GreenPages Sharpens Solutions Focus

The Kittery, Maine-based integrator has sharpened its solutions focus over the last year, with professional services-based solutions now accounting for 40 percent of sales, up from 12 percent a year ago, said GreenPages President and CEO Ron Dupler. And he said he expects a 30 percent increase in annual sales to $100 million this year.

"The technology solutions business is growing exponentially," Dupler said in an interview at the GreenPages Solutions Summit 2006 conference in Portsmouth, N.H., which brought together 70 of the company's customers and 42 of its vendor partners.

"There is a tremendous opportunity for our clients to leverage technology to drive their business. There are also significant challenges, because the technology is complex," he said.

Over the last year, GreenPages has doubled the size of its solutions architect staff, increased its project management staff to seven (up from four) and added field engineering talent.

The company's solutions march was accelerated by its April acquisition of TenCorp, a solution provider based in Needham, Mass., that had a robust state/local government and education business. The deal also brought GreenPages a wealth of technical talent and an ISO-certified advanced project and configuration center.

Even with its stepped-up solutions push, GreenPages isn't turning its back on its reseller procurement business, according to Dupler. In fact, the company has tripled the size of the ISO-certified center.

Dupler said that when he took the GreenPages top job nearly two years ago, he envisioned a 50-50 products-to-solutions business mix. But now he sees the solutions business exploding, noting that ultimately, "the external market will dictate what we look like as a business."

"There's a tremendous hunger for our solutions expertise," Dupler added. "We're also good at supply chain, logistics and e-commerce."

The procurement side of the business is now "table stakes" for customers, who are increasingly relying on GreenPages to solve business problems with the best technology available, Dupler said. "The difference between GreenPages and the rest of the market is our solutions capability. We are farther down the road with the evolution of our business. We have an amazing technical staff that can guide our clients through the maze of choices available to them." At the heart of GreenPages' business model is a vendor-agnostic philosophy that puts the interest of the client above any single manufacturer, Dupler noted. "We weed through all the hype and select the best technology. Our first commitment is to the customer," he said.

In an age where many manufacturers are seeking vendor exclusivity, GreenPages has chosen to work with multiple vendors. Among the company's partners at the summit were Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, VMware, EqualLogic, 3Com, Radware, Internap, ScriptLogic, Fortinet, Zixcorp, Foundry and Utimaco.

As part of its professional services onslaught, GreenPages has reorganized its professional services group into practice areas, said Tobi Evangelisti, vice president of solutions at GreenPages. The company also has added telephony, wireless/mobility and technical staffing as new practice areas, she said.

In addition, GreenPages has revised its data management, disaster recovery, compliance and managed services practices. Other practices include security, network operating systems, network infrastructure and virtualization/server-based computing.

Including the TenCorp acquisition, Evangelisti said the data management practice is expected to hit $12 million this year, up from $1 million last year.

The solutions summit for the first time featured a demo center and IT lab. "This is a live network environment," said Glen Jodoin, vice president of operations at GreenPages. "Customers can play with and test new solutions like VoIP or an iSCSI SAN."

Also this year, the summit featured more breakout sessions hosted by GreenPages solutions architects, covering topics such as "Getting To VoIP," "Data Management" and "Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning."