Alcatel-Lucent's newly appointed distribution partner for the UK and Ireland, Incanix, may only be a few months old, but it's set to play a key role in the vendor's plans to enhance its brand in the market during 2010, according to Alcatel-Lucent's Head of Distribution, Eamon Connaughton.

Incanix, which was formed last year by a group of industry veterans, will join rival Sphinx as a route to market for the Alcatel-Lucent enterprise portfolio, which is sold exclusively through an indirect model. "It lines up with Alcatel-Lucent's worldwide strategy of supporting multiple resellers and value added distributors in every country," Connaughton told Comms Dealer. "We've been working with Incanix since last October to prepare for this announcement."

Connaughton says that feedback from Alcatel-Lucent resellers to the appointment has been positive. "The beginning of the new year is the time to change the game and ratchet it up another level," he says. "I'm looking forward to it, and am quite excited. We've had really good feedback from the reseller community about this."

A new distribution partner will enable Alcatel-Lucent to broaden its reach and attract new resellers from both telecoms and IT backgrounds looking to sell converged products. "There's a number of data VARs we haven't reached to date that we do want to reach," Connaughton explains. "At the same time we want take our existing resellers with us on the convergence journey so we end up distributing more of our portfolio into the converged market, and reach them through a wider portfolio of indirect resellers."

The next 12 months should be strong for IP telecoms, says Connaughton, as more businesses begin to understand the benefits of converged communications. "We think that customers right across the board will be looking at convergence as a mechanism to use technology to gain an advantage. That's definitely going to come to the fore," he explains. "In that sense we're trying to reach all markets with as many resellers as we can. The portfolio we have is strong, and having two value added distributors will help us to push that in the marketplace."

Competition in the enterprise space is set to increase, at least in part thanks to an end to speculation over the future of the Nortel product set, which was mapped out by new owner Avaya last month. "The best way we can address competition is to look to our own family of value added resellers and distributors, and our own product portfolio, and do what we think is best for the end user," said Connaughton. "I've no doubt that the competition will be doing that equally, so we have to face up to that and come out with the best offer we can to the end user."

Resellers who want to broaden their portfolio are finding that convergence technologies make it easier for resellers to shift between product lines. It's not just larger partners that should be looking at the enterprise portfolio, explains Connaughton. "You're SMB customer today is your large enterprise of tomorrow," he added. "The reseller has to have the capability of growing alongside the needs of their customer base. You want to extend the reach of your own products as far as possible, which means that resellers have to recognise that while the SMB is important they may have to extend their reach into the mid and large markets."

The partnership with Incanix is only the first part of Alcatel-Lucent's strategy for 2010, says Connaughton, and there'll be more announcements over the next few months regarding new marketing strategies and spend throughout the channel. "Alcatel-Lucent is working on a number of fronts to support both Incanix and Sphinx to reach and support distribution resellers across the UK & Ireland market," he explains. "This will include creative marketing and PR, pre-sales and post-sales support delivered to both distributors. We will endeavour to support each VAD in the area that both parties agree needs greater resource applied, in order to achieve the return desired for all concerned."