Although around for nearly 20 years and having undergone several company transitions, Toronto-based Ceryx Inc., a privaty-owned company specializing in messaging research and development, has kept one thing constant: Its focus on building and maintaining strong relationships with its partner community.The company which is today known as Ceryx, has a long history behind it, dating back to 1989, when it was first founded by Gus Harsfai as NRG Consultants. Harsfai, who is currently the president and CEO at Ceryx, later created 800onemail, an outsourcing company which would later become Ceryx. Finally, in September 2001, both operations were amalgamated to create Ceryx Inc., an e-mail outsourcing company that serves customers throughout North America.
Harsfai, who has been with the company since its birth, made note of just how well Ceryx has done for itself in growing its client base over the years.
“We’ve done extremely well in the mid-market enterprise as well as with the smaller business market,” Harsfai said. “We seem to be quite strong in a number of verticals, especially with real estate, financial institutions and entertainment. We don’t focus to target these markets, they just seem to come to us.”
While Harsfai could not release the company’s exact numbers regarding staff and partner sizes, he said both have been growing exponentially over time.
“We are able to keep up with our growing customer base because we understand the business and the fact that you have to keep investing,” Harsfai said. “We invest ahead of the curve with things like account management and by doing it this way, customers never suffer.”
Among some of Ceryx’s solution of offerings are security and spam management solutions, mobile solutions and managed and hosted Exchange services. In addition, the company also prides itself on the fact it’s a Microsoft gold certified partner.
Harsfai credited a large part of Ceryx’s success to its partner community as well.
“Members in our [ThinOffice] partner program have strong relationships with their customer base, which is primarily on the SMB side,” Harsfai said. “We’re looking for the right partners and we look for companies that have shared values. We want them to represent the brand just like we do.”
To help maintain and manage its partner community, Ceryx keeps an eye on establishing and nurturing strong relationships with potential and existing partners.
“We’re looking for companies that over-service their customers,” Harsfai said. “It’s not just service for service sake, but it’s about the right kind of service. Businesses are built on relationships and on communication. These things must always be working properly.”
Since the implementation of its ThinOffice partner program last fall, Ceryx has been able to sign up resellers from across the country, some of which even deliver solutions around the world. With the help of sales offices in New York and Toronto, Harsfai said news of Ceryx services and solutions are spreading like wild fire.
As a Microsoft gold certified partner, Ceryx has also seen an increase in user interest when it comes to Exchange 2007 and SharePoint.
“We’re seeing this start to take off,” Harsfai said. “On the hosted side, this gives customers the ability to collaborate and integrate fully with the Exchange offering.”
Solutions set aside, Ceryx has also had many internal successes over the years.
“Being able to grow our staff is another big accomplishment,” Harsfai said. “We have a stellar team here at Ceryx.”
Harsfai also mentioned being able to deliver on the Ceryx promise has also been a symbol of the company’s success.
“I’d put our e-mail system against anyone else out there because its architecture is built much better and it still remains cost-effective,” Harsfai said.
A benefit of using Ceryx’s security and spam management solution is that the e-mail firewall solution does not need to be installed since it’s monitored 24/7 by Ceryx’s team of Network Operation Centre messaging experts (NOC).
While there are no plans to open Ceryx offices outside of North America within the next 12 months, Harsfai says he will not rule this option out if an opportunity were to present itself.
“If there’s a lot of business coming in from other areas of the world, that’s something we may eventually look into,” Harsfai said.
