ClearOne Announces Distribution Agreement With Westcon Group
Salt Lake City, UT and Tarrytown, NY, February 14, 2007 – ClearOne (OTC: CLRO.OB), the global provider of audio conferencing products, and Westcon Group, Inc., the world's leading specialty distributor in networking, security, mobility and convergence, announced that Westcon Group will distribute ClearOne's products in North America.
Westcon Group is launching its ClearOne relationship initially with Voda One with intentions of also carrying the products at Comstor and Westcon in the future. ClearOne's products will be available through Voda's One ConvergencePoint program (http://www.convergencepoint.vodaone.com). The Voda One ConvergencePoint program offers resellers a central focus on selling Avaya solutions, while supporting them with a wide variety of Affinity Vendors, enabling the development of the types of converged, multi-vendor solutions that their customers are requiring in today's business environment
Westcon Group will carry ClearOne's full line of personal, tabletop, and premium audio conferencing products, which include Chat™ 50, Chat 150, the MAX® and MAXAttach™ family of analog wired, wireless, and SIP-based VoIP conference phones, and the RAV™ series of premium conferencing systems. The company will also carry ClearOne's line of conferencing furniture. ClearOne's MAXAttach™ IP and MAX IP products have been certified under Avaya's DevConnect program; the Chat 50 and Chat 150 also connect directly to select Avaya handsets for greatly improved hands-free speaker phone capabilities.
"We are very pleased to join forces with Westcon Group," said Steven Andresen, ClearOne's vice president of worldwide sales. "They are a major player in the telephony channel, and this arrangement opens new opportunities for resellers and end users who have been looking for a better audio conferencing experience. Our products are a perfect complement to a telephony system sale, and having them available to Voda One's resellers directly alongside Avaya's solutions is ideal for us and the reseller community."
Steven Bernard vice president and general manager of Voda One, added: "We are excited to have a direct relationship with ClearOne, which gives us the ability to offer a highly competitive product at an attractive price point. BusinessPartners accessing our ConvergencePoint program can be brought up to speed very quickly on how to position these solutions in the market, which can compete against the best audio conferencing products in the industry. Having ClearOne on our line card also plays well into our mobility strategy, since our BusinessPartners are selling more and more soft phones and related accessories--these kinds of solutions will become more and more important to the mobile workforce."
Ken Apperson, president of Northern, CA- based Quagga, said "Voda One's addition of ClearOne gives us a chance bring a high-margin, high performance product into a mobility solution sale. Having these products available through makes it extraordinarily easy to position them in every applicable end-user market."
ABOUT CLEARONE
ClearOne is a communications solutions company that develops and sells audio conferencing systems and related products for audio, video and web conferencing applications. The reliability, flexibility and performance of ClearOne's comprehensive solutions create a natural communications environment that saves organizations time and money by enabling more effective and efficient communication. For additional information, log on to www.clearone.com
ABOUT WESTCON GROUP
Westcon Group, Inc. is a multi-national specialty distributor of networking, security and communications equipment for leading technology vendors, including Cisco Systems, Inc., Nortel Networks Corporation and Avaya, Inc. Through its Voda One, Westcon and Comstor divisions, Westcon Group sells products and services to resellers, systems integrators and service providers. Westcon Group has particular expertise in the convergence of voice, data and video applications and technologies, including voice-over Internet protocol, or VoIP, security for networking and communications systems, remote access, Internet and e-business, virtual private networks, videoconferencing and wireless connectivity. For more information, visit www.westcongroup.com.
All third-party names referenced are registered trademarks of the respective companies, who do not necessarily endorse ClearOne or ClearOne's products.
Kurt Olsen
ClearOne
801-303-3362
kurt.olsen@clearone.com
Moon Lee
RLM PR
212-741-5106 X 231
moon@RLMpr.com
Jeff Touzeau
Westcon Group, Inc.
914-829-7388
jtouzeau@westcon.com