Peak 10 is a national provider of cloud and colocation services. About 40 percent of its revenue comes from the channel, as do more than half of its new customers.

“We are committed to the channel,” said Dave Sroka, vice president of channel sales. “We are spending a ton of money in a channel, and a ton of resources.”

And Peak 10 wants to increase the amount of business it does with the channel as a whole.

“The channel is just a smarter way to work to the end customer,” he said.

During an interview yesterday with TMC (News - Alert), Sroka offered several examples of some smart things Peak 10 is doing to ensure a better experience for its channel partners and for end customers.

For example, Peak 10 has a channel-neutral philosophy with respect to its direct sales team. Sroka explained that means Peak 10 sales people make the same commissions whether they are selling direct or working with channel partners. That way, internal sales people do not have a disincentive to work with channel partners.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based company also is expanding its workforce in a very strategic way. For example, Peak 10 recently hired a regional partner manager in Los Angeles to drive partner engagement on the West Coast. Peak 10 also has added a sales team of 20 to 25 people to focus on ensuring the company’s existing 2,200 customers are happy with their services. That helps control churn and potentially can expand wallet share. Additionally, the company recently stood up an enterprise group to focus on its biggest customers and opportunities.

Peak 10 is also using the human touch to keep channel partners up to date on important developments in the industry. One of the company’s employees regularly calls Peak 10 channel partners to let them know about big breaking news in the industry, and takes the time to explain what the news means for those channel partners, their customers, and prospects.

“We want to be seen as that resource for that,” Sroka said.

The company is also making improvements on the infrastructure front. Peak 10 recently implemented ServiceNow (News - Alert) as part of its back office solution. Sroka said it was expensive, but was worth the investment.

In terms of its network, Peak 10 is standardized on Cisco (News - Alert), EMC, and VMware technology. This infrastructure enables the company to deliver data center and network services; cloud services including hosted private cloud, object storage, public cloud, and disaster recovery as a service; and managed services including application management, data protection, encryption as a service, managed data security, and server management and monitoring.

Sroka noted that most businesses are taking a hybrid approach to the cloud, and because Peak 10 can address both sides of that, it’s uniquely positioned in the marketplace. Peak 10 is also noteworthy, he added, in its willingness to sign business associate agreements with its customers. Such agreements mean Peak 10 has skin in the game in case its customers experience a security breach or service outage related to its services.

Leading the charge at Peak 10 is Chris Downie, who assumed the CEO position in September. Prior to that, Downie was CEO of retail data center solutions provider Telx Holdings.