The 2012 Business Connectivity Partner Program Guide

Page 2 of 3

As a national switchless CLEC, DynaLink offers voice and data solutions spanning VPN, MPLS, T1, POTS lines and a lot more. DynaLink agents receive commissions as well as marketing, sales, engineering and service support as part of the program.

DukeNet greeted the fall with a brand-new channel program, through which it also added a master agent relationship with Converged Network Services Group. DukeNet is now offering its high-bandwidth connectivity solutions for enterprise and data center through VARs, consultants and systems integrators.

EarthLink's strength, of late, has been to offer pre-prescribed bundled services through partners as a way to give customers the range of communications they need while letting the channel make the offers as custom as possible.

Ernest Communications, the Georgia CLEC, has been steadily increasing its channel presence with strong offers in voice, data, telecom expense management and hosted connectivity. The company also has expanded its executive team, having brought on former SPS vice president David D'Antonio in August to run sales and marketing.

Evolve IP's been lauded for the flexibility of its channel programs, which include everything from private-label offerings for MSPs to the reselling and integration of cloud services such as unified communications,WAN connectivity and backup and recovery, and perimeter security and monitoring.

It's only three years old, but eZuce had a fully baked UC software suite at launch as well as a channel strategy, and its EZ Partner Program offers Expert, Pro and Elite levels targeting various sizes of business. Its partner-hosted Communications-as-a-Service offer- ings have been especially well-received.

The business and fiber communications specialist's Sales Agent Program draws on national and regional telecom agents,VARs and systems integrators serving customers with IP data and voice.It offers commission payments with residual and bounty components and lets select agents tackle installation management and more.

Canadian telecom stalwart G3 Telecom covers residential, busi- ness and wholesale connectivity needs. It offers VoIP, Internet, long-distance and telecom expense management services under reseller, agent and referral programs.

The One Marketplace Access Exchange is a platform for auto- mated pricing, ordering and provisioning of multivendor access networks--a "marketplace" to connect customers and networking suppliers. It welcomes VARs, integrators and MSPs as partners.

Globalinx, which is undergoing a rebranding this month, focuses on hosted PBX, SIP trunking, mobile video applications and interconnection. It partners with agents and wholesale partners and markets both business and residential services.

Glowpoint has sought to boost its position as a premier managed video services provider by growing channel sales of its OpenVideo cloud platform. In August, it acquired public videoconferencing room and managed video services specialist Affinity VideoNet.

Granite's known for its solid-as-a-rock channel offerings, which combine residual revenue share plans with telecom agent incen- tives to sell POTS, long-distance, broadband, structured cabling and other services.

Integra offers a Premier Partner Agent Program, which includes a commission structure plus dedicated resources and co-branding/ marketing collateral, and a Referral Partner Program, through which partners receive referral fees for sending business Integra's way.

Level 3's blockbuster acquisition of Global Crossing in 2011 meant a tricky channel program integration, but as of the end of last year, the programs had merged and former Level 3 sales vice president Michael Jerich had been named vice president, indirect channels. Level 3's Business Partner program awards solution providers channel-neutral compensation and training.

Offering data, voice and wireless, Lightyear Agent Partners have access to LightSource, a resource for agent information, promo- tions and keeping track of commissions, and PortalPlus, a CRM tool, as well as regional sales managers and sales development specialists responsible for channel enablement.

Masergy tweaked its partner program a year ago to offer more rewards to higher-classified partners more strategically aligned to the company. Not only has Masergy's channel partner revenue continued to climb, the company's also made waves with a recent acquisition of hosted UC player Broadcore Communications.

MASS Communications offers a full range of telecom management services, including voice, data, network and risk management.

The big news for CLEC McGraw and its channel was that in August, it launched the full-fledged managed services program it had been promising for months.What's available already is asset and infrastructure monitoring, and McGraw has said that more services, such as VoIP, SIP and MPLS, are soon to follow.

Mediacom Business, a division of broadband provider Mediacom Communications, has a Business Partner Program for telecom agents and consultants. Service offerings include fiber-based voice and data products and business Internet, phone and TV services to SMBs.

Longtime channel pal MegaPath this fall took a bigger leap into cloud services with a suite of cloud hosting offeringss, powered by VMware vCloud. Earlier this year, Megapath also retooled its partner portal to include capabilities such as enhanced order status tracking and customer support ticket tracking.

Through Lync, Microsoft became a force in unified communica- tions, and thanks to the UC functions in its Office 365 suite as a whole, is becoming a mighty player for hosted communications too.

The company is as of this year a registered CLEC, through its Mitel NetSolutions business. Through a new offering, AnyWare IaaS, Mitel extended its Freedom UC architecture so that organizations can host Mitel's virtualized UC and collaboration software in private data centers NetSolutions provides.

Nectar, a wholly owned subsidiary of solution provider Juma, offers Enterprise Session Management for H.323 and SIP-based IP PBXes and sells into enterprise and carrier environments. It includes Solu- tions Partners, for using Nectar services at the core of a managed service offering, Reseller Partners and Referral Partners.

Japanese telecom bigwig NTT's reach goes deep into the channel, not least for its ownership of global integrator Dimension Data. But it also has a well-regarded NTT America Global IP Network Channel Partner Program, which covers agents paid on commis- sion, resellers that receive service discounts, and referral partners.

PanTerra Networks has some of the strongest customer word- of-mouth of any hosted communications provider, especially in often-fickle SMB customer segments. Its partner base includes VARs and wholesalers that can opt for private-label service options.

<< Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >>