Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Is sole-source a thing of the past?

To be honest, I'm not a shopper. I refuse to go to one store to buy tomatoes on sale and then another to get the onions just to save a few cents. Convenience is my motivator. In business, I'm the same way. Once I have found a vendor that I like, I don't want to worry about diverse contracts with multiple suppliers. The biggest value to me isn't the money saved, its the time saved.

But, I've learned more recently about entire business models growing around the concept of supplier aggregation. A friend of mine runs a business that serves offices throughout the Indianapolis area, providing all of their office supply needs. He shops the competition, gets bids, and buys from a half-dozen different vendors each time he fills any order. Sole-sourced? Yes and no. The end-customer is receiving product from a host of sources, but the frustrations and headaches that usually accompany such shopping are no longer theirs to bear.

The same thing has been happening for years in the telecom industry. Retail stores, restaurants, and c-store locations all need one thing: broadband access. Yet, fewer and fewer are going directly through any one provider. Sure, it's quite a hassle for a network administrator to negotiate and manage contracts with AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all at the same time. But, what if they didn't have to?

The Accelerator™ antenna technology allows one company to have multiple sites each served by different wireless broadband providers--whichever one is best for any individual site. It's the best of both worlds: ideal coverage and flexibility while Accel Networks handles the procurement nightmare.

Labels: Broadband, Fixed Wireless Broadband, Network Providers