The telecoms equipment maker promoted the program to its distributors in December. It offers 60-day financing on purchases of Nortel products and services purchased through its distributors, which includes Ingram Micro, Westcon, Synnex and Tech Data. IBM and DLL are serving as third-party financing companies.

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For an update on how Nortel's channel changes have improved partner rebates click here.

The new financing is part of Nortel's larger suite of finance options, including lines of credit and purchase order financing programs available to smaller VARs that land big deals.

"Purchase order financing is something that partners have been asking for," said David Wilkinson, vice president of channel strategy at Nortel. The program lets VARs leverage the customer's credit worthiness for a particular deal, rather than relying on the credit worthiness of the VAR itself.

"Since we've launched it on Dec. 3, there have been several examples of partners leveraging this to do deals they would not have been able to do in the past," he said.