Symbol Technologies appointed Aug. 23 Sanford "Sandy" Preizler, former head of RFID sales, to lead its channel effort as products and channels become more important to each other at the mobility components and solutions manufacturer.

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Symbol is capping a three-year channel turnaround, growing indirect sales from 45 percent of revenue in 2003 to more than 75 percent in 2006, a Symbol official said. Marrying go-to-market strategy with product development has been a key, Preizler told Channel Insider.

"An example of that is the MC70 Enterprise Digital Assistant we introduced this year," he said. "This rugged EDA enabled partners who work in verticals like health care, field sales and field service to offer a multimode device that could withstand more rigorous environments than previous products in the EDA family."

Symbol's Wi-NG architecture and to-be-released "ruggedized" mobile reader are further examples, he said, of technological innovation with partners' businesses in mind.

Symbol launches RFID training for VARs. Click here to read more.

Preizler, a former channel executive at Cisco Systems who served as head of Symbol's RFID sales since March 2005, redefined the go-to-market strategy for RFID at the Holtsville, N.Y., manufacturer, Symbol officials said in a statement.