Siemens Looks to Woo UC Resellers with Synnex Deal

Synnex resellers now have another unified communications solution available to them.

IT distributor Synnex will now offer the complete product line of Siemens Enterprise Communications, including end-to-end solutions for voice, data, video and security, the companies announced today.

The announcement comes a few weeks after Siemens signed on with Synnex in an effort to jump-start its fledgling channel efforts. Siemens has been known as a direct sales company, but is looking to develop relationships with channel partners and go against channel favorites such as Cisco, Microsoft and Avaya in the growing unified communications market.

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Analysts have said that while the recession has hurt IT sales overall, unified communications remains relatively strong.

The Siemens-Synnex agreement gives Synnex’s 15,000 resellers access to the full Siemens portfolio. Siemens says this lets them help their customers with layered or incremental unified communications implementations. In addition, the agreement also gives Synnex reseller partners access to Siemen’s global services infrastructure, which the companies say will enable resellers to quickly implement standards-based UC solutions across multivendor environments.

“Our agreement with Synnex underscores our dedication to the North American market and will significantly expand our ability to drive adoption of next-generation UC technologies,” says Michael Garland, senior vice president of North American alliances and channels for Siemens Enterprise Communications Group, in a formal statement issued by the companies. “By making it easier and more profitable for our partners to distribute our solutions and giving them the support they need to succeed, we are also reinforcing our commitment to the channel.”

Siemens OpenScape portfolio provides an OpenSOA approach and the OpenPath commitment to extensibility that the companies say can help resellers ease integration pain points and costs for customers.

“We carefully evaluated Siemens’ offerings and determined that its open architecture, single-vendor platform for UC, including data and security products, plus its unmatched support levels will give our large reseller base the extra edge it needs to succeed in these challenging times,” says Peter Larocque, president of U.S. distribution at Synnex, in a formal statement issued by the companies.