Siemens' strategy to recruit reseller partners for its UC portfolio through data distributor Sphinx is progressing well. New partners, including the country's largest Enterasys dealer, have come on board in the three months since the Midlands-based firm was appointed for Siemens voice products.

Last October Sphinx became the first IT distributor to join Siemens Enterprise Communications' Go Forward! program, offering end-to-end solutions based on the popular Enterasys networking portfolio. Enterasys is part owned by Siemens through a joint venture led by the Gores Group. Siemens' UK Indirect Sales Director, Leon Mangan, commented: "The first thing we did was look at Sphinx' current Enterasys partners and talk to them about their desire and willingness to get into UC. As a result of which we now have on board and working with us Net Connections, which is Enterasys' number one reseller in the UK."

Resellers who sign up through Sphinx will have access to the HiPath portfolio for the SME market, but Mangan explained that the long-term ambition is to begin transitioning Siemens' enterprise products to an indirect channel over the next few months. By 2011 he expects to have several large resellers working with its OpenScape Unified Communications Server. Mangan says that talks with Sphinx' larger partners have already begun. "We're talking to them now about the technology and what differentiators we have in our UC architecture," he explains. "We're probably going to see, over the next 12 months, 10-12 large enterprise VARs who are interested in engaging with Siemens."

Mangan believes that interest in the Siemens portfolio has been stimulated thanks to efforts by Sphinx and uncertainty surrounding other vendors' product lines. Mangan added: "Sphinx has done some heavy call out days to increase involvement from VARs, but there are clearly challenges with other manufacturers around mergers and takeovers at the moment, and some people are looking at what their options are going forward. We're working hard to make sure we learn from the mistakes some of our competitors may have made moving from a direct to indirect model, and to get the logistics and support processes right."

It's early days for the Siemens and Sphinx partnership, but the telecoms vendor says that data resellers are adapting to the challenges of selling unified communications. "Many data VARs are finding it easier to sell UC than some of our traditional voice channels. The data guys already know the IP and WAN side of things. If they focus on selling the applications of UC, they tend to have an easier ride getting it in and paid."

Working with Sphinx has highlighted some key differences in the problems experienced by data and voice channels as the technology converges around unified communications, according to Tony Smith, Head of UK Distribution at Siemens Enterprise Communications. He said: "Data resellers tend to specialise a lot more. They aren't just ‘data VARs': One might specialise in security, one might specialise in Microsoft solutions, they each have their own areas. The smaller ones are very niche, and are very good at what they do, but they're focused on that. It's only the larger ones that do everything. So the pain point really is in broadening the mindset and learning to ask different questions to the ones they're used to."

One of the biggest opportunities for all resellers over the year ahead, Mangan says, is fixed-mobile convergence. "We combine Enterasys' Siemens voice over data solution with our voice over WiFi solution so we can deliver voice over WiFi," he explains. "There are lots of data dealers who've been working with wireless within Enterasys, and there's an opportunity now for them to cross over into the voice space using the same technology."

The increasing amount of activity from the mobile network providers in FMC deployment doesn't phase Mangan either, even though on the surface it seems they're competing with traditional voice and data providers. Instead, he says, it presents an opportunity. "I won't say who I'm meeting with, but I've spoken with mobile carriers to understand their UC product because I believe they could complement what we're doing," Mangan added.