Allied Telesyn renovates for '06

Allied Telesyn has announced a raft of changes following the September consolidation of its Australian and New Zealand businesses.

The networking vendor has parted ways with its electrical wholesale distributor, John R Turk, to focus its attention on IT distribution partners Express Data and Anixter.

Under the restructure, both distributors now buy direct from Allied Telesyn's Singapore-based manufacturing facilities with the aim of increasing overall channel margins.

At the same time the vendor has also moved from a 25 percent direct sales hybrid model to a 100 percent channel sales model.

Two new channel support roles have been created, with Levi Sutherland taking on a new northern regional manager role, and Scott Penno a southern regional manager position.

With its focus off holding and managing stock, Allied Australia was now turning its attention to increasing partner certification levels, northern manager Sutherland, said.

To raise its profile among resellers the vendor is also running a two-for one promotion on its Media Converter products, Sutherland said.

"We are best known for our Media Converter products so we are trying to leverage that to encourage resellers to offer end-users the rest of our product line, especially our high-end routers and switches," he said.

A new five-year extended warranty initiative, Net.Cover — which would offer resellers double digit margin — was also due to for launch in Q2, Sutherland said. A formal partner program would follow in Q3.

"You really need two things to be considered in the high-end market — reseller training and extended warranty cover — and we are addressing both of those things with these changes," he said.