UK ISP Glide Business, formerly WarwickNet, is aiming to accelerate its growth plans with the appointment of Daniel Alvarez as head of channel. Alvarez, who brings over 20 years of industry experience, made the move from channel sales at Daisy Wholesale.
Glide specialises in broadband for businesses in previously neglected areas such as industrial estates and business parks. The company says it has seen “huge growth” in the past year. It builds, deploys and maintains its own core network, which has resulted in the building of 550 live cabinets, translating to 100,000 premises passed. The company expects this figure to rise to 750 cabinets by the end of next year.
By further opening up Glide’s infrastructure to the channel market, Alvarez plans to build and expand on strong reseller and service provider partnerships to “double connections” over the next 12 months.
Alvarez said: “We have a unique proposition. The fact that we own, run and manage our network means we have a huge opportunity to equip channel partners with innovative and reliable services. We can help partners to enable their own customers’ digital transformation.”
Without being beholden to Openreach, he said, Glide can deploy fibre quickly and supply and manage end-to-end customer support. By extending this offering to channel partners, the company predicts its agility and flexibility will also give partners a competitive edge.
Alvarez says the channel is often hindered by what it can offer customers because of the infrastructure in place. “Partners might have a myriad of IT services to offer, whether it’s Office 365, cloud ERP systems or managed services, but find they have their hands tied because they are relying on inadequate infrastructure. We want to enable partners to offer a wider variety of products and unlock new potential for themselves.”
