Kemp Technologies has truly come a long way over the last few years, and it’s not done yet, seeking to expand its presence in Canada through a new channel program.
Beginning life as a reseller for F-Five Networks, a traffic management solution provider, Kemp has gone on to establish itself as a global manufacturer of load balancing appliances that target the small to medium business marketplace. Since it was founded in 2000 Kemp has witnessed a growing demand among in the SMB marketplace and has evolved itself to become a manufacturer of load balancing and traffic management appliances.
With headquarters in Bethpage, N.Y., and sales offices in Washington, New Jersey and Seattle, the privately owned company houses 15 employees. For the past four years, Kemp has committed to provide a low-cost load balancing and traffic management solution to smaller companies.
Peter Melerud, director of business development at Kemp, says he has seen demand for these solutions all over the world.
“There’s a huge gap between enterprise grade products,” Melerud said. “But at the bottom end of the market there’s not really a product that will address the functional aspect at a lower cost.”
The LoadMaster 1500, a server load balancing appliance that also helps with Web traffic, first began shipping in 2003.
“Our goal was to design something that was affordable for companies moving from a one server to a two to three server environment,” Melerud said. “We have products that fit companies that have as few as two servers and can scale all the way up to 1,000 servers.”
He added what makes LoadMaster an attractive solution for many partners and end-users is its price point of US$2500, including first year warranty and support services.
While the company currently has a strong user base in North America and Europe, Kemp wants to strengthen its relationship with Canada. To help with this channel push, the company has recently established a VAR Master channel program, a formal program to offer support and services to partners and VARs.
“We wanted to develop a program that would make it easy for partners to get engaged with this,” Melerud said. “We market our products, help leverage Internet marketing channels, use new line media to spread the word and offer sales, technical and marketing training.”
The channel program was launched at the end of last month and since then, according to Melerud, it has become a raging success.
“Up until now we didn’t have a formal program,” Melerud said. “Now we have a focused and targeted program directed towards the channel. Our partner program is available online and is designed to be taken advantage of by our partners no matter where they are in the world.”
According to Melerud, the demand for the solutions that Kemp currently offers is continuing to grow, driven by their low cost, high availability and scalability of the products.
While business is still going strong, with about 70-75 per cent of Kemp’s total sales coming from North America the company does not want to lose its speed.
“We want to develop a better presence with Canada,” Melerud said. “We will develop this region much more aggressively as time goes on and we will do this through the channel.”
Comment: [email protected]
