Infinity And Beyond

Born in 2000, Infinity Network Solutions Inc. (2008 CRN Fast Growth rank 67) started out primarily as an IT consultancy. Today, with more than 40 employees, it is a full-fledged network integrator. Focused mainly on the K-12 state and local government and education (SLED) market, Macon, Ga.-based Infinity recently has made a foray into the small to midsize market, primarily companies with 25 to 200 employees. Company President Robert Betzel shared some insights on markets worth pursuing and on challenges ahead.

How has your business evolved?

For the first six years, we were focused on 3Com. We were adopters of DCX platforms. We sell digital phone systems. [But] for the last year and a half, we've worked much more closely with Cisco than in the past. We realized we weren't able to achieve our goals unless we were business-focused rather than product-focused. We can do that with Cisco products. We can help customers learn how to improve their service. We get to understand their businesses; we want them to buy a solution, not a product. If a customer doesn't know what [products] they've bought, we've done our job.

So the challenge is getting the customers to identify challenges rather than stick a product in there as a solution?

As customers are buying systems and applications, we can wrap our technologies around it, especially with electronic medical records [EMR].

A lot of hospitals are building a central repository for records. From surgical to orthopedic, all your doctors that work together would have access to your records. Doctors are now having to buy certain software applications to be part of a medical group. Applications are needed to get access to records from a particular practice. That solution [incorporated] hardware and software—that can provide patient reminders, for example. The traditional orthopedist has an EMR, wiring, switching, servers, appliances connecting the EMR to the telephone system. The customer can use the telephone to access those records, which historically have been trapped inside the EMR. We show customers how to make their business more efficient and offer a better experience for themselves and their customers.

We are also showing our customers that they can achieve the same results by spending over months. We have a leasing and even a rental program. The upgrade path is built in: Customers can replace it at the end of the lease; they simply make the operational payment—just like you pay to keep the lights on.

We hear that the state and local government business will offer a sea of calm during these tumultuous times.

We continue to focus on SLED. It's available. In the SLED market, we're seeing large-scale projects that are not already slated to start be delayed. But services still have to be provided. They are going to have to build new schools. But are they going to pull out old infrastructure and redo it? Probably not. But there is some E-rate funding going on. SLED is a larger organization and works like a small business. SLED doesn't look at cost over time, as SMB does [SMBs] want their return on investment.

What other verticals are promising?

We are looking to other verticals, including legal. Legal hasn't yet embraced technology to reduce cost in terms of practice management. Our focus is to improve the business process. We show how can we help them take technology and do that. They are being asked to charge less, so they need to find ways to help them reduce costs.

What is your biggest challenge for 2009?

Our internal challenge is going to be trying to maximize the use of our own staff. We must rethink how staff engages. We must continue to achieve an understanding of how to engage customers at the business level. The largest external challenge will be dealing with credit and capital getting tighter.