Keeping Up With Crocs

As it turned out, ShoreTel and Extreme had been working together to create a converged solution for midsize companies when Evolve's need for a backbone arose.

"The combination of growth, change and staffing shortages, and the need to deploy advanced technologies, heightens the role of the resellers," says Scott Lucas, Extreme's senior director of solutions marketing. "The demand is then on the vendors to make sure solutions are compelling and easy-to-use. We're embracing an open strategy that allows you to integrate with folks like ShoreTel."

Larry Stein, marketing director at ShoreTel, adds that his company has been focusing on partnering with other vendors and has fostered a close relationship with Extreme. The two companies work together on interoperability testing to make sure the combined product sets will be easy to integrate and implement.

"You can't deliver a high-quality IP-telephony solution without a robust, high-performance network," Stein says. "The two go hand in hand, and Extreme makes a high-performance, reliable solution. It's a natural fit."

That relationship involves ongoing work on both sides. "We meet with partners like Evolve and discuss our plans to make sure they have the right solution requirements and that ShoreTel field-sales reps and engineering personnel are connected," says Stein. "We even make introductions to the Extreme field-sales and engineering people, so we're engaged to ensure the customers get what they need."

Extreme's Lucas adds that the ecosystem a customer interacts with has to be more than the sum of its parts. "We look at what ShoreTel brings and what Extreme brings, and it's all channeled through Evolve and our partners," he says. "Those partners are pivotal. They tie things together and understand the customer needs and requirements."

As for the growing importance of networking and VoIP, Stein says that buying a phone system can be a "career-limiting move" for end users. "There's a lot to lose," he says. "If a copier goes down for the day, people are annoyed. If the phone system goes down for the day, people might lose their jobs."

That's why Evolve worked very closely with the Crocs IT team. "We had several planning sessions on how we would set up the network, how we were going to build it and what the IP schemes would be," Hanson says. "Then we went out and set it up, and we took two of their IT folks with us. We sat down with them and trained them on using the systems and doing the administration."

Crocs is now running the network and VoIP solution itself, but Hanson says Evolve acts as a second-layer provider. "When they get overrun, we go in and help them catch up again." The VAR also acted as the network provider and negotiated direct-access fiber from Level 3.

In the end, big growth signals big opportunity for solution providers, whether they get in at the ground level or come onboard to help a customer along the way.