Foster To Align MegaPath Business with Channel

After a short hiatus, Dan Foster is back at MegaPath Inc. with a new title and greater responsibility but a continued commitment to the channel.

Foster returned to MegaPath May 1 after leaving in January to take a job in the clean-energy sector. He becomes president of the business markets group, a post vacated by Bruce Chatterley in mid-April. Chatterley assumed the job following the mergers of MegaPath, Speakeasy and Covad Communications. Industry scuttlebutt has it that Foster – a 10-year MegaPath employee – was aiming for the same position, but it went instead to Chatterley, who had led Speakeasy as its CEO.

“I kind of felt like I was on the 10 yard line when I left," Foster told Channel Partners in an interview in late May, implying that his re-entry into the telecom game is a chance to make a big play and score. And the channel, he said, will be a big part of his playbook.

“Even though I am going to take on a GM role and the P&L responsibility of our largest division (about 80 percent of our revenue), I am going to continue to be … very involved [in the channel]," he said. “The channel is a passion of mine, and I think folks want to feel that in the business, that there is complete alignment, not just at a sales and marketing level."

Chris Gellos, senior vice president of sales, will continue to managed the indirect sales channel as he has since January, with Foster serving in the role as channel chief.

The channel contributed nearly 40 percent of the revenue to the business markets group in the first quarter of 2011.

“That’s where we are looking to scale. We are not getting our fair share in the market," Foster said. “Honestly, I set out on an odyssey to build that. Over the last year, we have been incredibly focused on building the channel – both deepening the relationships with the partners we have and adding a few more."

The effort is starting to pay off, he said, citing metrics from one of the master agents, which reported tripling the number of partners actively quoting and closing MegaPath during 2010.  

Foster points to some of his goals for the Business Markets Group as part of his strategy to increase penetration in the channel across the board.

One of those goals is innovation in products and services. Specifically, Foster points to initiatives to roll out Ethernet over copper on a nationwide basis; adding fiber aggregation to target upmarket customers; and leveraging its data center to provide infrastructure as a service in an effort to expand its cloud services.