What a difference a year makes for Brent Rebus. A long time Cisco Canada vice-president, he left the networking giant and emerged as the new president and general manager of StorageTek Canada.
“”We need to and are looking to grow our partner base because they have the services and the complimentary
technologies to enable our customers to take advantage of our solutions,”” he said earlier this year.
While at Cisco Canada, Rebus spearheaded the drive to increase the bar on reseller certifications. The move was met with a lot of discord because it forced solution providers to increase their level of expertise or be cut from Cisco’s partner network.
This move, while painful at first, has worked out incredibly well for Cisco. At StorageTek he will not reinvent the wheel. He will try to establish the same type of strategy.
“”We’re going to continue to enhance the value that we deliver to the partner base in terms of identifying the types of certification requirements they have to meet,”” Rebus said, “”and as they invest more in us my plan is to have the organization invest more in them.
Resellers were very upbeat about his arrival at the company.
“”I think it’s a great move for StorageTek and for partners,”” said Greg Rokos, president of ESI Information Technologies of Montreal, a StorageTek and Cisco reseller, who’s known Rebus for several years.
At Cisco Rebus was known for building strong relationships and understanding customers. “”Having worked with him in the past I think he has the right stuff,”” said Rokos.
Rebus also managed to pry Michael Mercer from Bell Microproducts Canada to run its Canadian channel strategy. Mercer, himself a CDN Top 25 Newsmaker back in 2002 for his innovative Storm program, has a lot of clout in the marketplace and with resellers.
