3Com unveils partner strategy

3Com has unveiled its partner strategy for 2006, dangling the twin carrots of stability and profitability.

The networking vendor also unveiled its new country manager, Bruce Cossill, the heart of its stability pitch.

Cossill was the founder of Imagineering and Tech Pacific and was also responsible for bringing 3Com to Australia in 1980.

He rounds out a new management team which includes chief executive Scott Murray, senior vice president of sales and service James Fieger, and Asia-Pacific vice president Peter Chai who would also look after services and operations.

Speaking at the company’s partner conference on the Gold Coast, Cossill said 3Com’s succession of four country managers in three years had been unsettling for partners.

“Our execution has been erratic and that’s why so many operations people have come in,” he said. “We now have stability in A/NZ.”

As previously reported in CRN, 3Com has also revamped its partner program with the goal of increasing partner profitability.

The vendor has redirected 80 percent of its marketing back through partners, has made changes to its special price quote (SPQ) system and created new VoIP, enterprise wireless, enterprise LAN and security specialisations.

It has also formed an enterprise sales team which would work to feed leads to partners, and has reinstituted its rebate system which offers dealers up to a 4.25 percent return.

A partner dashboard, designed to help dealers manage their accreditations has been created and training sessions would be extended to Adelaide, Brisbane and Auckland.

“There is every reason why we can and should go up against Cisco,” Cossill said. “If we don’t get it right this time you have to ask ‘what’s going on?’”

Following the launch of the partner program, partner and alliances manager Dean Vaughan and Cossill opened the floor to reseller questions whereupon they were beset by complaints.

Several raised the issue of the untimely payment of margin via the SPQ process, with Cossill admitting that this had been an issue, and that a new Siebel system had been implemented to fix the problem.

With 3Com’s decision to place its support service offshore another reseller complained of delays in addressing service issues of up to a day – much too long for those working the enterprise market.

Another raised fears around a monopoly being created via 3Com’s strategy of having single products available from single distributors, while others complained of stock supply issues and confusion over where TippingPoint fit into the 3Com portfolio.

3com bruce cossill collaboration networking tech pacific