Clear Connection: VoIP

Within that channel equation for VoIP, VARs generally give their distributors good marks for support and training.

"It was important for us to work with Westcon because of their understanding and their alignment with all the apps with Avaya--IP-telephony, unified-messaging and call-center stuff," says Chandler Legarreta, vice president of sales for Source One, Boise, Idaho, a $50 million reseller. Westcon Group, Tarrytown, N.Y., whose divisions handle Avaya, Cisco and Nortel, also assigned a Westcon point person to get the business units to work together on the best possible bundling of products and features for Source One's customers.

"That's extremely helpful," Legarreta says. "They've taken the time to understand how the VARs go to market and how we pull parts together to sell an overall solution."

But sometimes things slip when lots of different players have to coordinate, says Gia McNutt, CEO of Special Order Systems (SOS), a Rocklin, Calif.-based VAR that works with Ingram Micro. Just a few months ago, SOS was having trouble with direct ships and with long delivery cycles that too often got extended, leaving SOS at a standstill with customers expecting installation on a specific date. But things have changed in the past few months. "Ingram [Micro] has been very proactive and has set up conference calls, monitoring [them] through a spreadsheet," McNutt says.

Selling VoIP is nothing short of complex. VARs and customers need to understand whether a solution is IP-enabled, IP-integrated or fully converged with other networks and systems, according to Anthony Daley, senior vice president and general manager of the Americas for Westcon Group.

For its part, Santa Ana, Calif.-based Ingram Micro offers VoIP boot camps--its next one is in June--as well as technical visits for education, hands-on experience and the ability to learn from other VARs who have had early successes in the VoIP arena.

"They have to understand that the salesperson must become a consultant, not a sales rep. And a consultant has to know and understand the end customer's perspective--its biggest business imperatives and the processes around those imperatives," says Sally Stanton, vice president of category management at Ingram Micro. "This isn't an isolated application like a PBX used to be, so VARs have to be able to explain to an end user how an IP solution will impact its businesses and processes for the better."

Westcon reaches out to VARs through its global convergence symposiums held around the world, which bring together Westcon's anchor vendors, as well as those who build applications, security and quality-of-service features, Daley explains. "We cover the gamut with specialty distributors, and we have follow-up training for VARs for all components in conjunction with the manufacturers," he adds.

More VoIP opportunities are cropping up as the technology moves downstream to embrace smaller organizations. Until about a year ago, VoIP made no sense for customers with fewer than 75 users, according to SOS' McNutt. Since then, Cisco and others have introduced platforms for approximately 25 users.

McNutt would like to see the threshold move even lower--whether in pricing or number of users a VoIP solution can serve.

"Most small-business owners know they can get a key system for about $6,000, so when they see a price tag of $10,000 to $15,000 for an IP PBX, they ask, 'What do I get again?'" McNutt says, adding that VoIP is a tough justification for small businesses of 15 users or less.