By Preston P. Forman
Realtech founders Ray La Chance and Ken Yanneck like to repeat the words "focus, focus, focus" to describe how their company runs. A better catch phrase for this VAR with offices in the Empire State Building might be "The Big Picture People."
This booming reseller fills the narrow niche of network integration, shunning the larger role of systems integration. Using the Internet and often Virtual Private Networks, Realtech creates a communication vision for an organization. From a state-of-the-art newsroom for The New York Times to a "smart" highway system, this company translates complex communication needs into a blueprint for the enterprise.
"We come in as the focused player to solve the underlying communication problems in the infrastructure," said La Chance.
Yanneck and La Chance saw the developing role of technology in information after graduating from college in the mid-1980s while looking for opportunities beyond hardware and software.
" Anybody five years ago could have realized that voice, data and video were going to converge into one unified service. We saw it back then but weren't sure where it was heading. It was a good thing that we were young, inexperienced and undercapitalized because we hung our hat on this convergence, which is only now coming to pass," said La Chance.
Like many entrepreneurs, they funded the startup with credit-card advances. It was a good bet. The company has grown 40 percent to 50 percent for the past five years with no outside capital. Of their 70 staff members today, 40 are engineers or technical support staff.
Although a "big picture" VAR, La Chance said his company declines networking and custom programming jobs.
" There are a lot of opportunities to make quick revenue, but it isn't what we want to accomplish as a company," he said.
Internet security is the foundation of many of Realtech's biggest projects and one of the greatest challenges, given the relative immaturity of the industry. La Chance said that overall, there are few complete solutions in the marketplace, but rather dozens of products that have a specific role.
"The challenge for all these Internet security companies is building integrated services into a manageable platform. It is what we are trying to do:build homogenous platforms instead of a dozen point products," he said.
La Chance said the tremendous flux in Internet security products means resellers need to take-no surprise-a big picture approach.
"In many cases, we are picking the 'best-of-class' family for a solution rather than the 'best-of-class' product, so it is easier to create a homogenous environment," La Chance said. "We are setting direction and vision for Fortune 1000 companies, and we have to consider integration, the total package and future needs. It's finding the most mature product line in an immature industry. "
Russell Vines, senior network engineer for Realtech, who has been testing and investigating Internet security products for several months and who assisted the Test Center with this review, said he is often forced to make "apples and oranges" comparisons.
"It's a very young market, and to a great extent it is lagging behind the proliferation of Internet. What we are seeing in Internet security products is just the cusp of what is coming," he said. "What makes this even more difficult is that companies know they need security but are confused about where they are going."
As with everything involving
the Internet, La Chance warns the best products of today may very well be outclassed just months from now. He said the industry needs to consolidate product offerings.
"Luckily, we are finding that customers understand the importance of Internet security and are spending freely with the understanding that their infrastructure must constantly be monitored," La Chance said.
Realtech's "big picture" approach is what appealed to the New York State Thruway Authority, which recently hired the company to design and implement a massive 500-plus-mile realtime traffic monitoring system. The $4 million VPN will connect 63 toll plazas as well as several dozen offices and police barracks.
"I found them to be very energetic, which is an important factor in a project this big," said Tom Cavolino, the authority's director of information systems. "Their approach is intuitive, and they come with a level of engineering staff and certification that is the best in New York State."
La Chance said the project not only builds the company's expertise and reputation but also satisfies his original mandate of using technology for efficient communication.
"In the end, they build a smart highway system and we [accomplish] our dream of building the underlying infrastructure," said La Chance. "If a client can help us answer the questions of how fast, how reliable and how secure they want something to be, we can build it, regardless of whether it's for a highway, a hospital or a summer camp."
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Realtech Systems Corp.
New York (other locations include Albany, N.Y.)
www.realtech.com
- Key clients:The New York Times, New York State Thruway Authority, McGraw-Hill, AIG, Avon Products
- Years in business:
- Annual sales: $20 million
- Number of employees:70
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