Comcast Business, Spectrum Win Big at Telarus Partner Awards

Two cable giants led a list of channel-oriented vendors that took home honors from Telarus Wednesday night for sales performance.

Telarus, the master agent/distributor, named Comcast Business its supplier of the year at the Telarus Partner Summit. Comcast led all vendor partners in sales for the 2016 fiscal year. It’s the fifth consecutive win for the cable company. Spectrum Enterprise, second only to Comcast, snagged recognition as the most improved supplier.

Level 3, ACC Business (AT&T) and Nitel rounded out the top five in terms of sales volume.

Roger Blohm, executive vice president of Telarus, says suppliers helped the distributor increase its sales by 35 percent over the last year.

“Their willingness to work with us in the field to recruit new partners, to support our events, to allow us to co-locate our monitoring hardware in their data centers to provide transparency to the cloud, to keep our pricing and fiber tools up-to-date — it all blends into the recipe of a healthy channel selling community,” he said.

Telarus also recognized Big Leaf Networks as its best new supplier. It doled out multiple awards to individuals that work with Telarus on behalf of suppliers:

Telarus agents also got in on the action. Complete Communications, a Utah-based solution provider that has partnered with Telarus for the last 11 years, earned recognition for the best sales performance. Telarus awarded California-based vCom Rookie of the Year.

The distributor did its annual technology reveal earlier in the day. The new solution is MoonRize, an addition to the Telarus partner app that gives visibility into orders.

CEO Adam Edwards said MoonRize will save time and stress for partners as they and their customers wait for suppliers to deliver solutions.

“Up until today, we’ve really been in the dark as to where these things are. We’ve been wasting a lot of time,” Edwards said.

Co-founder Patrick Oborn said customers are dealing with two specific risks. First, some of them are on a timeline to replace current systems, which means that a delayed order could force them to settle for existing contracts. Second, the customers that are opening up new locations won’t be able to do business until the order comes through.

“In the past, whenever you put an order in – and it’s really almost irrespective of supplier – your order kind of goes around the dark side of the moon, and you’re just praying that it comes out the other side and it’s working. Timing is everything, because the timing speaks to your credibility,” he said.

Telarus lastly announced that it will move its partner summit from Park City, Utah, next year. The new venue will be in Boca Raton, Florida.

Read our recap of Tuesday’s keynote, where Edwards and Oborn talked M&A and SD-WAN.