Adtran sends margin signal
Vendor aims to lure prospective partners with offers of up to 20 per cent on equipment
Networking vendor Adtran is hoping to entice resellers with margins of between 10 and 20 per cent on sales of its enterprise switches and routers, without them having to rely on support and maintenance deals.
Adtran entered the UK market earlier this year and has recruited two VARs through its distributor, Anixter.
"The existing players in this market have too many resellers. The margins are three to five per cent at best," claimed Kevin Barnes, Adtran's EMEA business development manager. "We aim to give VARs margins of more than 10 per cent and sometimes as high as 20 per cent on equipment sales."
The vendor is talking to 25 potential resellers in the UK, and has already signed up two resellers, according to Helde Resende, Anixter?s EMEA marketing manager.
"Brand awareness is definitely the challenge; this is a mature market with strong players, and Adtran is not a recognised vendor just yet," Resende said. "But when we get in the door and sit down with customers, Adtran has a strong message and a good, price-competitive product."
Tony Duddy, marketing manager at Mercury - one of the two resellers already offering Adtran in the UK - highlighted product performance as a major advantage. Adtran devices beat Cisco kit in recent throughput testing by analyst Tolly Group, he claimed.
"We found the 1200 [product] to be excellent. The proof is that our own guys have taken it on," said Duddy. "Our IT manager was a bit sceptical about bringing it in at first, but once the box was live on the network he was pleased with its performance and feature set and is now happy to deploy it anywhere."
Resellers will receive discounts depending on which level of partner programme they sign up to, along with pre-sales and engineer training, demonstration equipment and marketing funds.
Telephone support for Adtran's products will be provided by the company IPS, backed up by an Adtran engineer based in the UK, another in Germany, and Adtran's US operation.
Duddy claimed that Adtran stays ahead of rivals such as Cisco by maintaining much closer contact with its resellers.