In well attended launch today at the Makati Shang-ri La, Huawei announced its partnership with Lamco International as its sole distributor for the Enterprise Network and Unified Communications products.
Richard Yang, the Country Manager for Enterprise Business Group granted me a few minutes of exclusive interview where he shared useful information about Huawei and its Lamco appointment as distributor.
Huawei is a 23-year old company, and according to Mr. Yang, Huawei is the 2nd largest telco provider worldwide, Ericsson being the first. The company is present in 140 countries worldwide with 14 regional headquarters, 20 R&D centers and 37 training centers. While the PH office which have been around since 2001 has 700 staff, 600+ of which are all Pinoy, and they got 5 offices scattered in the country – 3 in the Makati and 2 in Cebu and Davao respectively.
Huawei carries a wide range of products, the partnership with Lamco is one only out of the four business group. The Telco/Carrier Network group which is strong in both Smart and Globe infrastructure. The Enterprise Group which will position its core routers and switches including the UC (Unified Communications) solution; they also got the widely-used Consumer products (the USB dongles are mostly Huawei, the LTE Dongle by Smart is also Huawei), and lastly they have the Joint Venture group.
Corporate resellers were present in the launch, these are the group that will actually do the positioning and selling of the products. Quidway, NetEngine, OptiX, and SoftCo are the common naming convention that you will hear from these guys.
Mr. Yang likewise shared that Asia Pacific College is their Huawei certified training center in the Philippines.
Huawei, just like Cisco requires Engineer’s Certification for its partners. The highest certification level is HCIE or Huawei Certified Internetworking Expert. I guess this is the counterpart of Cisco’s CCIE. The entry level certification is the HCDA or the Huawei Certified Datacommunication Associate.
When asked a tricky question why Lamco, why not the other distributors; Mr. Yang simply answered Lamco has the expertise in the networking solutions and have invested with the required certified engineers already.
Huawei is a Chinese company which has been making noise even in the Telco vertical; recently Globe Telecoms announced their network upgrade and Huawei is the sole supplier, while Smart is almost done with their network upgrade with Huawei at their back end likewise.
Lamco were represented by Mr. Wilson Lim, EVP and General Manager. Lamco is one of the largest distributor of enterprise and consumer products from A-Z, you name it from Apacer or Avaya up to Watchguard and Zebra products.
When purchasing solutions and products like Huawei, companies or organization should talk to authorized resellers; resellers prepares the design and bill of materials and place its order from the distributor. And finally, the disti orders the required equipment to the principal, in this case, Huawei.
