Alliance Corporation: Heart of Glass

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Making delicate connections is what Alliance Corporation is all about

From smart phones to smart homes, the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Industrial IoT (IIoT) has been coming to fruition for several years. With every step forward, the demand for quality, reliability, and speed increases, particularly in telecommunications.

In the past, copper wire cables were the preferred choice for telecommunication, networking, and cable connections. However, with much higher bandwidth demand, security, and speed, fiber optic cable is now a crucial part of the critical infrastructure of networks and systems.

Inside every fiber optic cable are filaments of glass no wider than a human hair. These glass threads inside the cable must be terminated with a connector, so the cable can connect to devices. The manufacturing processes for these terminations are delicate, precise, and labor intensive. And it’s a specialty of Alliance Corporation.

Founded in 1993, the Toronto-based enterprise is a leading supplier of best-in-class wireless network infrastructure products, serving the continent’s largest telecom providers, as well as OEMs, systems integrators, resellers, and contractors. With facilities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Alliance offers a comprehensive assortment of products and the flexibility needed to provide complete solutions for their customers.

The company prides itself on taking an innovative and flexible approach to providing knowledgeable recommendations, pre-packaged full-site solutions, fast and efficient delivery, and support. Altogether, Alliance offers a seamless solution fulfillment experience designed to meet the demands of any project. The company is independent of the cable manufacturers and has partnerships with industry leaders to ensure customers get the optimized solution for their exact needs.

Darin O'Brien

“We pride ourselves on our flexibility and ability to react to the customer requirements very quickly,” said Darin O’Brien, Alliance’s Vice President of Manufacturing. “We’ve expanded into offering fiber solutions for data centers and other network uses because when it comes to manufacturing a cable assembly, the termination process is the same in all of those areas.”

Recently, Alliance has been making powerful connections designed to strengthen their position as North America’s premiere supplier of wireless network solutions. In late 2022, they acquired GetWireless, the largest independent distributor of embedded modules, end-device modems, asset trackers, intelligent gateways, cellular boosters, and other equipment needed to interface with the IoT. According to the company, GetWireless enables mobile network operators, value-added resellers, integrators, and OEMs across a wide range of enterprise, industrial, government, and SMB applications, and presents the best cellular solutions for new IoT applications.

In July, Alliance completed the acquisition of Tessco Technologies Inc., a seasoned technology distributor, manufacturer, and solutions provider serving commercial customers in the wireless infrastructure ecosystem. For two decades, the industry’s leading manufacturers of mobile communications, Wi-Fi, IoT, wireless backhaul, and other equipment have relied on Tessco as a trusted supplier. The merger broadens the company’s facility footprint, product offering, and value-added capabilities.

The Value-Added Connection

“We're not your typical distributor. We bring huge value,” O’Brien said. “For customers who need custom fiber cables, we offer engineering, technical, and manufacturing expertise to create what the customer is looking for, not what we think the customer needs, but what the customer actually requires.”

He added, “From a manufacturing standpoint, we're not the type of company that creates a cookie-cutter product and pushes it onto the customer. We listen to the customer, to what their needs are and then our team collaboratively  creates the ideal design that will make the customer successful.”

With next to no automation in the whole process, worker training is absolutely key. The company’s vast experience in engineering is a terrific training aid.

“Our assembly work is very delicate. You're handling a piece of glass that's smaller than the size of a human hair, taking these fibers and attaching a single connector. In some cases, 12 to 24 of these strands must be put into one connector. It’s labor intensive.” That being said, their talent bench is robust, nimble and able to scale quickly. “We can turn around a custom length cable in five to seven days. That makes them able to help their customers go to market faster than other manufacturers that may take up 24 to 48 weeks to create a customer solution.

“We drive manufacturing excellence through continuous improvement, through empowering our people, engaging our employees, streamlining the operation, and maintaining our quality management systems,” he said. Not surprisingly, quality is at the root of many of their technical advancements. “Continuous improvement processes on the manufacturing side also helps us with our training and our people. It helps to us understand the product that we're building and improve on that new product.”

O’Brien is justifiably proud of the manufacturing division’s fiber optic low failure rate, which is so small that it can be difficult to measure. “That’s fantastic, especially because many of our fiber cables are installed on cellular towers and other outdoor structures, exposed to extreme weather. In the heat, cold, rain, and snow our products still perform well with zero issues. That really says a lot about our quality of manufacturing as well as our thoughtful designs,” he noted.

Customer support is a team effort at Alliance. Sales training involves the general manager, operations, and purchasing to arm the sales team with correct answers to customer queries on the spot. “We want the customer to feel part of the company right from day one,” he stressed. And that means an all-access pass. “The customer has access to anybody, not just the sales team. They've got access to senior level execs to help them with their experience, products, and solutions.

“We hire talented people here at Alliance, and we value their experience and knowledge,” O’Brien enthused. “Together, we come up with creative solutions for our customer’s challenges. Ours is an absolutely team-focused, creative environment and that's one of the reasons we're so successful.”