Down economy or no, Qwest Cyber.Solutions approaches the market with guns blazing.
The 2-year-old spin-off from Qwest Communications International displays the same bravado often seen from its parent. Qwests broadband network and enormous footprint keep QCS performance high and infrastructure costs low. QCS offerings go beyond basic hosting, to application delivery and management.
As a private company, CEO John C. Charters says, QCS isnt distracted from its business model by the gyrating capital markets.
While public competitors such as Corio and USinternetworking have struggled, QCS has picked up 65 application service provider clients “of the Fortune 500 variety,” Charters says.
“Outsourcing is always up in the down economy,” as companies strive to shrink expenses and make costs more predictable, he says.
QCS manages more than 160,000 seat licenses on behalf of 185 customers, including heavy hitters Expanets, JDS Uniphase, Mitsubishi, National Semiconductor and Redback Networks. And Charters says the company will be profitable this year.
QCS initial target was companies looking to upgrade Enterprise Resource Planning implementations. It soon became clear that firms wanted a streamlined way to add features, such as customer relationship management from Siebel Systems, or Ariba procurement.
Initiatives that will roll out in 2001 include a pre-integrated service provider package and a business-to-employee offering that bundles products from Automatic Data Processing, PeopleSoft and others.
According to Charters, fear, uncertainty and doubt can be your friends. “Ive got lots of little [competitors] falling by the wayside. That clears the way for us,” he says.