Siemens Eyes Network Convergence With ProCurve Deal

Communications networking VoIP

The deal, according to Palo Alto, Calif.-based ProCurve's worldwide business development manager, Pierre Grand, essentially makes Munich-based Siemens Enterprise Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG, one of ProCurve's Elite level channel partners.

Siemens will begin a phased roll out, starting in Germany with subsequent implementation planned soon for the United States, United Kingdom, Austria and Spain. Grand said combining the two vendors' offerings provides high levels of IP communications performance and open standards-based networking to users.

Grand said Siemens will focus on selling its HiPath unified communications solutions and ProCurve will provide the LAN component with its range of switching products, including the ProCurve switches 3500, 5400 and 8200 series, which are built on the ProVision ASIC, and the ProCurve Switch Series 2600, which was recently upgraded to the 2610 series.

Basically, Grand said, Siemens will be offering every component of a turnkey VoIP and UC solution with ProCurve as the backbone. Siemens, by adding ProCurve to its lineup, can be a one-stop-shop for voice and data convergence.

"A few years back an offering like this wasn't compelling enough to the enterprise," he said. "We now have something that's very compelling from an enterprise standpoint."

According to Grand, Siemens will handle the installation and the first level of service. He said the deal won't take away from ProCurve's stable of existing channel partners and in certain areas where Siemens channel partners deploy HiPath solutions, resellers will also be able to offer the complete Siemens and ProCurve solution.

The agreement, Grand added, will expose ProCurve to a much broader customer base among the large, multi-national corporations Siemens currently serves.

"We do not see any downside in this relationship," he said, adding that partners can leverage the tools offered by Siemens to create services and management offerings around them. "Siemens is the preeminent and dominant vendor in the IP communications space. But Siemens has no LAN offering and is open to partnering with open-standards vendors."

Thomas Roesler, senior vice president of data business for Siemens Enterprise Communications, said in a statement that the deal with ProCurve will round out Siemens' current converged network offerings.

"As a global vendor and system integrator, we see the need for attractive, robust and feature-rich voice and data solutions," Roesler said. He added that pairing with ProCurve to offer its IP infrastructure gear gives Siemens "a new degree of freedom to act as an independent system integrator in the market for integrated data and real-time end-to-end solutions."