As ISPCON approaches, Coyote Point Systems is emphasizing partner support (and price, features, scalability). The company has no direct sales channel, which its partners like.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 2, 2006]

San Jose, Calif.-based Coyote Point Systems is working on partner programs, looking for elite ISPs, not just anybody. "We've been successful primarily in five key verticals," explains Jack Irving, vice president of sales at Coyote Point Systems. "They are: colo and managed hosts, e-commerce, health care, government and education, and select VARs."

"Most of our partners started as customers 4, 5, 6, 7, or even 8 years ago," he says. "Now we're recognizing them, providing them with tools such as a password-protected partner resource center and participation in their marketing efforts."

Partners are important
For example, today, Coyote Point Systems' CEO is at a conference run by a partner. St. Paul, Minn.-based VISI is running a conference called VISI Data Center 2.0 at which the company will unveil its upgraded data center, with a ribbon cutting ceremony by the mayor. It will also have sessions, including "Deploying a High Availability Server Network", presented by Coyote Point Systems CEO and CTO Bill Kish. The VISI Data Center 2.0 conference is free.

VISI is proud to operate the largest locally-owned data center in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Asked if the company really sells nothing direct from the website, Jason Baker, CTO of VISI, confirms that it's true. "Just recently Coyote Point Systems put us in touch with the University of Minnesota, and opportunity we might not have heard of without our relationship with Coyote Point Systems."

Measuring your load balancer
Of course, when a load balancer is working perfectly, you won't notice it. That's why Irving likes this post by Interop's Robert Ballecer. Ballecer writes, "these silver boxes are Equalizer E450si Load Balancers from Coyote Point Systems. . . If they do their job well, and there's no reason to believe that they will not if past experience is a guide, then the only way a visitor will know about their gear is if they visit the NOC on the show floor or read the Interop blog."

Nevertheless, the company had Tolly Group compare its E350si with F5's more expensive BIG-IP 1500 and BIG-IP 3400 [.pdf]. The conclusion: "Outperforms BIG-IP 1500 in every test, offers near-comparable performance to the more expensive BIG-IP 3400, and offers compelling price/performance advantages."

For ISPs looking for load balancers, Irving has a clear, succinct description of the value proposition. "We allow the service provider to increase capacity by 25 percent without adding servers, using that capacity for sustained growth or for peaks. That's in addition to the features ISPs expect, like failover and access controls, like providing reliable and consistent access."

Baker says that VISI knows that the most important application is e-mail, and that business customers will not tolerate even a minute of e-mail downtime. "Like any service provider, we overbuild. We have excess resources available and can switch on the fly. Our people don't have to watch for problems, because the system senses the health of servers in real time and makes the decision where to send requests. Obviously, we have people working 24 x 7 to make sure there will be know problems, but when there is a problem, it is isolated so our people can work on it."

He adds that Coyote Point Systems also helps with "Oprah moments." "Six or seven years ago, we had a customer in kitchen and bath products who received a phone call that they would be mentioned on Oprah in a week. They called us in a panic, not knowing if their website could handle the traffic. So we put in the load balancer. It was fascinating. You could really see the impact. The show aired in the same time slot in each time zone in the U.S., and after each mention, it was like a tidal wave. This can make the difference between a blowout success and failing to capitalize on a PR event."

Security and compliance
VISI has just obtained its SAS 70 certification, type 1. Baker explains that type 1 certification is the implementation of documented processes. Once the company has been operating with those process for some time, it can request type 2 certification, where auditors check that the company is adhering to the processes it has designed.

"We have customers who are large financial institutions and large health care companies," explains Baker. "For those customers, SAS 70 compliance is a simple check box: if you don't have it, you're cut out of the RFP process."

The bottom line
But however many large customers you have, the majority of your customers are average-sized companies. MSPs need to provide both features and value. "Many of our customers are SMBs," says Baker. "Value is very important to them, and therefore to us as well. With Coyote Point Systems, we get a solution that has 80 percent of the features of a really big solution but at a third of the cost. Our customers just need that 80 percent, not the additional bells and whistles. Coyote Point Systems can provide that too, but customers don't usually need it."

—End