The VAR Guy

The buzz involving Interop Las Vegas (April 27-May 2) is building. The VAR Guy has received briefing requests from Adtran, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and other networking vendors. Here are three messages he hopes to hear, and three messages he intends to ignore.

Three messages to hype: 

1. Open Source: Face it. The Asterisk IP PBX is gaining momentum. Companies like Digium are on a roll. What do entrenched networking companies like Cisco and others plan to do to address Asterisk?

2. TelePresence: Prices coming down? Deployments going up? Please advise.

3. Unified applications: So, you’re getting into the unified communications market. What independent software developers (ISVs) are writing to your platform? What applications are available?

 Three messages to avoid:

 1. We just won [insert award name here]: Awards are nice. Pat yourself on the back (privately) if a magazine decides to honor you with a crystal trophy. But frankly, most bloggers don’t care. Unless, of course, The VAR Guy himself wins a Pulitzer. In that case, our resident blogger can spend the entire show trading mutual admiration with you.

2. We’re green: Ok, the green movement is important. But if you can’t state exactly how your product or service benefits the environment, don’t make the claim at all. In short: Give The VAR Guy some metrics to back up your claims.

3.  We’re channel-friendly: Nice claim. But before you make it, consider this: Roughly 95 percent of Cisco’s revenue flows through partners. Beat that mark, and The VAR Guy will truly be impressed.

That’s all for now. The VAR Guy has to spend some time reading more of the Interop spam hitting his inbox.