Internap Adds Agent Program

Internap Network Services

The program, unveiled this week, currently has 17 agents singed up, said John Bigelow, vice president of alternate channel sales at Internap. In addition, Bigelow said he expects to reveal several master agent partners later this month.

The agent program pays monthly commissions of 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on revenue commitments, Bigelow said. Internap also offers a reseller program for companies, such as xSPs, that want to integrate a pipe into their offering. In such cases, Internap provides a discount on services, but Bigelow declined to provide specifics.

A basic referral program provides a commission of 3.5 percent per month for six month on contracts of at least one year. For 24-month or longer contracts, Internap pays 3.5 percent per month for 12 months.

Channel partners are also provided with a Web portal for marketing information, a dedicated channel manager, online quoting and ordering capabilities and training, the company said.

Internap offers IP services over 10 backbones worldwide with 35 service points in the United States, Japan and Western Europe. The company differentiates itself from other competitive carriers in speed and SLAs, Bigelow said.

A routing algorithm makes sure traffic is directed to the best possible connection at all time, he said. Internap provides a service-level agreement of 100 percent uptime, 55 millisecond or less latency in the United States and 155ms internationally, and less than 1 percent packet loss.

"We have an intelligent routing process that really gives our customers the best possible connection in IP world," he said.

With the agent program fully operating now, Bigelow expects to see revenue from the alternative channel increase exponentially. For 2001, Internap was generating about $140,000 per month from the channel, a "very small" portion of the company's overall yearly revenue, which analyst consensus puts at about $117 million, a company spokesman said. Internap expects to report year-end results later this month.

By 2003, Bigelow is hoping to bring the channel business to become 30 percent to 40 percent of revenue.