NEWS & VIEWS: "We ensure that there is no shortage of inventory for our partners"

Montreal-based Eicon Networks makes communication products for networked

business applications. Eicon distributes, markets, and supports its products in

more than 80 countries through a network of channel partners, telecommunication

companies, Internet service providers, and original equipment manufacturers.

Recently the company launched the V series of its Diva servers for voice,

speech, and conferencing applications. Chew Weng Hock, general manager (South

Aisa) elaborated the details of its products and India plans to VOICE&DATA.

Excerpts:

What percentage of your revenue comes from India?



Being a private company we do not disclose the revenue figures. However, the

Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, contributes about nine percent of our

overall revenues. Within this, India is the largest contributor with a 40

percent share, followed by Malaysia at 20 percent, and Australia and Singapore

contribute 15 percent each. Overall, our biggest market is Europe with 75

percent and North America contributes 16 percent.

Why is Eicon not getting into direct selling of its products?

Eicon does not provide end-to-end solutions. We provide just the platform on

which others can develop applications, either according to the market

requirement or on their own. Our partners develop these applications and deal

directly with the end customers. We ensure that there is no shortage of

inventory for our partners. This model also gives us the leverage of working

with multiple partners and gives us better market reach without being restricted

to one application-one partner kind of a model.

Does this mean that the solutions have to be bundled with your products

and vice versa?



Our partners sell the products either directly or via their resellers. Some

sell their applications with the product; some sell just the application and

recommend the type of platform. We follow an open standard and our products can

work with applications developed on other platforms too. Our Diva servers are

designed for all the operating systems including Microsoft 2000, XP, and 2003,

and all major Linux distributions. We do not place any restriction on buying our

product with the application if it works with other products. The aim is to

provide end products that fit into the requirements and demandsof the user.

How many partners do you have in India?



In India we have been distributing our products through Dax Networks. At

present we have two partners and we would appoint 20 partners within the next

six months. These partners are mainly going to be the independent software

vendors and system integrators. Globally, over 70 partners are using our

open-ended platforms to develop voice solutions for end users.

Anurag Prasad