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.

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.