Bandwidth.com Teams With VAR in Online Portal Deal

This one has telecom service providers teaming up with high-profile data distributors and solution providers to boost SMB sales in a down economy.

"What Bandwidth.com is able to do is simplify the process by which we order bandwidth, and they're able to give us a choice of carriers," said Joe Borovay, COO of Insight Direct, Tempe, Ariz., which recently launched a services division with Bandwidth.com.

Bandwidth.com is a telecom master agent that offers services from Qwest Communications International, Sprint Communications, AT&T, WorldCom and second-tier carriers to provide a variety of bandwidth options to SMB customers.

The service provider will give Insight's 250-plus sales associates access to an online portal where they can get realtime quotes and track the status of orders, Borovay said.

The agreement between Bandwidth.com and Insight, unveiled in February, follows on the heels of a high-profile partnership forged earlier this year between AT&T and Tech Data.

That deal, which pairs AT&T's managed T1 service with a Cisco Systems router aimed at Tech Data's SMB VARs, allows solution providers to offer customers carrier-grade connectivity without having to qualify for AT&T's agent program and, at the same time, opens the way to a new solution provider market for AT&T. Both Tech Data and Cisco promoted the bundle to channel partners, AT&T executives said.

At press time, Sprint told CRN it planned to unveil its own distribution partnership this month. WorldCom also is eyeing a national reseller with which to bundle its services, a company executive said.

David Morkin, CEO of Bandwidth.com, said these types of partnerships are just beginning to emerge for service providers.

"Distribution has never been as important as in the current environment," Morkin said.

"The ability to sell connectivity in this economy is very valuable. Carriers, from a strategic perspective, are looking for entities that can articulate a value-add," he said.

Insight elected to add connectivity to its offering despite commodity pricing because it eliminates a pain point for SMB customers, Borovay said. "When we looked at the market for connectivity, bandwidth is one of the most difficult things to get, from a customer's point of view," he said. "The process by which you get a quote and get provisioned is very time-consuming and painful."

Bandwidth.com has integrated its back-end system with most major carriers, allowing Insight to track most bandwidth sales in realtime via the Internet. Morkin said every stage of the order, from the quote to local loop provisioning, can be tracked via the company's Web interface, a feature that Borovay said is key to Insight's success with bandwidth sales.

"Bandwidth.com gives us the ability to check orders immediately, and they are incented to get them provisioned quickly," said Borovay.

Adding services such as asset management, training, infrastructure and network design helps Insight increase the percentage of products it can sell to customers, he said: "Our direct channel is able to offer 20 percent of the products customers are buying. The other 80 percent is where Insight is focused."