Flash forward nine months and McManus is grappling with the opportunities and challenges of the expanded product set he inherited last summer after several Fujitsu operating divisions were consolidated into Fujitsu America. Whereas before McManus was supporting many partners with very discrete practices focused on mobility, servers and storage, now he is focused on helping Fujitsu’s resellers realize the full potential of Fujitsu’s product line — selling more total solutions into their accounts.

He has already seen many of his partners, for example, extend into storage, where McManus points to a 60 percent increase in installed base over the past 12 months. Now, Fujitsu is establishing relationships that will help it establish a deeper footprint in the retail POS space. Earlier this month, the company signed a distribution pact with a major distributor in that space, ScanSource. Under the pact, ScanSource will represent the Fujitsu TeamPOS series of terminals and peripherals.

Another area that will unfold this year involves how McManus can involve more Fujitsu VARs in selling more Fujitsu-designed services. Since another very high ranking channel executive at a different company mentioned the same thing to me this week, I’m betting this becomes an area of heightened conversation and potential conflict over 2010 — as vendors look to improve their margins and VARs seek to maintain their services differentiation.

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