Capitalizing on Colo: GCN Grows Agency with Global Colocation, Connectivity

China, Holland, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom – these are but a few of the exotic locations where Global Communication Networks Inc., Pompano, Beach, Fla., is contracted to set up colocation space for its clients this year. This is a surprising itinerary for a telecom agency that fulfilled its first colo contract little more than 18 months ago.

The company’s dramatic transformation from selling SMB accounts to building out colocation for multinational companies has been not only quick but lucrative. In its first nine years, GCN built up a base of SMB clients billing around $1 million per month. In the last two, it added another $700,000 per month in billables from colo and IP transit customers. In a very short time, colocation has come to represent 30 percent of GCN’s revenue.

What makes the transformation even more astounding is the company has only six employees and not one salesperson, unless you count its president, S. Chris Palermo. Palermo founded the company in 1997 and said it has been built primarily on referrals. Over the years and as the base grew, he has added three account managers and a provisioning manager and, most recently, a project manager for the colo deployments at facilities operated by Equinix, Switch and Data, and others.

The two sides of GCN’s business are very different from one another in respect to customer size, product set and required skill sets. In fact, Palermo is considering splitting the two apart. But, business has been so brisk, he hasn’t had time to make it happen.

A few years ago, GCN began selling in earnest big bandwidth -- gigabit Ethernet and waves. This, in turn, put them in touch with increasingly larger clients – many of which contacted GCN on referral to help them source circuits from diverse carriers at competitive rates. As Palermo gained the confidence of these larger customers, he began asking them about how they sourced their colocation. “[We] found that they had a void in sourcing data centers,” he said, noting they were doing it on their own and finding it difficult to find the best ones with their limited knowledge. “So, we tried to educate ourselves as much as possible on that and source and staff our company to be able to really cater to our clients.”

This meant locating data centers and knowing which carriers were collocated. It also meant bringing in a project manager – not just any project manager, but a certified program manager, Vlad “Sal” Salomatoff, with experience managing data centers. Sal, in turn, is teaching the account managers how to manage some of the smaller implementations.

Palermo said the company had early success with domestic deployments and even landed work with a marquee MNC, on referral from data center Terremark Worldwide Inc., which uses GCN to source bandwidth. It wasn’t long before