Choosing a wholesale IT and connectivity partner: what South African IT providers should ask first

If you run an IT company, sooner or later a client asks for something you do not supply. A business fibre line. A rack in a data centre. A cabling job across sites in four provinces. You have three options: turn it down, resell whatever you can find, or put a wholesale partner behind you.

The third is usually right and it is also where the risk sits, because you are handing part of your client relationship to a company your client has never heard of. This article is about how to judge that partner. It is written for the person who has to make that call.

The three ways IT providers get connectivity for clients

• Buy retail and mark it up. Simple, and you have no more leverage than the client would have had alone. When the line goes down you are a spectator with an invoice.

• Become a reseller of a reseller. Common, and it adds a layer. Every fault report now travels through two companies before it reaches anyone who can touch the network.

• Partner with a licensed operator. Fewer layers, and the company you phone is the company that can act. This is the arrangement worth the paperwork.

Why the licence matters to you rather than to your client

Your client does not care who holds an ICASA licence. You should, because it determines how long your escalation path is on the day something breaks and your name is on the contract.

There are two kinds worth knowing. A service licence permits a company to provide electronic communications services. A network licence permits it to construct, maintain and operate the network those services run on. A partner holding only the first is still buying the underlying network from someone else. A partner holding both can act on the network itself. Ask which they hold, and ask for the number rather than the claim.

For the record, Global Network Systems holds both: 0143/IECS/JAN/2009 for services and 0143/IECNS/JAN/2009 for the network, issued to Global Network Systems (Pty) Ltd, both with national coverage. You are entitled to ask any prospective partner for the equivalent.

The five questions worth asking before you sign

• Who owns the client relationship, in writing? If the answer is anything other than you, stop there.

• Is the SLA back to back? If they promise you four hours and you promise your client two, you have bought a liability, not a service.

• Who does your engineer actually phone at 02:00, and does that person have the access to fix it or only to log it?

• Does the branding stay yours end to end, including on site visits, notifications and invoices?

• What is their coverage outside the major centres? Most partners are strong in one metro. Your client with a branch in Mthatha will find the edge of that quickly.

The awkward one: will they take your client

Ask it directly and watch how they answer. A partner who has never thought about it is more worrying than one with a clause ready. The useful follow up is simpler: how many of your existing wholesale clients are IT companies, and how long have they stayed? A supplier who genuinely serves the channel has an answer. One who competes with the channel changes the subject.

A number of South African IT companies buy data centre, hosting and connectivity from GNS on exactly this basis, some of them for years. That is the test we would apply to ourselves and we would expect you to apply it to us.

What is actually available wholesale

Business connectivity delivered under our own licence rather than resold. Hosting and virtual servers in South African data centres. Cloud backup with restore testing rather than a green tick. Structured cabling and new site rollouts, including sites a long way from a major centre. Multi-site monitoring where you want visibility without building the tooling yourself.

How to test a partner cheaply

Do not migrate an estate to find out. Give a prospective partner one site, ideally an awkward one, and one deliberate escalation. You will learn more from how they handle a single difficult circuit than from any capability document, and it costs you almost nothing to walk away.

If you want to run that test with us, the starting point is a conversation about the one site rather than a proposal for everything.