Wi-fi wars: Battlelines for the branch office

HP tasked Aruba Networks A/NZ managing director Steve Coad to communicate the pair’s channel strategy. HP declined to comment for this article.

Coad is speaking to partners and customers and starting to bond HP and Aruba teams. And while “90 percent of Aruba partners are HP partners”, the relationship was shallow with little significant interaction, Coad says. The crossover should be much juicier than the Juniper partnership.

“When the Juniper-Aruba alliance was announced, we got together and said, Who are your resellers? Some of our larger, regional resellers were also large Juniper resellers… maybe because they didn’t want to be Cisco resellers. [But] Juniper didn’t have a huge number of resellers like HP did, [which] has hundreds of resellers. With Juniper, we only recruited four or five.”

Coad says after comparing resellers with HP, a “significant number” aren’t Aruba partners. “We’ve gone through a cleansing exercise and so far 40 HP partners have agreed to start the process to become Aruba partners.” 

And while it’s inevitable that Aruba resellers will be exposed to HP’s portfolio, Coad says HP isn’t seeking converts. “None of the Aruba resellers are being converted to HP switching resellers other than the ones who already are. Big system integrators like Optus, DiData, NTT and UXC – they already sell Juniper, HP and Cisco.”

Coad agrees the reason why HP bought Aruba was for its technology. Aruba enables mobile workers and guest logins, especially through its ClearPass access management system. It was used at the Australian Open tennis and by KFC, James Cook University and Epworth Healthcare to enforce policies on networks, devices and applications. 

He foreshadows a barney with Cisco once the HP and Aruba teams align in the first half of next year. “We also have a very competent, strong team whether its R&D and engineering and sales, pre-sales, or tech support that takes the fight to the major competitor. We can go hammer and tongs and beat Cisco.” 

Aruba also offers stronger margins per port than traditional wired switches, Coad claims. Plus it now has “credibility” to go after Global 2000 companies with gusto. 

Coad agrees with Gartner’s Munch that managed services provision is a core benefit of Aruba’s technology. “The strong management platform is very good for managing customers away to Aruba.”

He adds: “It’s a value-based wireless sale. There will be a lot of end users upgrading over the next four to five years [because] their wireless networks are coming to an end. They haven’t gone [802.11ac] yet; there will be a lot of transitions and upgrades. The use of wireless is changing.”

That includes more platform intelligence such as location services, data analytics and value-adds for retail, education, healthcare and public access. “The resellers don’t just want to sell the plumbing layer; they want to sell the management layers and services on top.”

Disties and prices

Unlike elsewhere, there’s no crossover between HP and Aruba distributors in Australia. “HP has five disties and Aruba has three and none of them are the same,” says Coad. 

HP and Aruba will operate separate channel programs for the next six months. Coad says the respective programs are similar but have quirks, for instance HP’s prices are in Aussie dollars while Aruba’s are in greenbacks; converting to HP’s price list should hedge our dollar as it falls.

“It’s the back-end, clunky stuff that needs to go one way or another. HP has a healthy rebate program and we don’t, so that’s something that we’ll leverage,” Coad says. 

“We want to recruit the resellers; we’re 100 percent indirect and want to maintain that. We really want to take on Cisco in the enterprise and down to SMB so we need skilled and credible partners and geographic reach.”

The Fortinet and Meru marriage

In July, Fortinet closed its acquisition of Meru Networks. At $44 million, it was smaller in scale than purchases by Cisco and HP, but again shows how networking vendors are consolidating to grab opportunities.

Jon McGettigan, Fortinet’s Australia & New Zealand regional director, says managed services are a “key focus” for the security vendor. Although Fortinet had its own controller-managed wi-fi access point (FortiAP), Meru opens markets and technology to be integrated into a unified stack for the enterprise, he says.

It adds 14,000 customers and Australian distributors Ingram Micro and Wavelink. “That gives us the opportunity to cross-sell to those [customers] who don’t have Fortinet as well,” McGettigan says. Among Fortinet’s 200,000 global users are the University of Ballarat, Brewers Association of Australia and New Zealand, and Apparel Group, parent of Sportscraft and Jag.

Fortinet badges will replace Meru’s by March. “An advantage of Meru is the large developer and engineering base. That’s a huge injection into our Fortinet wireless [products],” says McGettigan. 

Meru has 300 global staff and four locally who will merge with Fortinet’s 60 ANZ staff. 

McGettigan says Fortinet’s channel story is, “an investment in Meru, a larger customer base that we can have a great cross-sale conversation and the new talent opens up technology they’re not using currently”.

“Mobility is driving the requirement for wireless to be more prevalent, so [networking vendors] are taking the easier route to acquire a business rather than take four to five years [to grow it organically].” 

Next: partners weigh in