CCSS Concentrates on European Expansion
September 25, 2007 Alex Woodie
Over the last 18 months, English System i systems management software vendor CCSS has focused much of its attention on building its business in the United States and the Far East. Now, the company is shifting its sights to capture more business closer to home, in mainland Europe. “Last year was significant for us in relocating some of our senior members of staff from the UK to the US,” says Ray Wright, managing director of CCSS. “Coupled with this, we launched CCSS Asia in the Philippines to more directly serve System i customers in the Asia Pacific region. Now, by increasing our sales presence in Europe we can offer direct global sales coverage with more dedicated resources for our growing customer base.” To that end, the company last week announced the hiring of two new salesmen, including Rainer Nickel, who will join CCSS’ German sales team in the city of Bonn, and Manfred Petersen, who has been tapped to boost CCSS’ presence in Switzerland. CCSS is bullish on the European server market, particularly on IT spending among companies in the manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and financial services gigs, and cites Gartner server sales for Germany figures to back its expansion plans. IBM‘s System i server business is arguably stronger and healthier in several European markets, and CCSS hopes to ride this wave to expansion as other markets slow. The key for CCSS, as always, will be convincing System i shops that automating the operations of its servers with its three tools–QSystem Monitor, QMessage Monitor, and QRemote Control–can save the customers money or free up the time of their operators and administrators so they can pursue more important projects. That is probably easier to do during a time of expansion than during a time of retraction.
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