ZyXEL Communications UK says it is committed to growing its channel following the announcement of three senior European appointments.
Lee Marsden, formerly VP channel sales Europe and UK managing director (pictured) has been named ZyXEL’s president of Europe. He replaces Gordon Yang, who now concentrate on his new role as president of ZyXEL Communications Corporation.
Meanwhile, ZyXEL has named Jean Michel Bielli as Marsden’s replacement as VP channel sales Europe. Bielli joins ZyXEL from Netgear, where he was VP EMEA for the past five years. Marsden will continue to function as MD of ZyXEL UK’s operation.
The firm has also named Karsten Gewecke as VP for service provider sales Europe. He joins from Works Systems Inc , a provider of management systems for telecoms companies. He re-joins ZyXEL after a six-year absence, having previously held the role of director of business development Nordics and country manager UK.
Speaking to Channel Pro, Marsden says his European team will concentrate on building relationships with partners in local territories, emphasising the importance of local engineers and support for resellers. In addition, the firm has built a centralised European warehouse to bring stock closer to partners.
ZyXEL currently trades with 1400 UK partners in the UK each month, and Marsden says the firm is looking to add a further 600 this year – as well as getting a greater number signed up to the vendor’s partner programme.
He says: “Over the past year, we have seen strong sales through our distributor and reseller network throughout Europe and we will continue to build on that momentum over the next 12 months.”
ZyXEL’s UK distributors are C2000, Micro P, Ingram Micro and Theale-based VAD EFL.
