While at the Microcorp One-on-One event I had a chance to sit down with the president of ACC Business, JD Baker.  We talked about the changes in the portfolio in 2009 (now that all the Baby Bells have transformed back into Ma Bell).

Baker thinks that the second half of 2009 will be stronger, since the first half of 2009 was kind of soft.

The next strong service will be Ethernet. EaMIS utilizes Ethernet transport to establish connectivity for a customer for managed internet service. This was rolled out in 2009 - at very competitive pricing - at a time when businesses were looking for Ethernet in place of TDM. (Businesses growing out of Broadband are used to a Cat5 hand-off and inexpensive switches). Ethernet Access is in a controlled roll-out while being operationalized.

ACC Business services are a draft out of the AT&T catalog, but they are not an exact duplicate of AT&T.  For example, ACC Business did not have an SLA prior to this year. (An SLA is insurance for the customer, although giving him back $25 when his MIS T1 is down for a day will seem astonishing).

ACC Business originated in 1998 when the assets of ACC Telecom were acquired by AT&T as a component of the TCG acquisition. The business division of ACC Telecom was incorporated as ACC Business, a wholly-owned unit of AT&T. ACC Business was chartered to serve the telecommunication needs of small to mid-sized businesses nationwide, exclusively via Indirect Sales partners. The differentiator was that ACC Business gave you the AT&T network and product quality, but the customer received personalized customer care and support (a human answers the phone and the bill is much simpler).

Another differentiator is that the channel management at ACC Business has been in place a long time with many franchise players, like Ruth Morford, my channel manager for about 10 years.

Mr. Baker spoke about a couple of new services rolling out. One that will be added is ANIRA. ANIRA is Remote Secure Access to PNT using a VPN connection over any transport including Broadband. (FYI, PNT (private network transport) is the basic version of AT&T MPLS available through ACC Business). The other is the Business Direct Platform for agents and customers to get reporting on PNT and MIS services, like utilization, e-repair, DNS and about 60 functions, according to Baker.