WilTel CEO talks strategy

A leading wholesale provider of telecom services, WilTel Communications has been pursuing the enterprise market directly as a next-generation ISP for the last two years. Network World Senior Editor Carolyn Duffy Marsan spoke recently with WilTel CEO Jeff Storey about the company's enterprise strategy and its critical but changing relationship with SBC. Here are excerpts from their conversation:

What success has WilTel had in its push into the enterprise market?

We target the type of customers that need a wide-area networking specialist that will engineer a solution specifically to meet their needs. They need capabilities that other carriers can't bring. They need access to people and resources that other carriers won't bring. ... We have Lava Trading, a firm that handles 20% to 25% of all the trades on Nasdaq. That's certainly a company where the network is a key, critical component of the business that they operate. Another recent win is ING, a large insurance company where data is absolutely critical to their success.

We have all the capabilities to support enterprise customers very successfully. We're good on the data side, with MPLS, private-line and IP services.

We had a great voice business on the wholesale side, supporting 5 billion minutes per month. Now we're offering voice services to both our government and enterprise customers. Vonage is one of our largest voice customers. ... We don't release numbers about our growth in enterprise sales, but our revenues are continually going up. And with only 2,000 employees, we have a cost structure that's remarkable.

This year, WilTel announced Ethernet and storage services for the enterprise market, as well as new voice services. Can you explain the significance of these in terms of building WilTel's share of the enterprise market?

Storage-area networking is very important. Our Vyvx subsidiary is the leader in the transmission of broadcast-quality video over fiber for the media and entertainment business. We want to be the Vyvx of storage-area networking. Ethernet - both managed and unmanaged - is just the way the world is going. Voice services are part of the portfolio that an enterprise wants to buy. These services fill out our portfolio so enterprises can do one-stop shopping.

What other enterprise services does WilTel have planned for 2005?

We're going to continue to grow our IP VPN services. We're going to continue to expand on storage-area networking and Ethernet products. And we're going to focus very specifically on professional services and managed services for our customers. I think there's an opportunity to help clear up the networking confusion for our customers. We're also going to expand our voice products and our integrated access.

How much of WilTel's enterprise revenue is direct vs. through subcontracting deals with foreign carriers such as KDDI?

It's a mix. Historically, we've only been in the enterprise market through our wholesale arrangements. There are some wholesale customers that buy great big pipes and do finished services on top. There are other customers that work with us. We provide the enterprise services under their banner and their name. KDDI and SBC are two of these. We've been winning enterprise customers in both ways.