Lucent Tests Channel Plans With Bell Micro

"Bell Micro is our first step to the mass market with a killer product," said Jon Pelson, vice president of Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent's Global Business Partners organization.

The focus of the agreement is the OptiStar EdgeSwitch, a product Lucent introduced last summer but which is only now starting to enter the channel. The switch can be configured to connect Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, OC-48 and/or OC-12 protocols, allowing SANs to be connected over IP networks for use in remote backup and disaster recovery.

Other Lucent products Bell Microproducts will distribute include routers, remote-access solutions, data networking solutions, DSL products and firewall solutions.

The agreement with Bell Microproducts further shifts Lucent's sales focus to the channel, said Pelson. It leaves Lucent's direct-sales force to concentrate on its top 30 to 50 service provider clients worldwide, including SBC Communications and Verizon, with all other sales going through the channel, he said.

Until recently, the company did not have an authorized reseller program, said Pelson. However, about 200 solution providers have become officially authorized and others are in the process, he said. Lucent will only allow authorized partners to purchase through Bell Microproducts or other distributors it may sign in the future, he said.

David Boskee, senior director of strategic alliances at Storage Computer, a Nashua, N.H.-based systems integrator, said he is impressed with both the Lucent product and its move to Bell Microproducts.

The OptiStar has proven to be the perfect product for high-bandwidth storage WANs, said Boskee. "Our storage products can flood an OC-48 line, and only the OptiStar can handle the bandwidth," he said.

The EdgeSwitch and other products are slated for availability from Bell Microproducts this week. Edge-Switch pricing depends on the actual configuration of the product but is less than $100,000, according to Bell Microproducts, based here. Solution providers will be authorized to buy the EdgeSwitch based on whatever rules Lucent puts in place, said Phil Roussey, Bell Microproducts' executive vice president of enterprise storage.

MIKE CRUZ contributed to this story.