Xirrus appoints VCW to meet rapid growth

Xirrus, a specialist in high density wireless, has appointed Voice Comms Warehouse as its second UK distributor to meet demand from the health and education sector.

The vendor, who uses a distributed access point technology that combines multiple radios and controllers into each device, “has now reached the point where we need more capacity in the channel,” explains Ben Wilson, UK country manager for Xirrus. “VCW has a history of building strong channels, for example with Fortinet, and they both technically and channel-savvy.”

Wilson believes that VCW provides a good fit for Xirrus: “They did not want to have a ‘me too’ technology,” he explains. “With Xirrus, they [VCW] can talk to their customers and offer them something new.”

Key partners
As the first wireless product in the VCW portfolio, Wilson is confident that the agreement will help it expand its active partners from around 10 at present to between 15 to 20 over the next year. Although Xirrus has a relatively small community, it has some key names including education specialist SI European Electronique, and Capita, which has extensive contracts within government, education and health.

The firm says smaller partners like Satisnet are also typical of the highly-technical yet well regarded regional partners that Xirrus is hoping to recruit.

Its current distribution agreement with e92plus will be unaffected, claims Wilson: “We have a great relationship with them which we hope to continue.”

Says Mike Harris, chairman of the VCW Group: “We were attracted to Xirrus not only because of their technology’s uniqueness, but also because it is easy and fast to deploy – its technology triumphs where other wireless systems fail.  They have an impressive customer-base here in the UK, and we are confident that we will accelerate their UK channel strategy and help satisfy the growing demand.”

Activities
Wilson highlighted a number of other activities to support the firm’s UK growth including a new office and labs set to open at the end of July and the appointment of Hayley Tabor, ex-sales VP from Juniper Networks who has joined Xirrus as vice president of the company’s worldwide sales.

Xirrus markets itself as a wireless replacement for traditional cabled infrastructure. By using more directional radio antennas per unit than any other vendor combined with an integrated controller, the firm has won a significant market share in dense environments like hospitals and schools.

Although each Xirrus access point costs more than rival solutions, the integrated controller and high density of each device means that far fewer are required and the overall hardware and installation costs are significantly lower than traditional wireless technologies.