Service providers catering to large enterprise companies now have another formidable competitor to contend with. WilTel Communications revealed today it has expanded beyond its traditional service provider customer base to also target Fortune 2000 companies.
Financial, insurance, healthcare, government, cable and education are the initial verticals WilTel’s 150-plus sales and support staff is targeting, although the company already has sizeable enterprise customers in a variety of fields, says Anthony Tomae, senior vice president of marketing.
Forwarding its new strategy, WilTel this week announced it was added to the U.S. General Services Administration’s Federal Supply Schedule 70 and disclosed it has been providing financial services company Lava Trading Inc. with professional and Ethernet WAN services.
Presenting enterprise prospects with “solutions” as opposed to simply connections is key to WilTel’s new approach, says Tomae. “We don’t go in and quote for a DS3,” he explains. “We say ‘What do you want to do with it.’” Then WilTel suggests the best connectivity options, designs and engineers networks, addresses operations and field support issues, helps define workflow and processes, and stages and implements CPE solutions.
The company already offers a managed router service, which provides preconfigured hardware and software. WilTel has also positioned its existing MPLS IP VPN and Ethernet WAN services for the enterprise market. And WilTel will manage any part of a customer’s network at their request, says Tomae.
WilTel also plans to launch in June a managed security service, which consists of managed firewalls and intrusion detection, and a service called FocalPoint that offers DS3 and OCx connectivity at a fixed rate with no mileage-based charges.
Tomae adds that many large enterprises have multiple data centers. WilTel can design data centers and offer connectivity among those sites, he says. And because WilTel has 12,000 access points (it recently added 300 new access points in tier 2 and 3 cities), companies and other organizations don’t have to pay exorbitant fees for local connections to get ontoWilTel’s network, Tomae continues.
Although WilTel has become known as a carrier’s carrier, the company’s Vyvx unit has long served ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox – some of the country’s largest enterprises – with video transport services, says Tomae, explaining WilTel is not altogether new to the Fortune 2000 crowd. That fact, paired with WilTel’s experience serving large service providers like SBC Communications, its high-quality customer service noted by Atlantic-ACM and the breadth of its service portfolio and network reach give it a strong position with enterprise customers, according to Tomae.
