Sphinx lands Alcatel-Lucent deal
Distributor will now carry vendor's entire enterprise portfolio
Sphinx is to unleash what it has dubbed the channel’s “best-kept secret” after being appointed Alcatel-Lucent’s second UK data distributor.
After replacing MTV and Rocom as Alcatel-Lucent’s voice distributor in January, Sphinx will now carry the vendor’s total enterprise portfolio.
The vendor also appointed Westcon to carry its data products in March, but will make no further changes to its line-up.
Mark Hatton, managing director of Sphinx, said that the security distributor would target disenchanted Cisco, Extreme and 3Com resellers.
“Alcatel-Lucent’s data products are the world’s best-kept secret. On any technical review they score very highly, but they haven’t been properly marketed to enterprises.”
Hatton said Sphinx would support the appointment by boosting its Alcatel-Lucent sales team from six to eight and rolling out a reseller education programme next month.
Peter Tebbut, head of pre-sales, post-sales and marketing at Alcatel-Lucent UK, said: “There’s a big market out there for our data products. Sphinx has an IT customer base that is very security-oriented, which is different to Westcon’s contacts.”
Despite the two distributors’ different briefs, Hatton said: “We’re a different animal to Westcon. Alcatel-Lucent is a big proposition for us and it’s less so for Westcon because it is a big Cisco partner. We have no vested interest in Cisco and can approach Alcatel-Lucent from a convergence perspective because we do both voice and data.”