PowerDsine has designs on Cisco PoE resellers
Networking vendor offers discounts of up to 60 per cent discounts on bundled sales
PowerDsine is hoping to grab Cisco's reseller base for its Power over Ethernet (PoE) midspans, after the networking giant endorsed PowerDsine's products.
While a white paper covering PoE options for Cisco's Aironet wireless access points (APs) recommends the vendor's PoE-enabled Catalyst, 2600, 3600 and 3700 switches and routers, it also provides details on how to power APs using PowerDsine midspans.
"This is the first time Cisco has directed people to us," said Igal Rotem, chief executive of PowerDsine.
The company has launched a campaign with its distributors to sign up Cisco resellers, offering discounts of up to 60 per cent on bundled sales.
PowerDsine said the market for midspans - which allows users to add PoE to networks without changing their existing switches - has remained buoyant. This suggests users prefer to hang on to old products rather than upgrade solely to add PoE.
PowerDsine makes PoE chipsets and sells on an OEM basis to most of the world's networking manufacturers. Its midspans are also sold on an OEM basis and under the PowerDsine badge.
But Tony Nevill, sales operations manager at Cisco and PowerDsine distributor Comstor, said: "Reading between the lines, while PowerDsine's products have worked with Cisco, Cisco has never said that they do."
Cisco bought WLAN switching firm Airespace for $450m last month, fleshing out a range that includes the Aironet 'fat AP' model and Linksys's SME and consumer APs.