Vendor looks to recruit resellers with strong ties to smaller businesses as it shifts its focus

Access infrastructure vendor Citrix plans to increase its focus on the SME market by recruiting new VARs for its Access Essentials product line.

Citrix has claimed it will not neglect its mid-market and enterprise positions, while it makes the move to focus on smaller customers.

Access Essentials allows smaller firms with between five and 75 users to access order entry, billing, scheduling, CRM, accounting and other Windows-based applications using a web browser.

Kevin Bland, director of channel sales at Citrix, told CRN: “The past 12 months have been about extending our product set. We have moved our sales beyond virtualisation.

“We are now recruiting low-end VARs and we have a lot of planned activity in that area of the market. We are still in the early stages of this and will remain strong in the enterprise and mid-market spaces.”

Bland said Citrix’s UK distribution base of Interquad, Centia, ETC, Interchange and Unipalm are vital to its assault on the SME market, because of the size and quantity of VARs in the lower end of the market.

“The SME market is where we need our partners to have strong ties with distributors,” Bland added. “We have already recruited 140 VARs for smaller customers. We will continue to build the breadth of our channels.”

Andy Arthur, general manager and director of SCH Distribution, which incorporates both ETC and Interchange Distribution, said: “We have a good working relationship with Citrix and a good SME reseller base. We also have access to other SME VARs that are not Citrix accredited and we have a comprehensive programme to recruit new resellers.”

Phil King, software sales manager at SCH, said: “A lot of SME VARs see Citrix opportunities at the low end. We have thousands of SME resellers that are potentially suitable for this push. If you look at the Citrix channels, we have traded with three-quarters of them in the past already.”