Keeping Up With Crocs

The relationship between Crocs and Evolve demonstrates more than just how a solution provider can effectively deploy technology to meet the needs of a customer. It's also a perfect example of how partnerships can allow end users and their VAR allies to evolve.

As the Niwot, Colo.-based shoe company hired more employees and opened new locations, Evolve continued to work as its partner. Communication and networking became increasingly critical for Crocs as the company ventured overseas and needed to ensure it could stay connected. Evolve initially set up an Avaya telephony system for Crocs, but soon the company outgrew that solution. Crocs hired its own IT director, who continued working closely with Evolve to build a flexible infrastructure to allow for the company's rapid growth.

Meanwhile, Crocs grew at a phenomenal rate. Between 2002 and 2004, it added about 20 employees a month. In 2005, the number of new hires worldwide ramped up to about 100 a month. The spate of new employees had to be trained and brought online quickly.

"They were adding people so fast, and they wanted to start connecting multiple sites," Hanson says. "Their vision was to become a company that could hit just four digits to dial any employee, anywhere in the world."

Hanson started looking for a VoIP solution to fit Crocs' needs and, in the process, discovered that the company also needed a "solid backbone" on which to build the telephony solution.

A ShoreTel partner since 2002, Evolve regarded the vendor's VoIP product as "rock solid" and suitable for Crocs, Hanson says. But the shoe company wanted to consider all of its options, so it evaluated products from Cisco and Avaya before settling on ShoreTel's.

As for the backbone, Hanson decided--over a round of golf with one of the founders of Extreme Networks--to bring the alternative networking vendor into the mix. "They had great scalability and power in their offerings," says Hanson.

Crocs needed something scalable, for sure, but at a reasonable price, and Evolve came through with a ShoreTel-Extreme solution. "From the end-user standpoint, [the solution] is easy to use and understand, and it allows Crocs to touch any site they have from their Niwot location," says Hanson. "It's a real time-saver for a company growing as quickly as Crocs."

NEXT: Working hand-in-hand