Telarus, CarrierSales Converge Going Into 2018

Telarus says it is working hard to keep partners comfortable as it integrates CarrierSales into its business.

The Utah-based master agent is starting the new year with a rebranding that reflects the company’s acquisition of its fellow master agent. Telarus first announced plans to buy CarrierSales Oct. 30.

Amy Bailey, vice president of marketing for Telarus, tells Channel Partners that her company enjoyed 147 percent growth in 2017 and hired several partner development managers and field sales professionals.

Telarus’ Amy Bailey

She says the marriage with CarrierSales has boosted the master agent’s portfolio and supplier contracts.

Telarus already worked with Comcast and Spectrum, but Bailey says buying CarrierSales added Cox to the mix and gives Telarus a full range of cable offerings for customers around the country.

“CarrierSales brought over a great group of people that were specialists in contact center and specialists in mobility. They had a whole CenturyLink specialty practice,” Bailey said. “So those things added to our UC practice and the VXSuite practice really complement each other nicely. We’re really looking to be that mobility, cloud, UC, forward-thinking expert.”

HTG 360 CEO and Telarus partner Chris Ichelson told Channel Partners in November that the acquisition would be good for the channel. He said the key is that it solidifies the account base by combining two growing bases. And mergers between master agents and distributors are likely to follow increasing consolidation among carriers, Ichelson said.

Telarus unveiled a revamped logo to kick off 2018.

“With the consolidation that’s going on, I think that in order to be successful and to protect the partners’ bases that are out there with Telarus and CarrierSales — I think the merger of the two is great for the partner community. Because it solidifies that the channel’s really not going anywhere. And the more that we can look like the other side of technology or the distribution-type space, the better for the longevity of the channel, in my opinion,” he said.

Bailey says integration is ongoing for the two teams.

“We’re moving to one commission system. We’re moving to one phone system. We’re moving to one email system. All of those pieces take a little while to integrate, but all of the employees have been great about jumping in and figuring things out and making sure that the partners aren’t feeling any of those growing pains or those merger/acquisition issues.”

She says Telarus is planning 40 events for 2018 and will unveil a new website at the Channel Partners conference in Las Vegas. She says that, at the end of the day, the already-existing relationships between Telarus’ partners and its partner support team will continue to anchor the company’s success.

“We like to think of ourselves as big enough to matter but small enough to still care.”

In other news, Telarus announced on Thursday that HTG 360 has signed a distribution agreement that will expand Telarus’ security portfolio.