Voice partners warm to 3Com

3Com has recorded a 50 percent increase in its voice partner certifications in the last six months.

With newly qualified VoIP partners now “in the scores”, according to channel manger Dean Vaughan, the networking vendor claims to be making serious headway in the convergence market.

“One of our differentiators is that our barrier to entry for partners is very low while the quality of our technology is quite high,” he claimed. “That compares to some of our competitors where the technology is high but so is the barrier to entry.”

By recruiting partners from the TDM and data networking segments of the market — rather than poaching from competitors like Avaya, Cisco or Nortel — 3Com had also been able to expand the overall market, Vaughan said.

“We’ve traditionally been strong in education and local councils but our new partners are opening new markets in enterprise and corporate,” he said.

According to Vaughan, 3Com’s decision to base its technology on open standards was also seeing end users begin to consider the company for higher end work.

“IT directors are now more comfortable with hybrid models like having Cisco at the edge and 3Com at the core,” he said.

“They’re not fork lifting the whole network out, but for needs-based projects we are now being integrated. To do that three years ago we would have been challenged.”

Agreeing, TippingPoint APAC business development manager, Marta Bandala, said the market was now well educated and no longer needed end-to-end solutions from a single vendor.

To make the most of the new found opportunity, an open head count enterprise sales team was currently being recruited to provide direct touch support for the channel, Vaughan said.

In related news, 3Com is expected to shortly announce a number of changes to its channel partner program.

These changes are believed to include the addition of two new specialisations — enterprise switching and wireless — to its current voice, data and switching specialisations.

Training and hardware rebates are also expected to be reinstated after their axing a year ago. Current market development funding levels are expected to remain the same.