Yipes’ storage run

With many offerings from service providers differing mostly on price, some are trying to enable services such as storage to help set them apart. Yipes Communications, which uses Gigabit Ethernet to tap into metro areas with high-speed services, has teamed up with several storage service providers.

By partnering with the storage-focused providers, Yipes will be able to offer up another benefit to customers looking for storage services. On the flip side, the storage providers instantly will gain access to Yipes customers in their turned-up markets.

“We want to be disruptive to the traditional telcos,” said Ron Young, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Yipes. “And we are leveraging our [infrastructure] efficiently to provide additional services,” Young said.

The storage providers will be offering services such as storage backup, disaster recovery and data retrieval with the use of the Yipes network. So far Yipes has partnered with StorageWay, Storage Access, Progressive Technologies Group and StorageLink.

The addition of storage services only helps justify the Yipes business model even further, according to Young.

“We have multiple revenue streams,” Young said, noting that other service providers using the Yipes network to provide their services are supportive of that. “They can sell to anyone on our ring,” he said.

But while Yipes is taking on storage providers as partners now, that doesn’t guarantee Yipes won’t turn around and compete with them in the future. Young did not rule out that Yipes might work on offering those storage-related services at some point down the line.

Liane LaBarba is Senior Editor at Telephony. She can be reached at labarba@airmail.net.