Voda One Seeks More Health-Care VARs

Three IP telephony-based bundles were developed for small doctors' offices, clinics and hospitals up to 500 beds, said Ron Sheps, vertical market manager at Westcon Group.

"We put together a sketch of what a soup-to-nuts network implementation would look like incorporating voice, data, wireless and security. And we put together training sessions to make it sound, [as well as] end-user presentations, handouts describing how everything interacts and shopping lists."

Voda One created the bundles to attract solution providers that have never sold to health-care customers, according to Sheps. "Our initial goal is to bring a new market to resellers. You know the technology, I'll get you names, addresses, phone numbers of IT directors and point you in the right direction," he said.

For example, the doctors' office bundles include products to help end users get HIPAA-compliant. "They have to have intelligence access to data in a protected format. They also need to have offsite storage solutions to make sure data is readily available," Sheps said. "In New Orleans, the number of people who have no health records anymore is staggering. We want doctors to enjoy VoIP in a wireless format and be compliant with customer regulations."

Each bundle leverages a secure IP telephony and mobility solution aimed at reducing operational costs, saving time and delivering an enhanced customer experience, according to the Tarrytown, N.Y.-based distributor.

Included in the Avaya-centric bundles are network diagrams and product descriptions to assist VARs. The core system includes Avaya Communication Manager, Avaya IP Office, Avaya Interactive Response and Avaya Speech Access and other vendors such as RSA Security, Meru Networks and Metropolis Technologies.

Sheps cited Gartner/Dataquest numbers that IT spending in the health-care market is growing at least 12 percent a year, a number that should not decrease because of the aging Baby Boomer population that requires more care.

Westcon joined several IT health-care organizations to help design the solutions. "The best path is for us to become industry experts for our resellers. We will find out what are the trends in health care," Sheps said. "Once we did that, we could focus on what partner services [VARs] could bring to the table, what trade shows they should attend, what lead-generation services to work with, what type of solutions are critical and special to health care, and how to articulate them articulately and intelligently."

At one health-care conference, Westcon executives heard that two of the top three barriers to health-care IT implementation were the vendor's or solution provider's inability to articulate a solution and a return on investment, Sheps added. "We saw that as an opportunity to share with our resellers," he said.