Rebranded Colt is building its wholesale business in the managed services sector, selling products to telecoms companies to sell on to enterprise customers. Co-sponsored feature: Colt Technology Services
 
 


François Eloy: Colt is the information delivery platform
for Europe


Max Munro: Carriers are starting to behave like enterprises,
and they want bespoke managed solutions  

Colt has rebranded itself and it is telling the industry that it is now more than a telco. The new Colt provides the same level of telecoms services to its customers, but the company has strengthened its offering by combining its telecoms solutions with a wide portfolio of managed services.
“Our customers expect us to provide telecoms services and now they are looking for managed services,” says François Eloy, the company’s managing director of wholesale. “We are managing business critical applications on our network. Our platform is not only our network but our expertise and our 19 data centres in ten countries.”
Managed services already represents a significant part of Colt’s business but the company has developed a business plan that sees this sector expand considerably. “We want to be growing this business for the next 10 years,” adds Eloy.
The initiative coincides with a rebranding of Colt to Colt Technology Services. “We are the information delivery platform for Europe.”
Colt is approaching the market via three sales channels — major enterprises, including finance and media; midsize, serve through partners and wholesale.
Data is a substantial part of the wholesale offering, but many telecoms service providers are looking for more. “Many operators are reviewing their entire portfolio of products,” says Max Munro, Colt’s head of wholesale sales for managed services. “Carriers are starting to behave like enterprises, and they want bespoke managed solutions. And they want to reduce costs.”
White labels

Even when carriers offer managed services in their home countries, they may want to offer them outside their own market — and that’s where Colt can help. “Where they are looking to improve their offer at an European level, we can provide them with white-labelled products,” says Munro.
“This offers carriers the opportunity to sell managed solutions in new areas. We’ll sell our managed services portfolio to other telecoms firms as to any other vertical.”
Typical telecoms customers of Colt’s managed services are competitive players in a region or country. “It means they can reduce their cost, and it means they have solutions they can upsell to their customers. Carriers do want to offer a larger range of products.”
Sometimes carriers have their own extensive offering of services, but enterprises want dual sourcing “and we then provide the diverse technical solution”, says Munro.
Geographical range is another of Colt’s advantages, especially for wholesale customers looking for what Eloy calls “portfolio landfill” when they are looking for global coverage. “They want to offer the missing elements in areas they don’t serve themselves.”
Offerings can vary from a specific service to fill a gap in a portfolio to a complete range, provided under a white-label arrangement.
Customisation

“For example, one of the large operators provides a standard solution right across Europe — except in two countries. In those we infill that part of the offer,” says Munro. “For others we can supply a complete range of managed services, customised for these operators, so that they can offer them to their customers. This market has opportunities for all sizes of customers.”
But doesn’t this mean that in some cases Colt’s wholesale customers in the telecoms industry are competing directly with Colt’s own directly sold managed service offer? Yes, agrees Munro, “but in Colt our Chinese walls are well established. Otherwise we’d lose our credibility. We are used to run a dedicated wholesale business in its own right.”
Among the range of services that Colt Technology Services is offering is cloud computing. “We’re doing infrastructure as a service, software as a service and platform as a service. Software as a service requires us to arrange licensing with the software companies. As Colt, we have a high profile with them.” In other words, some telecoms providers are too small for that process to be economical, and they can benefit from reselling software via Colt.
“Software as a service is very much a sell-through play,” says Munro. “It is something we are working on hard with carriers.”
On the other two as-a-service variants — infrastructure and platform — Colt has its own Europe-wide infrastructure to enable it to sell managed services on a wholesale basis to telecoms operators. “We sell directly to them,” says Eloy. “We also sell services to telcos for their own use.” Telecoms operators are like just another vertical market sector, he notes.
“On the wholesale side a much more bespoke approach is required,” says Munro. “Perhaps an operator wants just one component, or perhaps a range of services bundled into an overall offering. We have to bespoke the offer.”
It requires Colt to work with telecoms operators on a very different level, he notes. In order to cater for this different approach, Colt has appointed a specialist senior team, says Eloy. “We’ve created a team of experts, some very senior people who can address this approach.”
It’s a new strategy from Colt — taken as part of its rebranding and repositioning moves. The decisions were taken in the middle of 2009 but have become public only in the early months of 2010. “It’s a five-year plan with a three-year business case for our return on investment,” notes Eloy.
It is still early days, but Munro says: “We’re very pleased with the response from customers.”
The company did not expect a quick response from established players in the market, at least at the start of the programme, “but we’re surprised at the response from national players”. As a result, Colt has expanded its consulting services to include IT platforms.
“We are changing quite dramatically as a business,” says Munro. “You can see us using the infrastructure we’ve always had in a different way. We’re concentrating on the strength we have across Europe.”
And Colt is applying its own lessons to its own operations, he adds. “It’s a difficult sell unless you can prove the returns.” Colt has to be able to demonstrate that it can make equivalent savings in its own business, by using its own managed services.
Cost savings

“Look at your own organisation to see where you can successfully make cost savings,” says Munro. “Look at the power, at the rack space, at the cooling. A reduction in capex is one of the great sales pitches.”
So what has been the result in Colt’s own operations? “We’ve saved millions,” he says. “We’ve achieved a 50% reduction in rack space, a 20% better cooling efficiency and a reduction in power of 40%.” Those are the sort of figures that Colt can show its potential customers in the industry.
The other side to that is changing working practices, to demonstrate how a company that is distributed across Europe can work effectively. “We are changing our working practices,” says Munro — and that’s bringing extra benefits, such as the added security when documents are stored in the network not on laptops.
“Colt is the information delivery platform for European businesses,” says Eloy. “And we are serving customers via 3 different channels including wholesale.”  GTB

Colt’s managed services portfolio