CRN Exclusive: D&H Doubles Down On Cisco Meraki With New, Intensive Training Program

D&H Distributing its rolling out robust, in-person sales and configuration training around Meraki to dramatically increase usage of the product among D&H's existing Cisco partners.

The Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor said its webinar next week and one-day training events in eight states starting next month are part of an effort to increase penetration of the Meraki cloud-controlled Wi-Fi, routing and security offerings from 20 percent of D&H's Cisco partners today to 70 percent to 75 percent of the company's Cisco partners, according to Peter Gambino, D&H's director of Cisco sales.

"We're taking Meraki and really running," Gambino told CRN exclusively. "We're not waiting and seeing how it goes."

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D&H has doubled its Meraki business over the past year, Gambino said, with the distributor's Meraki sales from the first 5.5 months of Cisco's 2017 fiscal year (which began Aug. 1) already surpassing D&H's Meraki sales from the entirety of Cisco's 2016 fiscal year (which ended July 30). Meraki has proven to be a good way for channel partners to introduce cloud services to their end-user customers, Gambino said.

"We feel this topic and product set are a great solution for the partners we meet and talk with on a daily basis," Gambino said. "We think this is a winner."

D&H's first users of Meraki were multisite companies with 30 or fewer employees in each location who could most benefit from using the cloud to aggregate and remotely manage different locations, Gambino said. Partners using Meraki don't have to be physically on-site to manage systems, products or applications, Gambino said, and have access to real-time, web-based diagnostics.

Demand for Meraki has been most pronounced from SMBs, schools and government agencies, Gambino said, with one of D&H's partners recently installing Meraki in a fairly large hospital. SMBs should find Meraki easy to use and easy to manage, he said.

Meraki should appeal to partners in the early stages of building out managed services, Gambino said, as well as those with a more mature managed services practice. Partners will benefit from the demo kit D&H has put together, he said, which can be used to demonstrate to clients all of the Meraki-related competencies in which they've been trained.

"The training alone does not get them into their customer set," Gambino said. D&H's Meraki webinar will take place at 2 p.m. Tuesday, and can be accessed at no charge at www.dandh.com/solutionslab.

Gambino said D&H was one of the only distributors to jump on the training center opportunity with Meraki as soon as it became available in December. The formal designation from Cisco will keep D&H on the forefront of expertise in the market as the vendor rolls out new initiatives around Meraki such as handsets, phone, videocameras and video surveillance, Gambino said.

Everyone in D&H's Cisco business unit is well-trained in Meraki, Gambino said, and is well-suited to get the product in the hands of customers as part of a full-stack product implementation. As D&H's Meraki business grows, the company plans to add more salespeople and do more training to help with scaling the business.

"We can scale, and they [our Cisco salespeople] are all knowledgeable on answering questions," Gambino said.

Though D&H's training courses are technical in nature, Gambino said they will go well beyond how to install and address sales opportunities around competitive positioning. D&H will also set aside dollars and its Cisco pro advertising teams to help partners market Meraki, Gambino said.

D&H's on-site Meraki360 trainings will be conducted by a certified engineer in Cisco facilities in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Gambino said 10 registered Cisco partners in each of those states will be allowed to attend the in-person training.

CHS Technology currently resells Cisco routing, switching, firewall and wireless equipment, but is looking to expand its business with the vendor into the cloud, according to David Goad, president and owner of the Norman, Okla.-based D&H partner.

"I don't think it's a question of if, but when, when it comes to getting on board with Meraki," Goad said. "We need to have this in our lineup."

Goad plans to send one of his technicians to the training course to get a better sense of how challenging it would be to add Meraki to CHS' line card. He hopes that Meraki offers good margins and is easy to set up and manage.

"I think that people expect you to be able to offer that choice," Goad said. "Customers may want stuff in the cloud."