PowerDsine Rolls Out Power Over Ethernet System For MSPs

The PowerDsine 6524, unveiled last month at Interop New York, is a rack-mounted, 24-port PoE system which ships with the vendor&'s first secure remote management technology, said Ronen Heldman, vice president of product management at PowerDsine, Melville, N.Y. “Now you can remotely manage the system more securely,” he said.

Previous PoE products from the vendor had interfaces that could be accessed over the Internet remotely but did not offer secure SSL VPN protection, he said. The PowerDsine 6524 starts at about $1,199 and is expected to begin shipping Feb. 1, he said.

PowerDsine is recruiting channel partners worldwide, Heldman said. The vendor is a close partner of Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks, as well as other networking vendors. A significant opportunity for partners comes from adding PoE to existing switch deployments that do not currently have PoE capabilities, he added. For example, Cisco uses PowerDsine as the preferred PoE upgrade to its Inline Power Patch Panel for its Catalyst switches and other products, he said.

PoE capabilities are becoming increasingly important as technologies such as VoIP and WLAN gain a stronghold in the market. With PoE, users can run a single connection to devices such as IP phones or wireless access points instead of a network cable and a separate power cable.

Larry Altman, major account manager at solution provider ePlus Technology, Herndon, Va., said the company has reaped a 5 percent increase in overall revenue by introducing customers into PoE solutions. With several Cisco certified technicians on staff, ePlus, which also resells Cisco PoE products, has been able to offer customers with Cisco installed bases a less-expensive route to PoE by offering them PowerDsine PoE gear. “Sometimes it makes good sense to have an alternative to Cisco,” he said.

Reseller partners typically enjoy about 30 percent margins on PowerDsine sales, and the average cost of a PowerDsine deployment starts at about $30 per port, Heldman said. Sales have been brisk, taking PowerDsine revenue to about $40 million last year, he said.

For customers, the typical return on investment after adding PoE totals about a 75 percent savings on the cost of power consumption and management, he said. PoE also reduces the amount of time it takes to get a new network up and running, Heldman said. “The value of [PoE] is the reseller doesn&'t have to wait for an electrician to arrive before lighting up the network, a wait that can take weeks,” he said.

Altman said about half the customers that adopt PoE solutions are deploying them on new network additions where traditional power was never run.