Crane elevates Mitel business
Telecoms distributor ups its support
Distributor Crane Telecommunications has bolstered its Mitel business unit to offer increased support to the telephony vendor.
Crane signed with Mitel last year and joined Nessco, Nimans and Westcon as Mitel’s UK distributors. The firm has also reshuffled its Mitel division management team. Will Morey, a director at Crane, is heading up the unit. Andrew Saunders, who was previously running Crane’s Nortel and Mitel units, will now concentrate only on the Nortel business.
Craig Walden, Crane’s former LG marketing director, will assume the same role for the Mitel division. “There has been a Mitel business unit for the past nine months, but that has now doubled in size,” he said. “We will continue to offer resellers the full range of support.
“We have put more emphasis on our Mitel business. We see its portfolio as being strong in IP.”
Bernie Dodwell, European security manager at rival distributor and Mitel partner Westcon, said: “The partnership [between Mitel and Crane] was signed a year ago. It is rather late for Crane to be applying focus to its Mitel relationship.”
Dodwell added that Crane has a reputation for concentrating on selling on telephony vendor Avaya’s products. He said Crane’s new Mitel team could be an attempt to move away from that perception.
Kevin Harrison, distribution manager at Mitel distributor Nessco, said: “Nessco is smaller compared with some of its rivals, but ‘perfectly formed’. We do not spread ourselves too thinly across a variety of different product lines and are therefore specialists in our core product range.”
Harrison claimed Nessco provides its Mitel resellers with a full service package, including engineering assistance, maintenance and support.
Kathleen Klasnic, lead analyst of vertical market technology at market watcher Datamonitor, said more distribution capability is a positive development for Mitel.
“Mitel tends to be stable and consistent in its current accounts, but is not gaining much new business. This seems a strange move by Crane so they must be expecting some new business from Mitel,” she said.
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