Partner Spotlight: Techdata Systems and Gigamon Help Customers Understand Their Visibility Needs

Founded in 2003, Techdata Systems Sdn Bhd is a leading provider of networking technologies and IT service-chain management across Malaysia. Techdata Systems helps customers improve operations, drive growth, and quickly adapt to changes in business demands. The company offers industry-specific applications and suites engineered for speed and user experience, with flexible deployment options that give customers a choice to run their businesses in the cloud, onsite, or both.

We sat down with Techdata System’s Managing Director, So Bee Hwe, to find out how partnering with Gigamon has helped solve their customers’ visibility and technology problems.

Gigamon: Who is Techdata Systems and what is the company history?

BH: Techdata Systems began in 2003 as a networking distributor with 3COM as the anchor brand. Over the years we have onboarded more solutions into our product portfolio and have grown into a leading enterprise network security distributor in Malaysia.

Techdata Systems provides innovative and future-proofed solutions to our clients through our channel partners; hence, channel ecosystem plays a critical role in supporting our go-to-market strategy and overall business. We provide end-to-end solutions with best-in-class support to assist our resellers and build a sustainable and profitable business. Our goal is to collaborate, support, recruit, and work with resellers who provide industry-leading end-to-end solutions and have market expertise in different verticals.

Keeping pace with the constantly evolving IT landscape, Techdata Systems is always on the lookout for next-generation technologies to ensure clients have a resilient and robust infrastructure.

Gigamon: What does your company name stand for?

BH: In this digital era where technology and data information are closely intertwined, Techdata Systems stands for determination, professionalism, and setting goals and striving towards them. It represents our commitment to deliver services and offerings to our clients with utmost reliability and integrity.

Gigamon: Describe your company culture. What makes you tick?

BH: As a distributor for enterprise network and security solutions, we respect and strictly follow the two-tier business model (distributor/reseller). We love working with technology leaders who continue to innovate and have a comprehensive channel partner program to support the two-tier business model.

Gigamon: When and how did you become a Gigamon partner?

BH: We became a Gigamon partner in mid-2015, when we realized the tremendous value that Gigamon visibility technology could bring to our partners and customers. We approached Gigamon with the intention of setting up a dedicated team to promote the technology and to become a value-added distributor in Malaysia. By November 2015, we were appointed as a Gigamon distributor.

Gigamon: If you had to describe Gigamon with just one word, what would it be?

BH: Visibility!

Gigamon: What are some of your market’s specifics, advantages, and challenges when it comes to network security and visibility?

BH: IT security compliance and standards of the regulated industries in Malaysia are strictly governed by regulatory bodies. As a result, companies in the regulated industries have high awareness of IT security. However, many of them are facing challenges such as SPAN port availability, encryption, and virtualization. Without access to the right traffic, their network security tools are only as good as the network traffic they can see.

Gigamon: Which Gigamon features stand out the most and make the product outstrip its competitors?

BH: Inline and out-of-band SSL decryption, resilience inline protection, support for cloud and virtualization, application intelligence, and the ability to manage all Gigamon appliances from a single console.

Gigamon: How do you see Techdata Systems fitting together with Gigamon to solve your customers’ problems?

BH: We adopt both solution selling and consultative selling approaches, depending on whether the customer is aware of the challenges they are facing.

We are constantly seeking customers who may be having problems due to limited visibility. The first step in solving visibility problems is to help the customer recognize the problem, and then show them how Gigamon visibility technology can help solve their problem.

This requires focus and know-how in Gigamon visibility technology. Hence, we have a dedicated team who focus on sales, pre-sales, and post-sales activities for Gigamon. In certain complex environments, such as telco, the Gigamon team will bring in their domain knowledge experts to assist in providing the customer with consultation, architecture design, and use cases that are relevant to their environment.

Gigamon: Where do you see the trends in network security and visibility in three years’ time?

BH: We believe network and datacenter virtualization and cloud adoption will be the key driving forces for network security and visibility in the coming years.

Gigamon: What’s an anecdote that customers share when they talk about our products and your products and services?

BH: One of our customers was about to issue a tender comprising multiple network security tools. They told the tenderers, regardless of what network security vendors they were going to propose, Gigamon was a must.

Gigamon: What is the most memorable moment associated with Gigamon as a partner?

BH: A customer switched from a competitor product to Gigamon at the eleventh hour despite our price being slightly higher because only we could meet their delivery timeline in complete quantity. We could do it because it was something we carefully planned with the Gigamon representative.

Gigamon: What are the wow moments associated with Gigamon?

BH: Gigamon CEO Paul Hooper made a special trip to Malaysia to meet one of our key customers. That was the finest example of commitment and leadership from the highest level.

Gigamon: What are some of the new challenges you see in the market that your partnership with Gigamon can solve?

BH: Network and datacenter virtualization and cloud adoption will present new challenges to our customers. Gigamon is well-positioned to help customers solve these challenges.

Gigamon: What are the positive business outcomes as a Gigamon partner?

BH: Because Gigamon is 100 percent vendor agnostic, we have the flexibility to work with different partners in pursuit of many different opportunities in network security or performance monitoring. Gigamon also provides us and our resellers with many up-selling and cross-selling opportunities once customers adopt the technology.

Gigamon: What unique capabilities does this partnership bring to your business?

BH: Our partnership with Gigamon allows us to build our capability and reputation in providing visibility technology in the market, hence carving out a niche market in the competitive IT security landscape.

Gigamon: What are some of the benefits of the Gigamon Partner Program that stand out? Trainings? Incentives? Discounts? Co-marketing?

BH: Gigamon has a very comprehensive channel partner program. It is a company that continuously invests in partner enablement, incentives, and co-marketing programs. All these are very important to maintain a healthy partner ecosystem.

Gigamon: Thank you, BH, for making time for us and for being such a wonderful partner.