Hello MotoChannel: Motorola Eyes Enterprises, Turns to Partners

While Motorola Inc. is best-known for supplying handsets and infrastructure equipment to service providers, the vendor quietly has been building an enterprise story over the last 18 months, spurred ahead by the acquisition of enterprise mobility scion Symbol Technologies in September 2006. Now it’s turning to a channel strategy to help it get the word out.

Motorola's Sal LoSchiavo

"Our business was primarily targeted to service providers, and we built a reseller channel in 2002 for that," explains Sal LoSchiavo, director of wireless broadband channels at Motorola. "That was a good business, but the goal was to go for more growth, so as we added new products, we needed other ways to reach the market. So we have launched a new channel partner program that includes VAR tiers."

The program contains a mobile VAR tier, whose 25 members focus on selling large mesh networking projects that contain a mobility component and require systems integration. Meanwhile, a fixed VAR tier sells the Motorola Canopy portfolio, point-to-point solutions, WLANs and some wireless mesh products; there are about 450 fixed VARs in the channel, and Motorola is looking to grow that. Most of them are rolled under Motorola’s five North American wireless broadband distributors. "If you purchase through a distributor, you partner with that distributor for 12 months, and rebates and so on are only offered through that assigned distribution," says LoSchiavo. "It helps foster relationship-building between the VAR and the distributor, because you’re committed now for 12 months."

Motorola also is leveraging its existing two-way radio distributor channel, which contains 1,000-plus dealers in North America that serve SMBs, governments and the public safety sector with walkie-talkie equipment. About 125 of those also are certified to be fixed wireless VARs.

To grow the channel, Motorola is targeting VARs fluent in selling IT, LoSchiavo says, with those focused on rolling out outdoor applications to date as a sweet spot. "This year we’re trying to bridge the inside and outside worlds with the WLAN portfolio acquired from Symbol," he explains. "Last year, we introduced a WLAN indoor portfolio and so now we can enable them to sell an end-to-end solution — inside and out."

It also works the other way around. "The total available WLAN market is a $2 billion market," LoSchiavo says. "If you are successful on WLAN, there is a good chance you’d be good at bringing in an outdoor portfolio. We can open up new doors and new business." Ironically, LoSchiavo said that after contacting several Cisco partners, the company discovered they were not really selling outdoor wireless. "So the Cisco channel is a good opportunity," he adds.

Motorola also sees a main driver in enterprise sales as being applications; therefore, it is looking to partner with companies that provide them, as well as differentiate by bringing applications to the table for VARs. To that end, the vendor continues to build an application ecosystem of third-party partners that VARs can leverage. "We can sell wireless broadband as the transport, for pushing data from A to B, but to drive success in the SMBs, you really have to leverage the apps," LoSchiavo says. "So we’re focused on best practices, and partnering those players up with the VAR channel to support our strategy going forward."

VARs, in fact, will be a center point for Motorola as it continues to target the business market. "The lion’s share of sales in general are driven by indirect channel for wireless broadband, and we also will rely on the indirect channel to penetrate the verticals, because we know it has a farther reach than Motorola direct," says LoSchiavo. "All these customers are so fragmented, and there are thousands and thousands of them, so the only way you’re ever going to serve those accounts is through a channel." He also says that since most wireless broadband deals are smaller — $200,000 to deploy a wireless LAN with video surveillance on a college campus, say — that it’s simply too expensive to acquire that business with a direct team.

As for attracting the kinds of VARs it needs, Motorola realized it would face steep competition from companies like Cisco Systems Inc. (No. 1 for WLAN sales) and specialized players like Meru Networks and Aruba Networks Inc., so it set about working on its legitimacy in the VAR space. "We’ve launched this new channel partner program that formalizes the tiers, benefits and requirements, and it includes a formal certification program," says LoSchiavo. "We had training programs, but this is a first for Motorola. It focuses on highlighting the skill set required to integrate and sell these systems. Our authorized VARs have to have technical certification — just as Cisco requires — so I think it puts us on the map in regards to a formal program."

Other requirements for partners include having pre- and post-sale support teams in-house, meeting sales expectations and targets depending on which tier (distributor, fixed or mobile), and, for the mobile VAR channel, 10 to 15 minimum technical field systems engineers.

VARs receive compensation on the hardware, maintenance and software components of the solution. Motorola provides MSRP pricing, but the VARs set their own sale price. Authorized partners also are entitled to rebates.

Motorola also maintains an online portal with proposal-generation tools, lead-management systems that automatically track and deliver thousands of leads, plus an education corner with case studies and application notes.

Motorola also hopes to sweeten the pot going forward by implementing deal registration later this year. "This will launch in federal market first," says LoSchiavo. "If a VAR identifies an opportunity, they can register the project with Motorola, and essentially they’re given certain protections that they get the account. It locks up the support we will commit to that one project that the VAR will sell to that customer." Through its portfolio, certification process and codified program, Motorola hopes to continue growing its channel for the foreseeable future.

"We have the resources and the strategy to continue to build this business now and in the future," LoSchiavo says. "Motorola has invested billions into the portfolio over the last three to four years to cover outdoor, indoor and everything in-between; the things we’ve developed organically, like Canopy [a proprietary suite of fixed broadband solutions], and what we’ve acquired."