Virtela Launches Partner Program
Virtela Communications Inc., a sponsor of The Channel Partners Conference & Expo, is launching the Virtela Agent Partner Program, targeting organizations with national and international clients and a broad set of expertise and value-added services, such as networking professional services, systems design, applications and network integration, and lifecycle management.
The company currently is recruiting 20 U.S.-based agent partners to market Virtelas full suite of services, including IP-based VPNs, security services,VoIP, video over IP and network consulting services. Virtelas network, which spans more than 190 countries, was designed to deliver critical applications and is built on a multicarrier, vendor-neutral module. The company combines more than 200 networks under a single network management capability for best-path routing, class of service and automatic failover.
With the ongoing turmoil and consolidation in the industry, agents have an enormous opportunity to capture more and more high-margin, value-added network and security services business, says John Powell, Virtelas vice president of global channels.
Powell, who has more than 20 years of diverse management experience in the telecommunications industry, recently was named to his post as head of channels. Powell previously was an area vice president of sales at Equant. I was brought on board to expand the channel program, says Powell, noting the companys partner targets include service providers, systems integrators, VARs and telephony resellers and agents. Todays announcement targets the latter category.
Agents that used to sell voice minutes are a dying breed, Powell says. We give agencies that are losing revenue from long-distance an opportunity to expand.
Virtela provides agent partners and their clients with a single-source vendor environment resulting in one bill, one contract, one reach number and one global set of end-to-end SLAs. The program includes two tiers Authorized Agent and Preferred Agent with commission structures tiered to monthly billing thresholds. Commissions include local loop and all MRC components. In addition, partners will continue to receive initial commission percentages through the renewal term of the customer contract.
Virtela provides agent partners with training on processes, tools and service offerings. It also offers pre-sales tools, such as brandable brochures, RFP templates and product collateral. The company offers sales engineering support and 48-hour turnaround time for quotes. Access to the VirtelaView Web portal enables agents to check status of orders and download sales materials.
