Nortel Kicks Off Partner Advantage Program

Under the program, Nortel aims to provide incentives for North American partners willing to boost their service capabilities to deliver high-quality converged solutions that incorporate technologies such as IP telephony, wireless LANs, security and communications applications, said Christine Durham, vice president of enterprise channel marketing at Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel.

Partner Advantage, first rolled out last month, now includes about 80 solution providers. The program creates three partner designations: Advantage, Premium Advantage and Elite Advantage. Each designation requires partners to achieve certain volume requirements, maintain specified numbers of Nortel-certified staff and provide varying levels of service capabilities. In return, partners receive deeper discounts and higher levels of sales, marketing and technical support from Nortel.

Nortel is also educating its customer base about the program so they know that solution providers that earn a partner designation provide top-level services, Durham said. "Some of them are [reworking] RFPs to request or require a designated partner," she said.

In the end, the training, certification and service requirements of the program should result in improved satisfaction among Nortel customers, she said. "The better the end-user experience, the better for Nortel down the road," Durham said.

Several partners that qualified for Partner Advantage applauded the program because it compensates them for investing in Nortel and puts less emphasis on sales volumes.

"Nortel's programs before had everything to do with volume commitments, what you spent with them and only that. This [new program], in a sense, levels the playing field," said Tony Parella, president of Shared Technologies, a Dallas-based solution provider that has earned the Elite Advantage designation.

About 80 percent of Shared Technologies' business is based on Nortel, Parella said, declining to reveal the dollar amount of the business. The solution provider has put about 350 sales and technical employees through Nortel's training and certification programs, he said.

Solution provider Combat Networks has spent $20,000 to $40,000 to beef up its services infrastructure and get six technical and five sales employees through training and certification, said Rob Finucan, president of the Ottawa-based firm, which has earned Premium Advantage partner status. The company does about $3 million in Nortel business per year, which accounts for 80 percent of its revenue.

Because of the steeper discounts provided by Partner Advantage, Combat Networks now has less competition from solution providers that have not invested as much in their Nortel practices, Finucan said.

"We're making more money off our installed base because we're not having to compete against the little guy who signed up on the Web and received a discount in the past," he said.

Partners said the most challenging aspect of the Partner Advantage program has been the training and certification element.

"The technical training, especially on the next-generation products, is very complex," said Kieron Dowling, president and CEO of Cygnal Technologies, a Premium Advantage partner in Markham, Ontario. Dowling had served as an executive at Nortel for 14 years, starting in the mid-1980s.

About 60 Cygnal employees have earned Nortel certifications. Cygnal, which also represents Cisco Systems and Avaya, recently became a Nortel partner. Nortel sales currently account for about $4 million of the company's $113 million in annual revenue, Dowling said.

The high level of difficulty ensures that Nortel's partners are capable of building and supporting more complex converged solutions, he said. "The stronger the partners are out in the marketplace, the better it is for Nortel," he added.