Meraki plans Euro assault as it enters the switching market

Cloud networking vendor looks to put the cat among Cisco's pigeons with product launch and regional expansion

WLAN vendor Meraki is hoping to tempt Cisco partners with "something a bit different" as it enters the switching market and rapidly expands its European presence.

The wireless firm has had feet on the street in this country for nine months and now has 12 European employees, including vice president of EMEA sales Geoff Haggart, who joined in November.

He told ChannelWeb that he would have 30 local staff by the end of 2012, helping to serve a base of "50 to 60" UK reseller partners and "several hundred customers". One UK VAR already signed up is top-level HP, Avaya and Cisco partner Intrinsic Technology.

"Intrinsic is smart enough to realise that Cisco is not always the right solution," said Haggart. "We see a lot of growth potential. The wireless market is growing at 40 per cent, and we are growing a lot more rapidly than that."

Meraki leapt into the switching arena this week, with the launch of 24- and 48-port edge switches under the brand name MS. The switch market has been characterised over the past year by a fiercely competitive battle between Cisco and HP, which has led to average selling prices being squeezed across the board.

But Haggart was bullish about entering an area where margins are so pressurised.

"A switch is a bit of a commodity, but we won't go into that market on its own, head to head against Cisco. We will go in on our core strength, which is wireless networking, and look to extend into the switching area," he said. "For price pressures, we are sat at a good level and we have the ability to have a lot more functionality."

Meraki has been serving the UK market through partner Cloud Distribution for almost two years. Greg Harris, sales director at the distributor, claimed he is happy with progress so far, adding that channel recruitment will be on a more selective basis from now on.

"The size of the end customer deals we are winning, the profile of the customers – it is all going up," he said. "If we do bring new partners on board, it is not going to be a multiple of the number we already have. We would rather have one selling 1,000 than 1,000 selling one."