WilTel breaks into enterprise market

LAS VEGAS—WilTel Communications, which previously had concentrated on providing carrier services, today officially launched its enterprise strategy at Networld + Interop here, announcing that it has enhanced its sales force and services around four specific verticals.

  Focusing on Fortune 2000 customers in education, finance, insurance and healthcare, the company also is launching Managed Security and Managed Router services geared specifically to those segments. Managed Security consists of managed firewalls and intrusion detection while Managed Router provides pre-configured hardware and software to reduce deployment timeframes on routers.

  “It’s sort of a natural evolution for carriers to get into the enterprise,” said Tony Tomae, senior vice president of marketing for WilTel.

  Among the other services the company plans to offer are an MPLS IP VPN and Ethernet WAN service. 

  WilTel traditionally has been focused on providing carrier customers with backbone services but doesn’t necessarily see any danger in competing with some of its customers, said Jeff Storey, president and CEO of WilTel.

  “Our carrier customers are very important to us, but [avoiding the enterprise market] kind of implies that we don’t have channel conflict, which isn’t really true,” he said, noting that WilTel often will be the backbone provider on two competing proposals from carriers.