Computer Weekly: Why is Acer investing in a
failed PC brand and trying to position Gateway as a reinvigorated
enterprise hardware and services supplier?
Kevin O’Donoghue: The Acer Group strongly
believes that there is significant opportunity within the
professional mid-market PC and services segment. Gateway will be a
channel-only brand and will operate as a separate company. In the
current economic environment it is expected that more vendors will
exit, so we want to offer the reseller community additional choice.
We will not compete with Acer by selling directly and we will not
be offering a competing services portfolio.
ComputerWeekly: Many people would regard the
business desktop and laptop market today as a graveyard for low
margin resellers to push out cheap kit with limited support, what
will you do to raise your game?
Kevin O’Donoghue: Gateway will target the
value-added reseller and system integrator channels as well as
those traditional resellers looking to sell and support our brand.
But we do not see ourselves competing at the low end of this
segment; we have publicly stated that we intend to avoid channels
where the principal aim is ‘box shifting’.
ComputerWeekly: You’re trying to establish
yourself as a serious player in the managed-services sector, surely
you are too far behind recognised vendors such as Salesforce.com
and Parallels to be credible aren’t you?
Kevin O’Donoghue: Our proposition is the delivery
of a full turnkey remote IT managed service solution, sold via
resellers to their end users with no customisation of the software
required. Other than a connection to the web, there is zero capital
investment required by the reseller and we will back our offering
with a business plan.
ComputerWeekly: Gateway very visibly pulled out
of the UK market when profits fell, how can you expect customers to
place long term trust in you for the next decade?
Kevin O’Donoghue: If Gateway was looking for
quick gains we would invest elsewhere. This new entity is a totally
new company that has the backing of a $20bn group behind it. We are
investing in the professional mid-market segment during tough
economic times because we believe there is significant opportunity
in the mid to long term – and our parent group is prepared to
invest in this development.