Virtualisation vendor, VMware, has brought on itX as a second distributor for its entire product portfolio.

VMware managing director, Paul Harapin, said itX will be complementary to existing supplier, Ingram Micro, who has had exclusive rights to the vendor's range for about three years. Up until now, itX has been restricted to selling VMware's low-end desktop solutions including VMware Fusion for Mac. The new deal opens up access to all of the vendor's server lines including its flagship product, ESX Server.

Harapin pointed to itX's strong software business and relationships with Sun, HP software, BEA Systems and Wyse as key factors behind its decision. Having a second distributor will give VMware better channel coverage and access to a different set of customers, he said. He added VMware was planning another aggressive growth year locally.

itX general manager, Greg Newham, said VMware's virtualisation stack is integral to its market strategy.

"We identified VMware a few years ago as a technology we wanted to be associated with and tried to get involved with their low-end products with the view of getting access to their full product suite," he said. itX initially joined forces with VMware about 18 months ago.

The distributor will look at bundling VMware's VDI product with Wyse thin client terminals. Newham said the absence of a formal agreement between Sun and VMware also opened up value-added opportunities for itX and its resellers.

itX is very different to Ingram and will target different types of channel partners, he said.

"Our strength is in the fact that we don't distribute as many products. We put a lot of effort into understanding the technology, identifying market opportunities and investing time into training the partners," he said.

Newham was also unperturbed by distributing both VMware and Citrix.

"The vendors will battle it out between themselves. We will support both products and customers will decide which technology they want to have. It's no different to HP and IBM slugging it out - I don't see too many issues because virtualisation is such a huge market opportunity," he said.

Read the original article from ARN, here.