Enterasys Gets In Channel Zone, Touts Security Effort

The networking vendor introduced 140 partners to its new channel efforts last week at its 2004 Americas Partner Conference in Miami, its first partner confab in several years.

"Enterasys started building a channel three years ago and did nothing to enhance it over the last two years," said Cosmo Santullo, executive vice president of worldwide sales and service, who joined the Andover, Mass.-based company last fall. Enterasys first moved to a channel model after it was spun out from Cabletron Systems in 2001.

Now Enterasys is providing incentives to its regional sales managers to engage top channel partners in joint business-planning, rolling out new online configuration and quoting tools, and providing more training to help partners build up their services businesses, he said.

"We're projecting a minimum of 20 percent sales growth [in Enterasys business]," said Amir Sohrabi, executive vice president of Managed Solutions Planning Xperts, an Arlington, Va.-based solution provider that had 2003 Enterasys sales of $8 million. "I'm really excited about their focus to market the company because that's something they haven't done historically."

The channel push is part of Enterasys' overall tactic to pick up market share against Cisco Systems by reinventing itself as a vendor that provides intelligent networking equipment capable of proactively shutting down security threats.

Enterasys' new Secure Networks strategy, accompanied by a new logo and new "Networks That Know" company tagline, launched two weeks ago with the aim of touting the security capabilities its product lines have had for several years.

Mike Vinton, senior account manager at Global Technology Resources, Denver, said he is pushing more Enterasys business over Cisco because the Enterasys equipment is more secure, especially as customers add voice and video to their data networks. "The more you put on the network, the more secure it's got to be."

With the frequency and complexity of security threats on the rise, Enterasys hopes its message will resonate not only with new customers but the thousands of Enterasys/Cabletron customers that have not recently made new product purchases, said Enterasys President Mark Aslett during a keynote presentation at the partner conference.

About 75 percent of the 15,000 existing North American Enterasys/Cabletron customers have not purchased from Enterasys for at least two years, creating a tremendous opportunity for both the vendor and its channel partners, Aslett said.

Enterasys is also finalizing details of a revamped partner program, expected to debut in the next few weeks. It includes new partner designations and higher rewards for partners that add the most value. Elements of the program could also include additional rebates and incentives for closing new business and selling solutions.