The voice and data channel is forging increasingly close ties with structured cabling and physical infrastructure specialists, industry onlookers have asserted.

Cabling vendor Panduit is about to embark on a reseller recruitment drive to sign up traditional IT VARs and systems integrators. Hamish Switalla, global systems integrator manager at Panduit, said that the Cisco, HP and IBM partner ecosystems could provide the kind of resellers his firm wanted.

“We are looking to provide an indirect model more consistent with the IT channel. Large systems integrators are looking to spread their tentacles to the installation part of the job and traditional installers are also playing more of a system integrator’s role,” he told CRN.

Switalla indicated that VARs investing in furthering their cabling expertise could be standing themselves in good stead.

“I think having the vision and the ability to design physical infrastructures is going to be critical, particularly for large-enterprise customers,” he said.

Telecoms distributor Nimans announced earlier this month that it had signed up with cabling vendor Fusion and will stock its range of voice and data installation products.

Nimans’ installation products business manager Dominique Wilson said: “Nimans has always stocked installation components as part of our commitment to offer resellers everything they need to complete a job from start to finish. Cabling is an essential component of this process. It is not a case of it catching on, the demand is already here.”

Reseller s2s was bought up by cabling specialist IT firm Bailey Teswaine earlier this year and managing director Scott Nursten said: “Systems integration is much broader now and covers everything from the physical infrastructure, all the way up to the communications stack. There is increasing pressure from the market not to have to deal with more than one supplier.”