Wireless LAN (WLAN) vendor Extricom is launching a partner scheme in the hope of challenging giants such as Cisco, Aruba and Trapeze.
The PartnerAdvantage programme aims to recruit new reseller partners and strengthen ties with established partners. It will introduce three levels of partnership: Registered, Select and Elite.
Partners have been promised support with sales, marketing and promotion. Extricom will also attempt to help partners increase their WLAN expertise and VARs will be offered a deal registration scheme.
Steve Northedge, Extricom’s EMEA vice president of sales, said his company has more than 20 UK partners and hopes to increase that number to 40 over the next two years. “We are a channel-centric organisation and all our sales go through the channel. Our sales people work very much shoulder to shoulder with our channel partners, he said. We meet customers at events, but we then put them in touch with our partners. We never sell direct to them.”
David Confalonieri, Extricom’s vice president of marketing, claimed his company’s technology is more reliable than that of the bigger WLAN vendors. “Customers tell resellers they want to buy a brand that is safe and well known, but our resellers tell people: ‘I’m afraid you are going to have to trust me today. If you want to truly mobilise your workforce, you need to look at the Extricom product,’” he claimed.
“All the other WLAN vendors fundamentally sell the same thing. Our proposition is radically different as you can get a live demo of our product in 10 minutes.”
Reseller G4 Networks has been working with Extricom for almost a year. Managing director, Gordon Smith, said: “We spent several months assessing WLAN products. Extricom seemed to have something that would get over most of the problems with wireless networks. This was important to us as we are selling ourselves on the back of its products.”
However, Alistair Mutch, UK and Ireland director of WLAN vendor Trapeze, is sceptical. “I do not think anyone trying to join [the market] at this stage has much chance,” he said.
Extricom signs new distributor