Westcon and Avaya Help Resellers Target Mid-Market Opportunities in IP Telephony

Westcon Group (News - Alert), a distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility, today said that resellers who take advantage of its onboarding and training financing capabilities—in combination with recent changes to Avaya's BusinessPartner authorization policies—stand to gain in the small and midsize IP telephony space.

 

Westcon Group has developed onboarding capabilities accessible through its ConvergencePoint (News - Alert) program. According to Weston, these capabilities help resellers “efficiently” navigate the product certification process.

 

Additionally, a new online tool, which includes step-by-step video-based training modules, makes the training process accessible to resellers. Officials pointed out that this tool, when used in combination with Westcon's classroom style training events, can reduce overall time to revenue.

 

Avaya S8500 and S8300 Media Servers are some of the key solutions in Westcon’s mid-market IP telephony portfolio.

 

Officials explained that by combining IP telephony products with solutions in Westcon's Open Source portfolio, including VoIP Gateways from Audiocodes and Digium (News - Alert)/Asterisk-based call center solutions from Aheeva, resellers can realize additional margin opportunities.

 

Steve Bernard, vice president and general manager of Voda One (News - Alert) business practice at Westcon, said that his company has been working closely with Avaya to help smaller resellers capture larger deals—mainly enterprise opportunities at small and mid-size companies.

 

In a challenging economic environment such as this, Bernard added, “our relationship to the reseller becomes more valuable when we can ease the onboarding process and present attractive financing options like flooring and lockbox.”

 

“We have simplified our partner authorization process specifically to help smaller resellers compete more effectively in mid-markets -- an area that represents the greatest profit potential and market growth,” said Donny Ward, vice president for North America Channel Sales at Avaya.

 

He also said that these changes, along with Westcon's consultative approach in helping resellers win and support deals, are good for the channel and represent a tremendous opportunity.

 

Last month, Westcon Group announced that that its MobilityPoint (News - Alert) program now features the Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN) -based products and solutions from Ascom, a manufacturer of mission-critical wireless solutions.