Profile: Andrew Saunders explains Zen’s wholesale push

Business ISPs who rely on selling internet access alone are not in a good position to tap in to future growth, warns Andrew Saunders, Head of Product Management and Marketing at Zen Internet.
While many have realised that growth is more likely to be enjoyed in selling services down the lines they provide rather than relying solely on monthly connection charges, Zen last month took the next step by announcing a wholesale service. This allows third parties who are working with clients, often in IT integration, to offer Zen’s connectivity, security, hosting and networking services under a ‘white label’ agreement.
Saunders reveals the decision to offer a wholesale service, alongside a direct route to market, means the ISP can tap in to growth that it may not have enjoyed if it continued to only deal direct with the end customer.
“We’ve been working alongside something like four hundred and fifty partners to provide connectivity, hosting and VPN services so the move in to a wholesale product really is a natural extension of where we were already going,” he says.
“We’re finding that businesses generally want to work with a single company so they know who they’re dealing with for all those services. So we need to be able to allow partners to white label our services so they have the client interaction rather than us. It means businesses get a direct service from one company so they only have ‘one throat to choke’, as it’s often jokingly referred to.”

Complexity and growth behind wholesale move

Ultimately, Saunders believes that the various services a modern business now requires has led to a level of complexity where they are more likely than ever before to need IT integrators to make sure the company’s infrastructure and services are running well and properly maintained. By allowing these integrators, or the partners they are working with, to provide IP connectivity and related services, Saunders believes the business ISP will tap in to a rich vein of new growth.
“It’s clear that we’re going to be getting a lot more business through wholesale than if we were just selling connectivity and associated services direct,” he says.
“That doesn’t mean that direct is not important to us because that’s still a very important market that’s growing well. I certainly feel a lot more confident in our future growth, though, now we’re allowing partners to effectively ‘white label’ our services, it effectively opens up the customer base of our partners.”
Zen has recently also started to offer an ASDL2+ ‘up to 20Mb service’ for clients with access to an exchange on BT’s 21CN network. It also has its own fibre optic backbone running through Southport, Manchester, Leeds and London.

Tags: Andrew Saunders, BT, BT 21CN, Business ISP, ISP, IT integration, wholesale, zen, Zen Internet