ISP differentiates from the telcos with reliability, channel reach

Internet Light and Power (ILAP), a Toronto-based Internet service provider, wants to expand its channel presence by working with more partners in major metropolitan areas across the country, its CEO, Tristan Goguen, said.

This national Internet service provider has been in business for 16 years and currently has a team of 10 employees. With 4,500 corporate clients across Canada and growing, the company’s CEO said he wants to increase the number of channel partners it works with.

“We sell almost primarily through the channel,” Goguen said. “We’re at about 80 partners now and we’re looking for more partners. We’re encouraging partners to give us a call, and I’d also invite partners to personally give me a call. The type of partner we’re looking for is anyone who’s having issues from a networking point of view and wants to work closely with an ISP.”

Goguen said one of the company’s goals next year is to increase ILAP’s channel presence across Canada. Today, most of the company’s sales volumes come from larger metropolitan areas such as Toronto, London, Ont. and Montreal. As part of its expansion plans, he’d like to add more systems integrator partners in Western cities such as Vancouver.

At ILAP, the company’s objective is to provide high availability Internet access to mid-size businesses, Goguen said. The typical ILAP customers are businesses with more than one office location and a need for high availability. He said these days, customers are choosing ILAP because they’re looking for services instead of the traditional carrier companies.

“We’re finding that customer’s aren’t going to local phone companies for solutions because they can’t meet their particular requirements,” he said. “Instead, they’re coming to us looking for things like network redundancy, products for geographic areas, and high end-products that are more reasonably priced. Because customers are picking services rather than carriers, we’re acting like a broker to the marketplace to help them find the best solution.”

Goguen said because regular business volumes and dependencies on the Internet are quickly increasing, customers have a greater need for redundancy.

The company’s flagship product is its Network QUB (quality uninterrupted bandwidth) solution, which is delivered through channel partners. This solution helps ensure that a customer’s network is always up and running. This solution is housed at the customer’s facility and involves two or more circuits that run through their routers, so that if a primary router fails, Internet traffic automatically goes to the second one. Goguen said these types of solutions are often expensive because investments in hardware and other technologies are usually necessary. After making this observation and realizing there was a market need, ILAP was able to provide a scaled down version that’s more affordable to these businesses.

“We can scale the solution to fit the budgets and requirements for reliability and redundancy in the mid-market space, which is usually about 100 seats,” Goguen said.

Alex Pyle, technical support manager at Value Added Systems, a value-added reseller and ILAP partner from Mississauga, Ont., said being able to offer ILAP’s Network QUB lets him “sleep at night.”

“The majority of our customers are very Web-oriented because they’re providing services to their customers and staff,” said Pyle. “Network QUB allows them to have maintenance time periods without having to change or restructure their Internet presence and also gives their businesses and me the ability to sleep soundly.”

Network QUB is also a solution that’s as easy to set up as a regular Internet connection, he added.

“There’s no learning curve needed for the customer,” Pyle said. “Partners understand they have two connections and if one goes down, the other goes up automatically without them losing their Internet connection. This solution also guarantees them uptime and reliability.”

For channel partners, Goguen said ILAP has a partner program that includes the usual forms of training and support for them, in addition to revenue sharing opportunities to help boost their margins further.

Follow Maxine Cheung on Twitter: @MaxineCheungCDN.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Maxine Cheung
Maxine Cheung
Staff Writer, Computer Dealer News

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