Viatel has announced plans to double its number of reseller partners by the end of the year. The company is focusing on growing its channel business and in order to support its 50 existing partners, and continue the successful recruitment of new targeted partners, the company has appointed Keith Jones as sales manager for the North of England with a team of five new channel partner managers.
Approximately half of all new business today for Viatel is through channel partners and the company expects this to increase in 2007.
"There is a lot of uncertainty in the channel at the moment with regards to next generation convergent services which has largely been created by the bigger players. Viatel intends to help partners through this difficult transition and has the infrastructure, experience and existing customer knowledge to draw upon to help the channel take advantage of the opportunities that convergence presents," said Neil Watson, director of indirect sales, Viatel. "We are dedicated to growing our channel base including voice and data resellers, ISPs, system integrators and distributors and look forward to more joint successes in the future."
The company has implemented a support programme for partners that includes monthly training workshops on next generation services and how to make the transition; dedicated telephone support and a new training centre based in the UK sales office in Bracknell. This is in addition to existing benefits including discounts, service presentations, technical training and training materials and resources, plus joint marketing initiatives.
The new Northern channel team is led by Keith Jones who joins the company from Legend Communications (now THUS plc). The team includes William Montague (also from THUS), Stuart Davenport from Net Services, Ian Gregory from Kingston Communications, Simon Butler from Siemens Communications and Nick Sacke from Tiscali.