Vernier Flips Channel Switch

Kamal Arafeh was named to the newly created position of vice president of sales at Vernier, a WLAN infrastructure vendor in Mountain View, Calif. Now is a good time for the company to shift its North American sales strategy to focus on the channel because Vernier's products have been in the market for a couple of years, Arafeh said.

"We're really looking for solution providers with a capacity and understanding of network infrastructure in general that want to make a leap into the WLAN market," Arafeh said.

Solution providers experienced in wireless security assessments and site surveys are also attractive, Arafeh said.

Vernier currently derives about 30 percent of its annual revenue through partnerships with about 50 solution providers but is looking to shift that to between 70 percent and 80 percent by the end of the year, he said.

Dan Riekes, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Affidia Systems, said the Los Angeles-based company is off to a good start with Vernier, judging by positive feedback from customers.

Riekes said selling products is a new venture for Affidia, which until now had been a traditional IT professional services firm specializing in education and health care.

"These guys [Vernier] know how to set up policy for individual groups or users or areas of a campus or organization, which makes things easier to manage and easier to add a lot more value," Riekes said. "That's why we decided to take on selling [Vernier products]."