Uunet channel plans in doubt
Uunet's channel restructure and bid for new resellers could be undermined by rumours that its parent company will be forced to sell the subsidiary.
Uunet's channel restructure and bid for new resellers could be undermined by rumours that its parent company will be forced to sell the subsidiary.
The vendor has announced a channel restructure designed to improve its chances of recruiting more partners in the UK. The new channel will consist of four elements: global large accounts, volume distributors, regional resellers and independent software vendors and application service providers.
According to Mark Nixon, channel director at Uunet, the restructure aims to change the perception of the company.
"Uunet is a global player, but we want to bring home the message that we are familiar with local markets, something that needed to be done in Europe, Middle East & Africa especially," he said.
Uunet will launch the scheme in November and Nixon expects the restructure to "bed in" in the new year. The choice of volume distributors contains some surprises, with datacoms box shifters being included.
"It will be novel for some of these firms to do large volumes of business without ever seeing any large shipments in goods inwards," he said.
But observers have cast doubt on the future of Uunet as a partner. The firm is part of the WorldCom Group, which is rumoured to be on the verge of a merger with Sprint.
According to sources, this would make the sell-off of Uunet inevitable, and would damage its standing as a tier-one internet service provider (ISP), since it could no longer claim ownership of a networking infrastructure spanning the globe.
Michal Halama, senior telecoms analyst at market researcher Gartner, said: "Any ISP that has to piggy-back onto the networks of other ISPs will struggle to guarantee service level agreements."
Nixon rejected this argument, however. "All this stuff must be put about by BT salesmen. There is absolutely no truth in the idea that Uunet involves an 'extra hop', now or ever," he said.
First published in Computer Reseller News