D-Link sales chief to head Linksys

Former D-Link national sales manager Graeme Reardon has taken a job with competitor Linksys as Australia and New Zealand regional manager.

Cisco-owned Linksys had been without a local head since Brian Allsopp defected to Juniper last September.

"I saw it [the move to Linksys] as a good opportunity to grow the business, similar to what we did with D-Link [in Australia]," he said.

"To replicate that [success] with Linksys would be great," he said.

Reardon had two local Linksys staff working with him, newly-appointed distribution manager Jacqueline Colquitt and Cisco contractor Rhod Brown, who was looking after pre- and post-sales support.

Reardon would report to Linksys' worldwide VP Janie Tsao.

He said Linksys had been "left to its own devices" for the past six months and there had been a few local Cisco staff looking after the division part-time.

Over the next few months, Reardon would look to crack the retail market for Linksys which had previously struggled to secure retail shelf space against the likes of Netgear, Belkin and D-Link.

Linksys is the number one supplier of networking hardware to the retail market in North America, owning more than 40 percent of the market.

Netgear, D-Link and Belkin captured over 60 percent of the retail network hardware market in Australia in 2003.

Reardon said new ISP business was high on the list of priorities. He had been with D-Link for the past four years and lead the ISP sales team at the company during his first two years in the role.

Linksys would also crank up its reseller coverage in conjunction with distributor Ingram Micro/Tech Pacific, introducing a new channel program and reseller training in March, Reardon said.

There were also plans to work with Cisco account managers to attack vertical markets, he said.

"I'll be trying to work with Ross [Fowler, Cisco Australia managing director] and his team to get what we can from the Cisco team," he said.