Redundant Networks competes on a
national playing field, but it found a measure
of success when it decided to focus first
on the home folks.
The company, which provides highly
secure, highly reliable sites for corporate
data centers, launched an aggressive initiative
to search for customers within a
stone's throw of its corporate headquarters
in Reno.
Results of the initiative aren't fully
known this is, after all, something more
than an impulse purchase on the part of
executives but Redundant generated
some good prospects.
And perhaps as important, the initiative
instilled a sales ethic throughout the company,
said Janice Fetzer, Redundant's vice
president of operations.
"We had people in our network operations
group doing sales. At first, they grumbled.
But they got real excited. It was a lot
of fun," Fetzer said.
Throughout the organization, she said,
the Reno-area sales initiative taught
employees to listen to customers and
figure how Redundant could meet customers'
needs.
And one of the company's sales executives
said the tight geographic focus got
Redundant thinking about possible customers
outside its usual marketing
channels.
For instance, Redundant employees
made contact with a company that owns a
number of newspapers around the region,
said Paul Ream, a senior account executive
for the company. Redundant also deepened
its conversations with medical-service
providers. Neither of those industries had
been high on the list of prospects.
Those contacts came after Redundant
screened a data base of about 700 Renoarea
companies and identified 90 good
prospects. From that list of 90 prospects, it
won six appointments to make full-scale
presentations.
Those presentations will focus on the
security of Redundant's data centers at
Reno and Raleigh, N.C.
How secure?
To get into the Reno data center in the
Reno/Tahoe Tech Center, for instance, visitors
stop in a "man trap" a room from
which all exits are locked where they're
given the once-over before a security guard
lets them depart.
Inside, Redundant
employees monitor
the data center
around the clock.
Fire alarms, meanwhile,
are so sensitive that customers setting
up gear in one of the center's wire
cages aren't allowed to unpack cardboard
boxes in the data center. The cardboard
dust from the boxes would be enough to
trigger the alarms.
Software protection tools some of
them proprietary are just as rigorous.
The sales presentations to Reno businesses
also will focus on the reliability of
the data centers.
The company's name Redundant
hints at its strategy. The data centers
at Reno and Raleigh mirror one another.
If one center fails, the other provides
immediate backup.
The two cities were chosen because
they're widely separated, have excellent
proximity to fiber optic networks and
have good Internet access, Redundant
officials have said.
The individual centers also are configured
to provide reliable service with
uninterrupted power supplies and backup
telephone service.
Redundant officials have said that
businesses nationwide became much
more aware of the need for business
continuity after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.
