VoIP Hardware: Cisco
Still, that’s not stopping partners such as Doug Bowlds, vice president of AAC Associates, Vienna, Va., from building a growing Cisco practice on the vendor’s VoIP portfolio. “Business couldn’t be better,” Bowlds said. “We’re overachieving [our goals], and it’s all voice-related,” he said.
High marks across both channel and technical criteria, particularly in areas such as product scalability and partner certification and training efforts, spurred Cisco to victory in the VoIP category of the 2005 CRN Channel Champions Survey.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company bested the competition, earning an overall satisfaction rating of 78.5. Avaya finished second with 75.2, while Nortel Networks placed third with 71.2, followed by 3Com with 69.9.
“We’ve dealt with quite a number of [voice] manufacturers in the past. … Cisco has been the best experience I have had, and I’ve been in the IT industry 25 years,” said Dave Shepherdson, president of Phenomenal Networks, a solution provider in Edina, Minn.
Partners lauded the vendor across a variety of technical and channel areas, awarding Cisco first-place finishes on 13 of 15 criteria, including product quality and reliability, interoperability, upselling opportunities and support over the life cycle of a project.
“It shows that the things we’ve been working on for the past number of years are really paying off in the eyes of partners,” said Richard McLeod, director of IP communications solutions for worldwide channels at Cisco.
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The vendor earned its widest margin of victory in scalability, besting its closest rival, Avaya, by 7.4 points. On the channel front, Cisco’s biggest showing was in technical education, where it outscored the competition with a 5.3-point delta between it and second-place Avaya.
Gia McNutt, CEO of Special Order Systems, a solution provider in Campbell, Calif., praised Cisco’s eLearning Web-based training initiative, which enables partners to access on-demand training at their own pace. The online training helps cut education costs and keeps crucial employees on the clock, she said. “As a smaller VAR, it’s incredibly expensive to take engineers out of the field for a week,” McNutt said.
Cisco shared the top spot with Avaya for reducing/eliminating channel conflict and placed second to Avaya in price/performance and sales margins. Partners said the Cisco brand name typically carries a price premium, one that can be problematic for smaller VoIP customers, particularly those with fewer than 50 seats.