Bridging the voice and data distribution gap

The aim of NV3, a spin-off from distributor Northamber, is to bridge the gap between data and voice resellers, allowing both to sell into the market, reports Ben Tudor.

The question that bounces around the convergence market is which is best at selling converged telephony: telecoms resellers or data resellers?

The question of the best convergence distributors is less frequently discussed.

Distributors from both the data and the voice markets have been tentatively approaching the emerging convergence sector for the past two years.

One player spawned by the build-up in the sector is NV3, a spin-off from Northamber, which boasted a turnover of £250m in its last audited annual results ended June 2002. NV3 targets specialist value-add resellers (Vars) with convergence skills.

Patrick Weekes, managing director of NV3, joined the company in October 2002 after an eight-year stint at Avaya, where he worked in roles ranging from marketing to management.

He sees his job as building NV3 into a converged distribution company. Weekes said there has already been a change in the convergence market, and that IP telephony will overtake time-division multiplexing PBX installations this year.

This view is backed by research from analyst Canalys. The analyst has noted a growing market share for hybrid PBX vendors such as Avaya, while pure IP offerings, such as those from Cisco, 3Com and Mitel, take less than five per cent of the market.

Weekes said NV3's aim is to bridge the gap between data and voice resellers, allowing both to sell into the market. Typically, he added, voice resellers understand the software but not necessarily the hardware, whereas the opposite is true for data resellers.

At present, NV3's line-up is restricted to Avaya, and a few software and application vendors surrounding Avaya's Multivantage suite. Weekes acknowledged this needs to change.

"We want to grow our vendor line-up," he said. "I don't believe in single-vendor distribution. In the meantime, however, we have the support of a large parent company, Northamber, which has plenty of vendors."

Crane, NV3's rival and the only other distributor in the UK capable of selling the entire Avaya range, has been offering aggressively priced bundles of Avaya PBXs, software and handsets.

However, Weekes pointed out there is a snag with bundling. While it makes a great deal of sense to Avaya, which can assemble and ship bundles as single units from mainland Europe, any firm with a non-standard installation - for example, more desks than the supplied number of handsets - has a problem with the bundles.

"Logistics is always an issue," said Weekes. "It can take six to eight weeks to get some stock from Holland or the US."

NV3 tries to minimise this delay for resellers by holding stock and piece parts as a way of offering bundle pricing on custom set-ups.

Fellow Avaya distributor Crane is a firm believer in bundling, said Peter Harkin, group marketing director at the firm. He said bundling can be helpful to resellers. For example, it eliminates the need to spec cabling and leads.

"We have a different business model. We also offer staging," said Harkin.

One reseller, who wished to remain anonymous, said NV3 is taking a different approach from that of other Avaya distributors.

"The main difference is logistics," he said. "Stuff is shipped quickly by NV3. It appeals to data resellers, but there is more to it than that.

NV3 has to offer both good logistics and all the pre-and post-sales support that the competition gives us."

NV3 already offers a number of services packages, including Avaya ServiceSpan.

"Service in a Box is intended to be straightforward for both the reseller and the end-user," said Weekes. He added that NV3 is also offers training for resellers.

Rachel Power, an analyst at Canalys, said: "Avaya has always used IT distributors for data products. IT-style distributors are unusual in voice.

"Vendors have gone direct, so large IT distributors have not played. Telecoms distributors tend to be smaller than their IT contemporaries in terms of revenue."

Power added that a wider channel with more options for Vars is a positive thing. "NV3 is fairly new for Northamber. It wants to diversify its product range to get an extra revenue stream," she said.