Peribit signs up second distributor

Vendor wants five new reseller partners per distributor in one year

Bandwidth optimisation vendor Peribit is hoping to pounce on opportunities not taken up by its rivals, and has signed a second distributor in the UK to help it achieve this.

Centia, a Citrix specialist, will join Norwood Adam in offering Peribit's new SR-20 SME wireless area network (Wan) optimisation product in March. Peribit also deals directly with a handful of larger resellers in the UK, including Hydra, Network Alliance and Real Solutions.

Rob Mustarde, Peribit's regional director for Northern Europe, said: "We are looking to accredit about five new reseller partners per distributor over the next 12 months. We will not restrict unaccredited resellers from buying the products; we want to take up opportunity sales as well."

Peribit's main competitor is Expand Networks, but Mustarde claimed that his firm's devices were newer and more sophisticated than those of Expand.

"We hope to encroach on Expand's business," he said. "There are plenty of opportunities out there that they aren't taking up."

However, some resellers have questioned Peribit's strategy. "We have considered them both," said Denny Meijer, technical director at Scalable Networks.

"Peribit focuses on point-to-point networking for the high end," he said.

"Expand has been around for a lot longer and has a bigger portfolio of products, which also support Frame Relay. We think point-to-multipoint is probably where the market is going to be for us, so we've gone with Expand."

But according to Shane Buckley, Peribit's president in EMEA, it is in the lower end that the firm is hoping to grow its market share.

Buckley said after having surveyed the company's customers most had said they liked the functionality and quality of service that the SR50 gave them. But they wanted something cheaper which they could use in their branches and smaller offices.