Digium, Westcon Group Partner to Deliver Open-Source Telephony to Channel

Pirro is quick to mention that the products Westcon will be offering are the proven and tested turnkey products, rather than code targeted toward developers.

He said CollaborationPoint OpenSource will include programs and tools for resellers who are new to selling open-source telephony. In addition, Westcon Group will reach out to dealers to familiarize them with the opn-source value proposition.

Pirro said he expects that in addition to pushing open-source through Westcon Group’s traditional channel, some Asterisk resellers will find a home with Westcon because of some of the support tools it provides that other smaller boutique distributors do not. For example, Westcon offers financing plans that partners can offer to their end user customers. In addition, Westcon has experience with legacy telephony platforms from Nortel, Avaya, Cisco and others.

“Having those experiences and relationships and understanding those environments, we think will be a tremendous benefit to the open-source or Digium resellers in the sense that in most applications they are going to be interfacing with some kind of proprietary or legacy system or some kind of multivendor environment,” Pirro said. “I don’t think there is another distributor today that has that level of expertise in that area and also is in open source.”

Westcon Group will be offering training and expects to also facilitate Digium Certified Asterisk Professional (dCAP) certification for interested resellers in the future.

To facilitate SIP trunking orders along with the open-source PBX, Westcon Group has signed on as a subagent of master agency World Telecom Group, which will qualify providers and quote pricing for Westcon Group’s resellers.