Huawei seeks to deepen its U.S. enterprise channel relationships by adding distribution, and on Wednesday said it had entered into agreements with two specialty distributors as well as added business process outsourcing (BPO) capabilities to support its enterprise customers.

Huawei already partners with Synnex in the U.S., but it is now also selling through West Chester, Pa.-based Communications Test Design, which focuses on repair, logistics and supply chain solutions, and Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Condre Storage, which specializes in storage and data center.

According to Huawei, its two-tier expansion will remain deliberately paced.

[Related: Huawei Enterprise Channel Chief: 'We're Ahead of Where We Thought We'd Be']

"We are currently still talking to one or two very specialized distributors," said a spokesperson in an email to CRN. "However, we're being very strategic about bringing on distribution partners and do not expect to be announcing a significant number of additional distributors in the U.S. over the next 12 months."

The BPO agreement is with Essintial Enterprise Solutions, which will provide six different levels of nationwide support of Huawei's enterprise hardware, from parts and logistics to field engineers and technical support. It'll be a new tool in Huawei's Hi-Care service portfolio, which VARs can sell as a maintenance and support service. In the future, Huawei solution providers will also be able to co-brand that service support with Huawei, the spokesperson said.

Huawei, which has designs on being a $100 billion company, began a major U.S. enterprise channel blitz a year ago at Interop, touting a plan to eventually do 100 percent of its enterprise sales in the U.S. through solution providers. In addition to the distribution and BPO launches, this year's Interop finds it touting its TE 30 videoconferencing endpoints, video infrastructure MCUs, and CloudEngine switches. Currently, U.S.-based Huawei partners can sell switches, routers, telepresence and storage products.

Huawei hasn't yet revealed names of its U.S. partners, but according to Rob Claus, vice president, U.S. channel sales and marketing, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, is building a pipeline, and as of October it has 49 Huawei-authorized partners, 11 in the authorization and process, and "more on the way," he said.

Huawei's entrance to the U.S. enterprise market has hit a number of speed bumps, including ongoing allegations about the $35 billion company's ties to the Chinese military and ongoing U.S. government scrutiny. It already has one black eye in the U.S. storage channel, too: a previous, storage-centric joint venture with Symantec, Huawei Symantec, which folded earlier this year.

NEXT: Facing Fierce Competition

Major Huawei competitors, especially Cisco, have also tried to paint the company as untrustworthy, uneven in its partnering strategy, and unethical. Earlier this week, Mark Chandler, Cisco's general counsel, took to Cisco's corporate blog to needle Huawei over the two companies' long-simmering dispute over intellectual property. Cisco and other companies previously sued Huawei for stealing IP.

"Within a few months of filing suit, Cisco obtained a worldwide injunction against sale by Huawei of our products including our code for a Cisco-proprietary routing protocol called EIGRP, and Huawei publicly admitted that the code had been used in their products and they pledged to stop," Chandler wrote.

That exact litigation was concluded and then covered by a confidentiality agreement, Chandler wrote, but after a Huawei lawyer stated that there "was not any infringement found," Cisco said it intends to set the record straight. Specifically, Chandler said Cisco is waiving confidentiality requirements for the litigation and "suggest[s] that Huawei itself have the expert's complete final report put into the public domain."

"Fair competition, indeed, requires transparency of business practices and a respect for intellectual property rights," he wrote.

PUBLISHED OCT. 3, 2012