Atria Networks making stronger push in enterprise space

Utility telecom provider Atria Networks LP is considering adding telephony to its service portfolio in a bid to further diversify its customer base, company executives told a gathering in Ottawa last week. Steve McCartney, president and CEO of Atria, says the company has an established track record of providing connectivity, data services, transparent LAN and other services to a wide range of customers, but customers have been enquiring about getting voice services as well. “We’re giving it some serious consideration,” McCartney says. Adding voice to its service portfolio would be a natural fit since customers already buy other IP services from Atria. What complicates the decision though is that voice itself has evolved into an application and the need for large voice switched environments might be on their way out. Additionally, IP telephony is no longer just about voice – picking up the handset and dialing a phone number – it’s more about the managed service provider environment, says Mike Stephens, VP of marketing and product development. “The biggest part of the problem with voice today is it’s not the connectivity aspect, it is the integration and management,” he says. “You look at a lot of the new applications on the voice side, you’re integrating not just voice, you’re integrating Outlook, your unified messaging with your voice, and presence.” The flip side, according to McCartney, is that adding voice is good business for serving trusted customers. “We’ve got a lot of trusted customers that have actually been saying to us we would really prefer that you also now provide us the voice switching,” he says. The company still hasn’t made a decision on the telephony front and will look at either selling voice for a select product set or a select market, McCartney adds. As Atria considers its future with the voice, the company is pushing ahead to broaden its customer base. Originally strong in the MUSH sector – municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals – in recent years Atria has secured a greater number of commercial customers. The company says it has a 50-50 customer mix equally split between public sector/government and commercial clients. Atria already has an impressive list of enterprise clients such as Research in Motion and Sunlife and these types of customers will become part of a larger focus in the future. “We’d like to take that even further,” McCartney says referring to the 50-50 customer mix. “We’ve like to more in the commercial space over time.” This doesn’t mean Atria plans to abandon the government sector. It is currently expanding the reach of its fibre network in Ottawa to reach more federal government sites. Currently at 125, there will be another 30 sites turned on by the end of this year, with the total hitting 200 by the end of 2010. The growth in enterprise customers has come at the expense of the existing providers, says the CEO. Given that the telecom market shrank by about 3% from 2002 to 2006, yet some parts of Atria grew by 75%, it demonstrates that Atria was taking market share away from its much bigger rivals, explains McCartney. Atria was once a group of utility telecoms, but since acquiring Telecom Ottawa last May has worked hard to integrate the company to a greater degree. There are still gaps in coverage – the largest extending from Ottawa to Peterborough – but the company works other utility telecom providers to ensure service continuity for customers who have locations in those regions. Wi-Fi plans in the making Atria, which owns a Wi-Fi network in Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa and operates Hamilton’s Wi-Fi network, is currently discussing plans for Wi-Fi. McCartney would only say that one of the company’s managers has been tasked with developing a plan on Wi-Fi. “It’s not our core business. In almost every case it was done as a community initiative, but it probably has many good uses. So we’ve asked one of our managers ”, he says.

Atria Networks making stronger push in enterprise space

News | 04/27/2009 7:57 pm EDT

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