Uunet: Concentrating On Connectivity

That's because the ISP giant,with more than 70,000 business customers in 114 countries,still believes reliable connectivity is key and sees little use in competing with integrators or application service providers (ASPs).

"Today, Uunet is focusing on its core strength as an Internet access provider," says president and CEO Mark Spagnolo. "Global VARs and ASPs looking to sell to the SME market will find unparalleled value in our service level agreements, our customer service initiatives, and the scalability and quality of our IP network."

To that end, the ISP puts much of its effort into providing users with the best platform possible through new forms of connectivity, hosted offerings such as e-commerce, beefed-up co-location infrastructure, VPS and security space, and a $100 million investment in its data center business.

Uunet is also targeting a new market in small to midsize business VARs, since smaller companies are now realizing that despite their modest sizes, they still have a number of single-user dial-up connections and may need a LAN solution and an overall Internet package.

When Jericho, N.Y.-based Paratech Resources Inc. wanted to create a complicated financial Web site for one of its clients, Paratech CEO Glenn Nortman knew his Internet and e-commerce solutions firm had the expertise to do its own Web development work. So he did not want to align himself with an ISP that would vie with him in that arena.

What Paratech lacked was the sheer infrastructure needed to bring the Web applications to fruition, so he wanted an ISP with the latest in platform and bandwidth technology.

"We wanted to take advantage of multicast technology," says Nortman. "We chose Uunet because it has one of the largest backbones out there. From our clients' point of view, we are positioning ourselves with an organization that has the kind of services we need to make their companies successful."

Kevin Dowd, president of Atlantic Computing, an East Hartford, Conn.-based integrator that specializes in Internet security solutions, is another VAR who will testify to the success of such a partnering model.

"The relationship with Uunet has been terrific. Since we are not competing with them, we can be synergistic," says Dowd. He tells of a recent integration in which a Uunet customer seeking help in IP address space management needed a specific package that the ISP didn't offer.

"Rather than send the customer off to pick up any other random reseller, it brought us in," says Dowd. "We sourced the product from them and delivered it to the customer and did the integration that went along with it. That's how you keep a good relationship."

The ISP, which currently has some 1,100 resellers enrolled in its channel program, offers resellers three choices, depending on the VAR's needs.

The Client Referral Program is designed for VARs who don't want to be involved in the implementation, while the Certified Solutions Provider Program lets them work alongside Uunet. The third, a Virtual Internet Provider Program that lets integrators sell Uunet services and solutions under their own brand name, is especially useful for VARs interested in providing applications themselves rather than teaming up with an outside ASP.

Is Uunet afraid of losing its foothold as competitors move toward specialized application providing? Not one bit, says Brad Wise, Uunet's vice-president of channel sales and development.

"One of the biggest challenges we see is that some companies are getting away from their core focus and losing touch with the thing that made their business take off in the first place," he says.

"Sure there's lots of hype about value-add things, but we believe there is still a lot of hype about basic connectivity as well. Connectivity is the underlying foundation of what everything else sits on."