AT&T, Altice USA Sign Agreements with Innovative Business Solutions

Innovative Business Solutions has announced a partnership with AT&T Business that will help its agents expand their technology portfolios.

The Colorado-based company has joined the brokerage/distributor organization within AT&T Business that Chris Jones leads. The agreement comes approximately two years after AT&T built the program to lie across its Alliance Channel and ACC Business programs.

Innovative has earned a reputation in the channel for its strong relationships with MSOs (cable companies). Co-founder Jed Kenzy said Innovative will remain committed to those relationships while giving partners and customers additional connectivity options.

“For a secondary solution and tertiary solution – whatever it is – AT&T fills a big hole for us in that regard. I’m incredibly proud of my team that they’ve been able to put together some volume without ever taking it away from the MSO community,” Kenzy told Channel Futures.

Source: LinkedIn

Kenzy said the partnership thus far has generated “net-new, incremental revenue.” In particular, Kenzy pointed AT&T’s cybersecurity offerings. He said AT&T partners with a variety of security partners that can fill gaps and employees a strong security engineering team.

“It doesn’t have to … cannibalize our cable-first tactics. It’s other products and diverse network that add to the equation, rather than subtracting from it,” Kenzy said.

Cable Partnership

In addition, Innovative Business Solutions also announced partnerships with Altice USA, Optimum Business and Suddenlink Communications. Those agreement put Innovative in an elite group of five brokerages [master agents] that partner with the four largest cable providers, according to CEO Jed Kenzy. Altice USA owns the Optimum and Suddenlink brands.

The four biggest MSOs that work with the channel are Comcast, Charter (Spectrum), Cox and Altice.

Channel Growth

Kenzy, who also co-founded connectivity mapping software CableFinder and sales execution center ClearConnect, said he is witnessing strong growth all across the channel. Moreover, he sees channel partners pivoting to technologies that they have never sold before, such as security.

“Networks are getting more complicated. Security offerings are getting more complicated,” Kenzy said. “And we continue to see the agent channel push through, learn and solve problems for business customers.”