Westcon Signs On To Offer Nortel's Meridian Wares

The Nortel-focused subsidiary of Westcon Group plans to carry Meridian telephones, integrated communications systems (ICSes), messaging applications and call center products, according to the Tarrytown-based distributor.

Last June, Westcon started selling Nortel's Norstar line of products for SMBs, but the distributor had its eye on Nortel's higher-end Meridian line for larger customers, said Alan Marc Smith, CEO of Westcon Group.

Although the Meridian line has traditionally been installed by voice dealers, solution providers will find opportunities in converged voice and data networks, Smith said.

"We feel VoIP is a transition technology. It's not going to be forklifted into a company. Instead, people will enable segments of their network with VoIP," he said. "If you have a bigger Meridian box, you're not going to pull that out. Instead, you'll replace segments of it."

Most customers aren't moving their enterprise to VoIP, but many departments are making the shift, Smith said, adding that Westcon intends to aim the Meridian line at those accounts. "You can justify moving your call center or customer support organization to VoIP more than your finance organization," he said.

Westcon Inc. sought the Meridian line because the distributor was looking to better serve larger accounts and to prepare solution providers to sell a higher level of technology, Smith said.

"If we couldn't sell Meridian, we'd be hindered in getting the resellers competent to handle IP telephony," Smith added. "The standard Meridian [product is sold by voice resellers who may sell the IP component, which is generally sold by a data guy. If a customer wants to upgrade their Meridian to make it VoIP, who's going to do this? The voice reseller understands PBX, but the data reseller understands how the blade is integrated into the network."

Johnston Communications Voice and Data has a heritage deploying voice solutions but believes there's a future in selling converged solutions, said Philip Johnston, director of sales at the North Arlington, N.J.-based solution provider.

"It hasn't happened as quickly as people first thought it would happen. When you buy a PBX, you make a huge capital investment, and you want to see a good 10- to 15-year return on that investment," Johnston said. "You're not going to spend that amount of money to get rid of it in three or four years. Converged technologies will be a factor here.

"If history repeats itself, [Westcon Inc. has done a good job rolling out Nortel on the data side," Johnston said. "They do a great job rolling out products and providing configuration support. Moving into voice will be a transition, but it won't be a hurdle for them to overcome."

Westcon Group's Voda One subsidiary carries Avaya's Definity PBX line, giving customers two choices for midsize-to-enterprise PBX platforms, Smith said.

"On any given day, Definity or Meridian is the leading PBX. [Having half of the portfolio left us deficient to deploy Nortel converged technologies," Smith said.

Westcon Inc. is the first data-traditional distributor to carry Nortel's Meridian line, said executives.

"In order for us to have the intellectual property, the software, the configuration and design capabilities, the pre- and post-sales support, it starts with a base product," Smith said. "Meridian is the chassis enabler. Unless you have that core competency, you will have difficulty adding value to customers' [solutions."

It's important for Westcon to offer as complete a convergence solution as possible, he said.

Meridian systems can accommodate between 60 and 100,000 lines while providing users with IP telephony expansion capabilities, according to Westcon executives.

"We've gone from 10 to 10/100 to gigabyte to terabyte. That's not revolution. That's a better, cleaner, faster technology, but it's still Ethernet," Smith said. "Now we're taking voice and making it into data and converging voice and data on one transport technology. That's revolutionary to the way we transact voice today."