Westcon has attained the rare distinction of a Microsoft Gold Communications Competency for Microsoft Lync. According to Greene, this means it can provide a one-stop shop for partners. “Westcon has the broadest Lync ecosystem in the industry and we can provide our partners with a complete solution of Lync-optimised hardware and services,” she says. “We can build the whole solution from the front desktop to the back end and to the help desk afterwards.” She says resellers would have to go to two or three distributors in Ireland to get an equivalent service.
“There are distributors who can offer pieces of what we can offer,” Greene claims, “but they can’t offer the whole portfolio. We can design it and support partners and order everything for them. There are Irish distributors offering some of the products we offer, it’s just that if a partner wants to grow and do the complete solution, it should talk to us.”
The Microsoft Lync business is relatively new for Westcon in Ireland, although it was launched in the UK two years ago. “We’ve done some investment on the Irish side,” Greene reveals. “We’ve just appointed an internal account manager for Ireland and that will give us the bandwidth to grow our Lync business practice in Ireland.”
Partners
She believes Westcon will appeal to a mixture of partners. Existing Microsoft partners will be attracted to the distributor if they are looking for an easier way to work with Lync. On the Avaya side, Microsoft is becoming a product that people want on their desktop and Avaya has developed a product to integrate with Lync. She says people are still keen to have the resiliency of the telephone system: “People are worried about the quality of the voice, they still like to have their own telephone system. Many customers still want a telephone back up.”
She emphasises Westcon’s ability to sell “the whole portfolio from data right through to the headsets on the desk” and the distributor’s 30-year heritage in the telecoms market.
In addition, she has access to “a huge resource in the UK of pre-sales support, IP Office design and a help desk”. She stresses that pre-sales support people come to Ireland and meet with partners. “A few weeks ago, I had five people from Westcon meeting partners [in Ireland],” Greene says. “They’re not just an e-mail address, they’re building their own relationships as well. Every month at least two people come to Ireland. It’s important that the guys in UK build up their own relationship for their own expertise with our partners.”
She describes Westcon as an “innovator in identifying market trends and new solutions for partners. We have the broadest portfolio in unified communications, video and data, we have a global reach and our logistics and inventory are a real differentiator”. For example, some Irish partners work with a customer’s European head office in Ireland but need to send products to other countries and Westcon can accommodate them.”
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