads, Oxygen ensures that lead provision is an active ongoing process, through demand generation activities like workshops, events, exhibitions, email and telemarketing campaigns.
Our campaigns are targeted towards achieving marketing ROI as well as to achieve brand recognition and generate leads.
We will be launching our new partner incentive program this September which is aimed to increase profitability for partners by getting increased rebates amounts for selling newer products vs. more established products.
Do you plan to add any new service, product or brand to your portfolio?
Oxygen is consistently evaluating solutions that will fit well into our Secure Mobility Solution portfolio. We have recently added Vidyo a leader within the visual communications market to our portfolio and will be adding two to three more solutions by the end of 2014.
Do you plan to add new channel partners to your channel community this year?
Oxygen will consistently add VAR’s to its existing partner base and provide them with PR and marketing support, technical presentations, product demonstrations, providing demo equipment, POC deployment, implementations, L1 support and L2 support.
This year Oxygen has taken an big leap forward on its strategy to engage with small and midsize businesses, after excelling in the enterprise market. Our focus will be on recruiting and training SMB-focused VARs and helping them to provide comprehensive enterprise-grade secure mobility solutions and unlimited scalability to the customers they serve.
Oxygen’s channel marketing campaigns is also designed to provide support to its channel ecosystem with an array of services to engender a stronger and more profitable relationship.
How has the technology and telecom market grown in the MEA region?
An expected strong technology growth in the MEA region is observed from vertical industries like banking and government. Key markets such as mobility, security, storage management and customer relationship management has also showed phenomenal growth when it came to technology.
However, beginning in 2014 markets aligned to big data and other information management initiatives, such as enterprise content management, data integration tools, and data quality tools with increased levels of investment.
The mobile telecoms market in the region also continued to display signs of growth. Driven by strong mobile handset data growth, telecoms service revenue in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has observed growth which was driven by handset data spending, with smaller contributions coming from non-handset mobile broadband and mobile voice.
