Joining Hands

Looking to expand its market share in Asia, 3Com has recently announced an
enhanced partner program for providing its channel partners greater
opportunities for growth and profitability. The program launched at Hangzhou
also seeks to reward partners based on their increasing commitment and expertise
in selling 3Com products and solutions.

The new partner program includes integration of H3C switching products into
the 3Com enterprise LAN specialization that will further enable seamless
integration of H3C partners to the 3Com Partner Program infrastructure and SMB
solutions specialization that will reward those partners who sell 3Com products
targeted at small businesses (OfficeConnect, Baseline product lines). Moreover,
the newly joined partners would have access to online training tools that will
provide them with more 3Com knowledge and solutions from which they can select
for their customers needs.

Following the integration of 3Com and H3C Technologies in July this year,
H3C was ideally positioned as a strategic solution suite of 3Com targeting the
large enterprise market. Having H3C partners integrated into the partner program
will allow advanced solutions like the IP storage, IP surveillance, and the
soon-to-be-launched Multiple Services Router (MSR) to bring to our customers in
Asia faster. And, with the inclusion of the SMB solutions specialization,
smaller businesses can also benefit from the expertise and solutions provided by
3Com and our partners, notes Peter Chai, vice president and general manager,
Asia Pacific, 3Com.

Since the small business market accounts for nearly 35% of 3Coms sales in
the Apac, the small business product lines in the new Focus Partner Program is
expected to have an immediate effect on streamlining the SMB solution
go-to-market process and rewarding partners selling these products with
quarterly rebates plus many other new benefits. Together with 3Coms new global
services and support infrastructure, which bring all critical customer care
issues back in-house, 3Coms customers in the small, medium, and large
enterprise space will be able to experience better pre-sales, deployment, and
post-sales support, adds Chai.

Significantly, the partner program will also give the partners a chance to
specialize in 3Coms major technology areas like security, IP Telephony,
enterprise LAN (including H3C solutions), and enterprise wireless
infrastructure, and now SMB as well. Partners can choose their specialization
categories as per convenience. The idea behind technology specialization is to
provide visibility for an end user to find the most qualified partner for their
needs. And along with the specialization, the partners can achieve the Elite
status (an exclusive group of partners that meet 3Coms most stringent
requirements for sales as well as technical and service support).

Restructuring Plans

The company has also announced a massive restructuring of its Asia Pacific
service and support organization thus bringing technical support in-house to
improve service delivery and give more personal attention to its Apac customers.
Moreover, the resolution time improved owing to opening of two new multi-lingual
call centers based in Australia and Philippines. The new model is scalable and
flexible. Apac customers can now call 3Com direct for dedicated support secure
in the knowledge that their query is being handled by 3Com staff with the right
expertise in terms of regional knowledge, language skills, and experience to
provide fast, accurate resolution, says Imran Khan, head, 3Com, Global Services
in EMEA and Asia Pacific.

The company has invested approximately $12 mn in setting up new systems and
recruiting staff worldwide with headcount additions for the new global service
and support team including seven in 3Coms Sydney office for complementing
existing Apac and field-based engineers. The America region and the UK would
soon be increasing their service and support staff, says Khan.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in