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2017 Directory
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Channel
Vision
NetCarrier Blends Hands-On Support
with Channel Commitment
By
Tara
Seals
PROFILE
For NetCarrier, a CLEC that
has expanded to become a
nationwide connectivity and services
powerhouse, 2016 has seen an
explosion in its channel ecosystem,
product advancements and support
investments – moves that will continue
to pay off in 2017 and beyond.
NetCarrier doesn’t employ a
direct sales team. Instead, its channel
managers work with agents, subagents
and VARs to acquire new business,
and the company’s Key Account team
works side-by-side with the partner to
maintain and grow each account.
“We have expanded into a
national play, engaging many
master agents in the past five
years, and that group continues to
be a key part of our growth,” said
Chad Muckenfuss, director of sales
engineering at NetCarrier.
NetCarrier partners also benefit
from the ability to receive instant
quotes, qualifications and, ultimately,
commissions on several access
providers, including the top cable
MSOs: Comcast, Time Warner Cable
and Charter. It’s continuing to expand
its strategic partnerships with circuit
providers to grow its footprint,
including, most recently, AT&T. The
company can hand off customer
services to POTS, PRI or SIP over a
customer’s existing bandwidth, and its
collection of services that runs on top
includes the nCloud product suite, with
unified communications (UC) and a
cloud PBX that puts the phone system
into NetCarrier’s secure, always-on,
carrier class data center.
“Our national expansion was due
mainly to the fact that we’ve been good
at putting voice over non-traditional
circuits, including broadband circuits,
with our own hosted platform that’s
unique to us, with our own proprietary
set of key features,” said Seth Gibbs,
director of sales at NetCarrier.
Crucially, just as NetCarrier’s
nationwide growth has been fueled
by this commitment to the channel,
in turn, that has led to increasing
investment in building out deep sales
and support teams.
“Increased sales have led to
increased demand for software and
support – both teams are growing,”
said Gibbs. “We’re making sure that we
over-hire for our support team.”
That investment in support has paid
dividends for its differentiation with
partners when it comes to UC and PBX.
“One of the big differentiators for our
hosted PBX or unified communications
platform is that we tailor the solution
for each customer’s business needs,”
said Muckenfuss. “That customization
ability has secured our spot with
the master agents. They can sell the
solution, and then we take the ball and
project-manage that end-to-end.”
He added, “We didn’t want to just
send phones to a customer and have
them be responsible for setting it up.
With us, every customer has a fully
managed deployment.”
NetCarrier has a physical presence
with the customer at least three times
during the process: once for a site
survey, once for the install and once for
turn up and porting.
“This eliminates a lot of issues for
customers, and it works out perfectly
for our partners,” Muckenfuss said.
Looking forward, the company will
continue to look for key partnerships
and look to grow the value proposition
that it now has in support and
customer care. It also expects its
channel makeup to evolve.
“Everyone has seen an adjustment
in the channel ecosystem as IT-focused
individuals enter the voice market,”
Gibbs said. “There is definitely a bigger
group of IT people that are slowly
moving into the space. For these folks,
we don’t focus on establishing direct
agent relationships, but rather we
direct them to master agents.”
Muckenfuss added, “The rise of
managed services has really changed
the telecom side of things because
VARs are becoming managed service
providers. Normally they didn’t want to
touch voice, but with IP and cloud, it’s
now a standard part of their network
design and support.”
Advanced technologies are part of
the NetCarrier mix as well, and will
continue to be a focus for the new year.
The company has been specializing in
crafting blended networks that combine
MPLS and VPN options on a national
scale; these hybrid networks offer cost
savings and significantly improve WAN
performance. For 2017, the company
will add an SD-WAN competency, with
layered network security.
“We’re fully embracing that and
looking to integrate it both on the
customer side and into our core,” Gibbs
said. “Our managed security module
is a centralized network firewall add-
on model, meant to protect against
brute-force and DDoS attacks that can
cause the customer performance to
be degraded. And we’re looking to do
something different with our model
with this; a lot of competitors are
outsourcing security to a third-party.
We’re looking to do a full integration as
an investment, so all of our customers
can benefit from that.”