Investing in Telecom Beneficial to VARs, Says Telarus

Telecom and IT channels have long worked together, and this is nothing new to Telarus, which has provided target programs for VARs that are interested in including career services to their broader IT portfolios.

Telarus has recently encouraged its agent partners to propel the convergence of these channels and to emphasize to traditional IT VARs that it will not be embracing carrier and telecom services because they are not profitable.

The co-founder and vice president of marketing at Telarus, Patrick Oborn, said: "If [VARs] aren't paying attention to telecom, they will be blind-sided by what's coming."

Oborn noted that it is important that agents do not put too much focus on recurring revenue streams when seeking to initiate new partnerships with VARs, and to try to get them into the carrier and telecom space. Oborn said that this is a must-take step for VARs if they are interested in protecting their existing customer base from carriers who have been actively developing out, or acquiring, IT services practices of their own.

Using Verizon's 2011 acquisition of Terremark as an example, Oborn said: "Since our last meeting there has been a roulette wheel of M&As happening between our partners, the carriers and IT companies."

Oborn stated that there are certain types of VARs (what he terms "Angle VARs") that would be ideal partners for telecom agents. He said that some VARs' customers have to deal with bandwidth limitations, and this includes solution providers in the data center, back-up and disaster recovery, and videoconferencing space. Traditional phone system solution providers are another example of an "Angle VAR," according to Oborn.

Furthermore, VARs offer protection to their current customer base and telecom agents, and Telarus is able to round out the portfolios of a VAR with network and carrier services, and can assist in their move to residual revenue models which accompany services-based sales.

Oborn stated: "The IT VAR channel needs the telecom channel. They don't need direct telecom reps. We're the only ones who can bring telecom to them in the nice, amicable fashion ... so it's important that you reach out to them, and reach out to these 'Angel VARs,' and that you do it in the right way."

A number of telecom agents already partner with VARs in some form. The president of Austin, Texas-based telecom agent Crossvergence, Lance Akins, stated that his whole business model is based upon partnerships with traditional IT solution providers.

Akins was formerly the vice president of sales at Telarus, and said that he has developed a base of "vested" IT solution provider partners that are able to assist in the offering of services that are related to data center and virtualization, and he responds with the provision of telecom and carrier services to the same end customers.

Akins said: "I know what I'm good at, but I think my strength in partnering is more knowing what I'm not good at."

To ensure that these partnerships are stable over the long term, Akins stated to partners that he will not move into their areas of expertise, or trump their relationships with end customers. Alternatively, he will maintain the telecom piece while his partners focus on broader IT and managed services.

Akins stated: "I have to let [partners] know, 'I'm not an engineer, I'm not trained in virtualization, and pulling wire is just this concept to me.' ... I'm just not that guy."

An independent sales consultant for Telarus and president of New Jersey-based agency ZCS Enterprises, Zachary Schechter, stated that it is apparent there have been more active VARs in telecom and network services in the last year.

He said: "It's not like I have more VARs knocking on my door than I did before, but I do think all the VARs I have in my funnel are more active in network services than they ever have been before." The increased bandwidth demands of enterprise customers is the most likely reason for this uptick, according to Schechter.

In order to encourage collaboration between agents and VARs, VARNetwork.com was launched by Telarus in 2007. This is a resource center that is designed to assist agents in working through deals with VARs, pay VARs, and create hardware leads for active members of Telarus' VAR referral networks. The key idea is that equipment or hardware leads can be sent out to VARs under the names of Telarus agents, in return for network leads for agents.

More than 4,000 registered VARs use the system as of May 2013, according to Telarus. (CY) Link