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BNH Business and Civic Awards: INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR
Pulling It All Together
Advanced Corporate Networking carves out new niches in network integration
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Business New Haven
2/2/2004
By: Mimi Houston
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Picture this: Way back in 1991, three good friends sharing, say, lunch together, talking about building a new and innovative business in the ever-evolving world of computers and communications - information technology (IT). All work for the same company; all share a common vision. Each is an expert in his or her own specialty, and the chemistry between and among them is powerful.
It's no small venture to be taken lightly - starting your own business, so many details to work out. Can they pull it off?
"We sat down and discussed it," recalls Ron Rich, a founding principal of Advanced Corporate Networking, based in Milford, "and 30 days later we were in business."
The "we" was Rich, Catherine Gunther and Francis Palacio.
"We all come from IT backgrounds," explains Rich, "but we each have our different strengths. Francis is what would be known as the chief technical officer, I'm the sales and operations guy. Catherine's strengths are in accounting - purchasing, accounts payable and receivable, and in human resources."
So far, has their business adventure been what they all anticipated?
"There have been times when it was better than we expected," laughs Rich. "It came quick and fast. There have been things that didn't work out - there have been ups and downs - it's just like life. But the chemistry of it worked right from the beginning. And we were successful four months after we started the business.
That exact business being....
"Our original concept was to provide high-level, professional network integration services and all the necessary equipment - which at that time were workstations, servers and communications technology equipment that today would be considered dinosaurs," laughs Rich.
In a relatively short time, just a few years, it became obvious that their new company would need to provide more to their clients, due to growing customer demand.
"Our customers were asking for greater after-hours support," remembers Rich. "We began to stay open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., then it became eight to nine. We realized there was no point in going any further. We were all used to IT's wacky hours - lots of nights and weekends. We decided we may as well go into it 24/7."
It took about 18 months more for the trio to find the right property - a building roughly the size of a football field - to house the next step in their company's growth.
Digital BackOffice, a service of Advanced Corporate Networking, provides Internet and/or Web hosting, including e-mail and other services. "It's where we manage the infrastructure, provide, monitor, maintain and manage the service 24/7," explains Rich.
"That means when a company's IT person has gone home at five o'clock and hours later there is a failure or a glitch, we'll be there to take care of it."
What they'll take care of is any number of services to businesses, including Internet, intranet and extranet hosting, nationwide DSL, e-commerce services, Web hosting and usage reports and utilization trends.
"In 1997 we decided to bring on the Digital BackOffice, and we opened it in 1998," Rich says, citing a continuation of the fast-track way his company prefers to do business.
And exactly who are these clients? They range from small private schools to Fortune 500s to public libraries and small to mid-sized businesses of nearly every description. They are headquartered not only in Connecticut, but in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania as well.
"Some of our clients have overseas clients," explains Rich, "so we have a presence there as well, like in Germany and England. We'll also be cultivating more business outside the New England area in 2005 when the technology and the arrangements we've been working on come together."
One particularly notable niche they've carved for themselves is in the public-education sector throughout the state, though their small to medium-size business clientele is a notable one as well.
"We knew there was a market there," says Rich of courting this oft-overlooked market. "In the early 1990s we were really dealing with the Fortune 500s. We decided then to focus more on small to mid-sized companies.
"Also, in the early '90s, there was great emphasis placed on outsourcing all your IT needs, following a book written by Jack Welch of General Electric. He really launched this wave of outsourcing - whether it made financial sense for a company or not. The pendulum swung way too far in that direction, and then, of course, it swung all the way back in the other direction."
With big companies reeling in uncertainty, it made sense to the business team to begin courting in earnest the small to mid-sized business sector they'd identified as a viable market.
"It really is an ignored market," Rich says of his company's target area. "It's a very time-consuming and costly endeavor to get into."
But for their efforts, Rich says, the rewards are paying off. And he gets the satisfaction of being able to provide small businesses with the technological advances and opportunities previously only affordable by the big guns.
"An example of this is video global conferencing, which you would typically find at, say, a Pfizer or General Electric. Companies used to spend thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars a year on these services. We can provide this service to small and mid-sized companies at an affordable cost."
In fact, small to mid-sized businesses can expect to pay considerably less for the services offered by Advanced Corporate Networking and the Digital BackOffice than they would if they hired and IT specialist of their own to put on the payroll.
"A lot of companies are still out there looking for that multi-million dollar contract," notes Dale Bruckhart, vice president of educational sales and marketing for Advanced Corporate Networking. "We're happy with the $5,000 to $10,000 contracts.
"For example, we have one client that just uses us to manage their e-mail system. We have someone at their office one day a week. They all save their computer problems and questions for Wednesdays," he laughs, "when they know he'll be coming in."
On the other hand, some clients have a growth potential that seems unlimited.
"One of our customers is Bibliomation," Bruckhart says. "They're a non-profit library consortium that consists of 60 public, academic and school libraries around the state. They're now outsourcing - to us - their computer network management. Previously they were doing it themselves.
"They are a very active market, and a typical prospect for us, in that they're a non-profit operation handling their own network for almost 20 years now. Remember: Back in the '80s the Internet didn't even exist. Then, in 1996, '97, they were overwhelmed with Internet traffic, and since then they've had to make the decision that providing Internet service was not their core business."
Bruckhart says his company's services allow libraries to be libraries again, concentrating on providing and tracking books and other materials rather than trying to keep up with an unmanageable amount of Internet traffic while costs soar. With newer technology and better pricing available to them, the Digital BackOffice has been able to cut their clients' Internet services costs in half, according to Bruckhart.
"This comes at a very fortunate time," he adds. "In 2003-04 many public libraries had their budgets cut."
Bruckhart is servicing more and more schools - public and private - and sees the growth potential, along with the continually evolving technology open to educators, as equally unlimited.
"This part of the business will just continue to grow," he asserts. "And it's particularly satisfying. It's exciting to see teachers using this new technology, and to watch the new curriculum tools and the testing and teaching tools.
"We have one teacher, for example, who is using this technology at a private school. He had to be away on the West Coast for a few days, but he told his students he still expected them to come to class. He set up an assignment that was not available to them before 10 a.m. - their class time - or after 11 a.m. The next day, all of his students showed up for class," he laughs.
Bruckhart says it's rewarding, too, to know he's providing services that his clients could never afford to provide for themselves on their own.
"For example," he begins, "we provide what I call the 'five nines' of availability: We're working for you 99.999 percent of the time. That's like, less than half a day of downtime a year."
That kind of service would come in handy anytime, but it's particularly useful when one of the countless viruses that plague all computer users rears its ugly, and destructive head.
"This year, as soon as the schools opened," Bruckhart recalls, "there were a huge number of viruses going on. Because of the private aspect of the school network, we can identify - even down to the specific computer at the school - where that virus is coming from. And if the school doesn't correct it in a certain amount of time, we have a way of blocking them off from the rest of the schools on the network so don't infect their computers."
Like their business clients, Advanced Corporate Networking's scholastic clients run the gamut in terms of size. They service very small private schools up to entire school systems in some towns. The company was recently awarded a public school contract that consists of 120 schools across the state.
Although ACN faces theoretical competition from the state, which is charged with eventually providing free Internet services to all schools - Bruckhart sees potential problems with this apparently good deal. Because each town will be responsible for housing the servers needed to connect to this program, difficulties in implementation may sour the arrangement.
"It's like putting a huge water main into each town," explains Bruckhart, "and then saying to the schools, 'Okay, go ahead and connect up to it.' The cost of this alone is far greater than what their Internet service is costing them now."
Bruckhart points to other managerial plusses his company can provide schools as well.
"All our schools are using a privately managed network that is blocked from the public Internet," he explains. "Because they reside on a private network, this improves their security tremendously. We provide a number of filtering services that control, among other things, exactly where a student can go on the Internet."
Bruckhart says the company is always seeking to identify cutting-edge technology and finding ways to offer clients better services at lower costs.
"Our data center in Wilton is relatively small in terms of physical floor space," he explains. "This keeps our real estate costs down, but because of the way we rack our machines, we can get a much higher density in that smaller space. We also provide an uninterruptible power system because we have a large generator that will handle any power outs. In fact, in last year's blackout, we had not one minute of lost service."
Bruckhart also says he and his company are providing services that the majority of businesses are having a hard time keeping current on.
"Businesses back in 1999 and 2000 spent a lot of money in IT, and now they're using three-, four-, five-year-old servers and systems. Now is the time to re-invest in technology, which we see as an upside. You hear these businesses saying, 'Let's buy a new server, let's upgrade our operating system.' But then when they check the cost, they're saying, 'Wait - do we really want to do this? Our business is manufacturing, or our business is accounting. We're not in the business of operating a large computer network.'
Bruckhart says his company is ready for the day when computers are even more integral to our daily way of life.
"Right now you've got an average computer ratio of five to one or six to one students to every computer nationwide," he says. "Every year we're getting closer to that one-to-one ratio. You know, in corporate America you have one tech person for every 50 networked employees. In education that number is one for every 500 people. We're already working with a middle magnet school of about 600 students where every one of them carries a laptop."
And when every school in Connecticut has jumped on the bandwagon, at least now they know there's a place they can count on for fast, affordable service. What Advanced Corporate Networking calls "service with the five nines."
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