CRN Fast50: Anittel shows why its No.1

Tales brings more to Anittel than a demonstrated skill at acquisitions.

Anittel, which stands for Australian National IT and Telecommunications, has made a bet on the convergence of IT services and communications. Tales' telco experience will help in overseeing that transformation to an integrated model.

"There's a huge amount of commoditisation happening in IT services," Tales says. "Improvements in technology allow us to commoditise traditional services that were solution sold to customers and take them through larger channels."

Tales sees Telstra and Optus' decision to provide software and infrastructure as a service (SaaS and IaaS) as evidence of a shift in the IT services landscape.

He is preparing Anittel to take on the telcos as they encroach on the traditional territory of the IT reseller.

"How do we take the learnings of telco marketing, which is very mass market oriented, and how do we commoditise IT services, which is traditionally solutions based, and join those two at the hip?"

Hosted or cloud computing services, combined with managed services and remote management, are clearly a large part of the future of IT service provision. The quality of these services relies heavily on a stable and strong internet connection to the customer.

Tales says that resellers who don't provide the telecommunications part of the equation suffer from an overburdened business model.

"If you're just doing managed services, half your issues are related to the carriage.

"Your customer is always going to come to you because you are the IT services provider, and your expensive engineers are spending a huge component of their time dealing with the carriers on connectivity issues."

Tales saw this problem with some of the resellers Anittel acquired.

"From a customer facing perspective, [providing managed services] wasn't a seamless process. There was a huge amount of cost being absorbed."

Resellers that run their own telco division can provide a much more rounded offering and service the customer better by providing a suite of services rather than just one component, Tales adds.

Tales is convinced that, with margins from voice and data services under pressure, the big telcos are changing as fast as they can and will one day get it right.

He sends this warning to other resellers. "The [telcos] will change. They know what they need to change and when they effect change it will be dramatic. They will get their customer service issues resolved reasonably quickly. They've got the balance sheet and the brand, they already service these customers from a voice and data perspective. Get ready."

Next: The regional approach