ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
Partnerships at the heart
of business success
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n,
Networking and Wi-Fi leader Linksys has built its success on its strong
channel partnerships. ITC speaks to Amanulla Khan, Managing Director
Linksys Middle East, Turkey and Africa, about the company’s continuing
success story with a network of distributors.
L
inksys is a leader in networking and
WiFi innovation for the home and
business, offering its leading innovation
and engineering strategies, and best-in-class
technology, design and customer service.
The company enables a connected
lifestyle for people at home, at work
and on the move, and with its award-
winning products, simplifies home control,
entertainment, security and Internet access
through innovative features and a growing
application and partner ecosystem.
The company works to enable the Digital
Transformation of its channel partners and
grow its channel market in the Middle East.
Some of the distributors it works with
are: Silicon 21 in Egypt, Techno Blue WLL in
Qatar and Al Jammaz Telecom in KSA.
But there are many more organisations
working with the company to enable its
continuing success. Here we speak to
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
Issue 20
Our business model is
we only work through a
distribution partner.
Amanulla Khan, Managing Director Linksys
Middle East, Turkey and Africa, about the
operations of its channel partners.
Can you explain the four different
parts to the Linksys business?
There are four different channels that we
work with.
One channel is focused on the
consumer business of Linksys. We work
with traditional retail as well as the online
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retailers. So for example, in our region
those could be Virgin Megastore, Sharif DG,
Emax or Gerry’s Bookstore. These are not
pure online players.
But then there are pure online players
like Souq.com which has been acquired by
Amazon, so we work with them as well. So
that’s the retail part of our business which is
one channel.
Another channel that we work with is the
reseller channels. These are mainly shops on
the streets where people come and buy IT
products. They buy our product, they stock
and they resell.
Then we work with the system
integration channel. These are managed
service partners or system integration
partners. These are the people who mainly
work on our commercial products. They take
our products, integrate them into the wider
solution and then offer it as a solution. It
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