Become a reseller voip

Traditional telecom, datacom gear and service providers cope with convergence.

CarrAmerica Realty faced some tough decisions when picking an IP telephony platform to replace its nationwide PBX infrastructure. But the harder choice was deciding on whom to partner with to install and configure the convergence gear.

The company decided on Expanets, a reseller and integrator of Avaya and Cisco voice and data gear.The fact that Expanets had installed CarrAmerica's old Avaya IP PBXs and had an extensive background in voice was key, says Barry Krell, vice president and director of engineering at the Washington, D.C., company.

"It's been a huge change for Expanets to sell something other than Avaya for voice," Krell says. And while his firm was learning to deal with the transition from TDM voice to voice over IP (VoIP), in many cases the Cisco-Avaya channel partner supporting Krell was learning with him.

As more businesses look to convergence, VoIP technology is reshaping how companies buy telecom and datacom gear and services from resellers, and forcing these middlemen companies to regroup and reshape themselves.

Equipment vendors promote the productivity gains and cost reductions of convergence, but it's the channel partners and integrators that usually deal with companies shopping for IP telephony.And how well these channel partners and value-added resellers (VAR) can handle the convergence shift could be reflected in how smooth, or rough, a VoIP installation can go in a company.

"For the telecom resellers and the data-corn guys, VoIP is a new thing, and both are having their struggles," says Troy Buck, senior sales manager at Teldata Enterprise Networks, a San Diego firm that resells Nortel and Toshiba telecom and VoIP gear to enterprise customers.

"Many telecom channel partners know PBXs and key systems, but they don't have much IP experience or knowledge about quality of service and routers," Buck says. "They come from the background of tip and ring [nomenclature for telephony wiring] and not the world of IP, QoS and routers."

From the data VARs' perspective, selling IP voice has some different challenges, says John Barker, director of operations at Versatile Communications in Marlborough, Mass.

Barker's firm, a traditional Ethernet switch and router integrator, took on selling VoIP products and installation a year ago, and the transition was tough. Learning the new technology and convincing customers to choose Versatile was a challenge at first.

"It's a chicken-and-egg issue," Barker says. "Last year we had a good data customer that was shopping for a voice system; they looked into what we offered for VoIf? but they were wary of going with us because we were so new to the technology and the technology itself was new."

Telecom experience smoothes VoIP rollout

Working with a strong TDM-voice company to install VoIP was a requirement for Can-America's Krell.

Along with Cisco engineers, Expanets helped Krell do some things that a data-com-only VAR might not have been able to, such as splitting T-1 connections between the Avaya PBX and Cisco Call-anager, which let the company gradually migrate from TDM to IP voice. The move also allowed more time for system testing and training, instead of a one-day cutover. Expanets also got rid of the old Avaya gear, which some datacom VARs reselling Cisco VoIP said they would not do, he says.

CarrAmerica eventually replaced its home-office Avaya switch with a Cisco CallManager and rolled out 400 IP phones in its main office last year. The company plans to consolidate 60 of its offices nationwide onto the centralized CallManager and add another 500 IP phones across the country this year.

"They put a lot of time and effort into our project because they're a good company with smart people," Krell says of Expanets and Cisco. "But I'm sure part of the reason was to make sure it worked so we could be a reference."

New waves from a big fish

For many big corporations, the old way of telecom/datacom resellers translated to Nortel-Cisco or Avaya-Cisco. Convergence has shaken up this model, some integrators say and equipment vendors are reacting in different ways.

"Cisco providers have become very responsive to RFPs that they wouldn't have been considered for in the past," says Mike Olsen, senior vice president of sales at NextiraOne, a provider of Alcatel, Cisco and Nortel voice and data gear and services. He says IP telephony is being approached in two ways: gradual migration, and rip and replace. Large companies with entrenched PBX systems such as Alcatel, Avaya, Nortel or Siemens often are opting to IP-enable those systems. Many businesses with a patchwork telecom infrastructure or companies that are moving to new locations are considering the pure-IP approach of vendors such as Cisco.

In the fourth quarter of 2002, Cisco had 44% of the $191.7 million in VoIP revenues in North America, according to Synergy Research. Traditional voice leaders lagged far behind in the market, as Avaya (12% market share) and Nortel (8%) came in second and third, respectively.

Teldata's Buck says the fact that Cisco is now into voice has been a huge change in the channel.

"Cisco definitely has the ears of the IT departments, and they're making a lot of headway with that advantage," he says. "IT people see voice as just one more thing to run across their data networks." He adds that Cisco's jump into the VoIP market also results from traditional-voice gear makers being slow to react to the VoIP market.

Versatile's Barker says his company resells Cisco equipment but focuses on HP switches and Mitel IP telephony gear. When you sell only Cisco VoIP and switches, "it might be you and 100 other resellers bidding on a Cisco project, cutting each others throats," he says.

Choosing the right partner

From whichever path companies approach convergence, choosing the right third-party partner will be important for larger companies, one integrator says.

"It can be very complex and expensive to re-create your voice network over your data network," says Darren Spohn, CEO of Spohn & Associates, an Austin, Texas, reseller of Cisco gear and AT&T services. "And no offense to the equipment companies, but it's not as easy as some might make it out to be."

He says customers can expect to see the telecom/datacom integration line become less defined as convergence gains more momentum.

"The business voice market is a very large market, and capturing it is a big business," Spohn says. "You'll see a lot of nontraditional voice companies trying harder to get a piece of it as the market evolves."