Upward Climb Toward Success

The Syracuse, N.Y.-based solution provider, which was founded in 1978 and saw revenue of $121 million last year, has several innovative ways of providing customers with what they need at a lower cost than the competition.

“[Midmarket companies are] being chartered with not necessarily shrinking budgets, but with doing more with their network. The network is becoming ambiguous with voice merging with data,” said Frank Kobuszewski, vice president of the technology solutions group at CXtec. “They’re facing challenges with security, wireless, [and] rolling security into wireless and into VoIP, but they still have accountability at the end of the day to keep the network up and running.”

The solution provider helps midmarket companies figure out what makes sense to their business and how they can upgrade and do what they need to do with the money they have, Kobuszewski said. “That’s the true value we provide to this segment,” he said.

CXtec’s most innovative offering is its equal2new line of networking and voice products. The solution provider allows customers to trade in hardware for credit, and CXtec then refurbishes the equipment to make it ready for resale. The company also sells new and manufacturer-refurbished products.

Products that are exchanged by customers are put through a 10-step certification process by 30 technicians in the solution provider’s 70,000 square-foot certification facility and warehouse in Syracuse.

CXtec also has 32 professional services employees who are trained on the variety of products, both new and legacy, that the VAR sells from vendors such as Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Sun Microsystems, 3Com and Juniper Networks.

“Our technical resources can talk about legacy products and getting customers from the legacy product to the more current product if that’s what makes sense to them. From an actual services implementation standpoint, we do offer configuration services. For midmarket companies with remote offices, we can configure the product here at our certification facility and ship it to remote sites,” Kobuszewski said.

Seneca Data, a manufacturer of custom computer solutions in North Syracuse, N.Y., has been a CXtec customer for several years. Recently, Seneca Data purchased from CXtec a complete turnkey system, including a Cisco 4510 Catalyst switch and an ASA 5510 security appliance, and had CXtec do the installation.

“We were in the middle of implementing a brand-new ERP system, and we just didn’t have the bandwidth to support it. In order to make sure we had the necessary throughput and to grow business, we made the investment in infrastructure for the future,” said Rob Morris, director of IT at Seneca Data.

Seneca got several quotes but went with CXtec because of their existing relationship, the value the company provided and the ability to save money using products that were equal2new-certified. The project—including hardware, installation, configuration, training, project management and 150 VPN licenses—cost Seneca Data about $75,000.

“It really came down to who worked the best with us and understood what we were trying to accomplish [and] was also willing to give multiple configurations and turn them around quickly with pricing,” Morris said. “I’d do business with [CXtec] again in a second.”

Another CXtec customer, The Masonic Care Community, a rehabilitation facility in Utica, N.Y., is working with CXtec on a campuswide wireless network and purchases products through the equal2new program.

“We’ve looked at several different vendors with their help. They just recently did a complete wireless survey [that] entailed several days of figuring out where they needed to put things,” said Chuck Spinelli, director of IT at Masonic Care. “Their service is unbelievably good. The salesperson that we have does pretty much whatever it takes to get the customer up and running—he goes out of his way to take care of that,” he said.

For CXtec, keeping customers happy goes hand in hand with keeping up on technology and how to adopt new products into customers’ current networks, Kobuszewski said. “That’s an ever-changing challenge, especially with the converged networks that are coming out,” he said.

“We’re a VAR unlike any VAR that you’ll come across. The business model that we’ve got is different, and regardless of what manufacturer partnerships we have, when we explain our value proposition to our partners, they really see us as a valuable partner,” Kobuszewski said.