Huawei channel boss opens up over European barriers

Raymond Lau claims Chinese networking vendor is making headway in efforts to crack western European channel

Huawei's channel boss has opened up on the obstacles the Chinese vendor has faced when cracking Europe as he sought to position it as a credible alternative to incumbents for local resellers and enterprise customers.

Talking to CRN at Huawei's Western Europe Channel Conference in Munich, Raymond Lau, president of partners and alliances, admitted local firms initially didn't know why they should be interested in Huawei.

"You can't say that people in western Europe didn't know about the brand. Even enterprise customers knew the brand as something in the telecoms industry. But they didn't know what Huawei had to do with them," he said.

"[They were saying] 'OK, so you come to the enterprise business, but what solutions do you have for me? You have the solutions, but why should I change?' There are a lot of these questions and we have to address that. Then the partners offer more barriers."

Regardless of these obstacles, Lau says he believes the Chinese vendor, which recently enlisted former BT boss Lord Browne of Madingley as independent non-executive chairman of its UK arm, is on the right track. The strategy is to target customers in vertical industries that will act as an industry reference, he said.

"We first invest in our account management resources to focus on this breakthrough, and at the same time we do a lot of preparation work on changing our process systems, lead times and pre-sale tools for partners who trial with us," he added.

"We are at a stage now where we are trying to position ourselves as a one-stop infrastructure provider for our partners, so they see that we have a broad portfolio of products."

Clients and resellers which consider Huawei are bringing healthy competition in their procurement environment, Lau added.

"We treasure every opportunity that our customers and partners bring to us, so we throw in all the resources," he said. "Whether we have to bring a product to a customer to test, make sure they are confident on a technical level, or just to assure the customer that Huawei is a competent option."