State of the ADTRAN Union

ADTRAN Connect 2010 attendees received a candid company update by key executives including CEO Tom Stanton, VP of Carrier Networks Jay Wilson and Senior VP of Enterprise Networks Rick Schansman. No surprises here: ADTRAN had a stellar year, and the company is looking to continue the momentum. Read on for the deep-dive…

“We’re doing better and better,” said Stanton, without a moment of hesitation. In both carrier and enterprise tracks the company has increased headcount and spending, and is still looking up — about $163 million in sales up — for Q3 of 2010.

On the carrier side of the business, Wilson said he was ‘pleased’ with ADTRAN’s success in the optical space and noted particular success with the Total Access platform. The company’s broadband solutions have been part of that business triumph, too, he said.

Schansman noted that as unified communications in the enterprise has grown, ADTRAN UC has become a ‘true’ solution package in the sense that it’s not simply a single piece of hardware with the label “solution” attached. ADTRAN’s success was not just because of its cohesive product line, Stanton pointed out, but also because of its employees — ADTRAN fosters a culture of employee empowerment. The company has made a habit of hiring the “best and brightest” engineers and applying their skill sets, which helped move ADTRAN from building plug-ins to creating full-featured hardware packages.

With all the good news about organic growth, The VAR Guy asked Stanton how he felt about the partnerships ADTRAN has made recently, notably with Polycom and BroadSoft. Stanton flipped the question over to Schansman, who said that the solution kits ADTRAN has bundled with the aforementioned companies have been a great value-add and a boost to sales productivity. There’s also more of that to come, as ADTRAN is continually looking to provide more and more ‘complete’ solutions.

“Not all growth can be organic,” admitted Schansman, but he continued to say that ADTRAN won’t stop doing what it does best.

Looking forward

But even with ADTRAN’s success and optimism, Stanton earnestly described that proliferation outside the United States is quite low — between 5  percent and 7 percent. The company’s focus in the next couple of years will be on ways to push that number up, as Stanton believes saturation in the the states is inevitable.

All this talk, but what does it mean for ADTRAN’s channel base? All three agreed that there would be more focus on the VAR space, as well as an effort to make sure ADTRAN is “growing the right VARs.” Translation? Continuing to make sure marketing is spot-on, with an eye on VARs who specialize in the carrier space, which ADTRAN correctly guessed would naturally bleed over into the enterprise space.

ADTRAN has seen vertical markets continue to climb, and sees promise in working with partners who can provide the right blend of security, packages and application needs — most notably with the medical field.

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