Westcon Picks Up Trapeze WLAN Products
Under the agreement, Weston Group's Westcon division will distribute the full line of Trapeze Networks' mobility products, which consist of switches, access points and deployment and monitoring tools.
"Westcon is a big player in the distribution game, and this deal will give us access to many more resellers," said Bruce Van Nice, vice president of world-wide marketing for Trapeze Networks.
The agreement fits into Westcon Group's ongoing efforts to add what it calls "affinity vendors" to its portfolio of partners, said Laurie Usewicz, vice president of marketing and affinity sales at Westcon. She described an affinity vendor as one that complements the core vendor in terms of product offerings.
Westcon has three main focus areas for its partnership efforts: security, convergence, and mobility. Nortel and Trapeze earlier this year formed a long-term partnership aimed at development of a portfolio of enterprise wireless LAN products, and Usewicz said this makes Trapeze a good strategic fit for Westcon's mobility efforts.
"The arrangement Trapeze has with Nortel provides us with significant acceleration in the wireless space," Usewicz said.
Westcon's existing affinity vendors include Motorola, Brix Networks, Symbol Technologies, and Secure Computing. Usewicz said the addition of Trapeze brings indoor WLAN technology to complement Motorola's Canopy outdoor broadband wireless solution. "The addition of Trapeze products enables us to construct an end-to-end network," said Usewicz.