Force10 Networks today announced an aggressive new promotion that incents HP resellers to continue to offer a standards-based alternative to Cisco. Resellers that want to offer best-of-breed Ethernet networking solutions from Force10 will receive an improved margin and a lower-priced competitive solution than a comparable configuration.

“We’ve seen ongoing channel disruption since Cisco introduced its Unified Computing System / blade server technology in 2009. It intensified this week with the announcement that Cisco will terminate its channel alliance with HP. We see a fast-emerging opportunity to build relationships with partners that now need an alternative to Cisco,” said Andrew Stewart, vice president, worldwide channels and sales operations at Force10 Networks.

Under the new program, Force10 will help resellers and distribution partners like Bell Micro, Tech Data and NHR to define attractive best-of-breed solutions geared for the data center, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and video applications.

Force10’s high density and resilient Ethernet switching and routing solutions are standards-based and offer the unique advantage of Command Line Interface (CLI) that is nearly identical to Cisco’s, thereby enabling seamless insertion. Moreover, Force10’s power and cooling metrics are up to 80% lower than Cisco’s comparable products. Also, the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Force10’s non-blocking line-rate solutions offer significant savings, ranging from thousands to millions of dollars over typical depreciation schedules used by enterprises today.

Industry Transition Opportunity

Called the “C300 Play-to-Win,” the promotion is designed to exploit the large installed base of Cisco’s Catalyst 6509 product family, which has now reached end of life. Under terms of the promotion that runs through the end of September 2010, Force10 will sell at a lower price its chassis-based C-Series C300 switch against any new Cisco 6500 Series chassis. Moreover, authorized reseller partners who generate more than $1 million in qualified C300 switch net sales to Force10 will receive an additional 10 percent cash rebate.

According to Force10, its C300 chassis solution surpasses the density and switching performance of the Catalyst 6509, supporting 384 line rate GbE ports and 64 line rate 10 GbE ports, in the same footprint as the Catalyst 4510R. The C300’s compact design allows customers to support more network capacity with less space while reducing cooling and power costs.

For Force10 authorized resellers who would like more information, please log in to our Partner Portal. If you are not a Force10 authorized reseller but would like to join, please register here.