Sydney outfit, Uptime Distribution, has sealed a first Australian deal with wireless gear maker, Trapeze Networks.

Uptime managing director, Tony Geagea, said Trapeze's wireless networking equipment and management software sold well overseas but was new to the Australian market.

"They've got a great install base of 2000 organisations worldwide, many which have 1000s of mobile workers and high bandwidth requirements," he said.

Uptime will have sole distribution rights to Trapeze's complete range of 20 or so products. Geagea said Trapeze was putting out draft-802.11n gear that would compete with wireless hardware from companies like Aruba and even Cisco.

"A Yankee Group review showed Trapeze with the lowest Total Cost of Ownership for [WLAN in] small businesses," he said.

Trapeze Networks country manager, Tony Wise, said a final draft of the latest wireless networking standard, 802.11n, was expected in November, ahead of ratification in 2008. Trapeze was working on developing product in line with that schedule. What's more, Trapeze's networking products would offer a choice of distributed or centralised architecture -- meaning customers won't necessarily have to rip out and replace their whole setup when upgrading to 802.11n, he said.

"That's our real differentiator," Wise said. "Anyone who's not based on [a more distributed] architecture is really going to have to do a forklift upgrade of everything."

Geagea said Trapeze had a presence in Australia but Uptime would also work hard to provide around-the-clock support, including pre- and post-sales, demonstration setups and tender response.

"We've got our own guys skilled up in the technology. Some have had years of experience with Trapeze overseas," he said. "We're going to be driving it quite hard in the marketplace."

Trapeze Networks is the fourth vendor Uptime has added this year. Geagea said Uptime tried to sign vendors that hadn't had much access to the local market but he thought could do really well.

Trapeze Asia-Pacific vice-president, Geoff Healey, said in a statement that the Sydney distributor was chosen for its comprehensive professional service offerings and support including monitoring, maintenance and training. Uptime's skills would help resellers get the skills and resources to sell the product effectively, he said.