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Ecuador-based ITAD provider looks to build new global partnerships while expanding the circular economy across Latin America.
Jhoanna Rosales, CEO VertmondeVertmonde has joined the ITAD Association, opening the door to new relationships with IT asset disposition providers, technology companies and channel partners in the U.S. and around the world.
In a new Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Jhoanna Rosales, CEO of Vertmonde, about the fast-changing ITAD market in Latin America and the opportunities emerging as e-waste, data protection and circular-economy requirements continue to develop.
Vertmonde provides collection, recycling, refurbishment, reuse and other ITAD services, with partner coverage across multiple Latin American countries.
We also discuss the company’s work helping bring refurbished technology to rural schools in Ecuador and its “Galapagos Free of E-waste” initiative.
Learn more: https://www.vertmonde.com/
ITAD #CircularEconomy #EWaste #LatinAmerica #Technology
“The number one metric should be: did the person calling you have the intent to buy?”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Todd Fisher of CTM discusses how businesses can connect advertising activity to actual phone-call conversions and better understand whether their marketing dollars are producing qualified buyers.
CTM is a call tracking and attribution platform designed for businesses where phone calls remain an important part of the sales process. The platform helps companies identify which ads generated calls, what happened during those conversations and whether the caller actually intended to purchase.
Fisher says traditional metrics such as call volume and duration often fail to answer the most important question.
“If they wanted to buy your product, then the ad probably did its job,” Fisher says. “What happens after that may be something you need to look at internally.”
CTM uses AI to analyze calls and answer specific questions about each conversation. Businesses can determine whether a caller had buying intent, whether they were qualified, whether they had the right insurance or service requirements, and how effectively the sales team handled the opportunity.
That creates value for organizations of almost any size—from large contact centers to local HVAC companies, medical practices and other small businesses that depend on inbound calls.
The platform can also help companies improve advertising efficiency by identifying campaigns that generate serious buyers rather than simply more calls.
Fisher says AI is making this level of intelligence available to smaller organizations that previously could not afford the labor required to manually review thousands of conversations.
CTM also offers voice AI that can answer calls, book appointments and connect with calendars and CRM platforms, giving small businesses another way to capture leads when employees are unavailable.
Companies can work with CTM directly or through advertising agencies and other partners that bundle the platform into their services.
Visit CTM.com to learn more.
By Doug Green
“It’s a community that helps support the growth of your business.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Amy Slater of the Managed Service Providers Association of America discusses how MSPAA helps managed service providers increase visibility, find trusted resources and connect with businesses looking for technology support.
MSPAA is a membership organization that gives MSPs a profile on its public platform, where small and midsized businesses can search for providers that match their needs.
Slater says visibility is only one part of the value. Members can also contribute articles, share social media content, participate in podcasts and gain access to event opportunities, including discounted tickets and speaking engagements.
The association also helps MSPs find trusted vendors and service providers in areas such as marketing, HR and technology.
“There’s usually no shortage of companies that can solve a problem,” Slater says. “The challenge is finding the right one.”
MSPAA works to vet both its MSP members and the vendors it recommends, giving providers another layer of confidence when looking for help.
The organization also offers vendor focus groups where participating MSPs can be compensated for their time. Slater says participation in two focus groups can effectively offset the annual membership cost.
For smaller MSPs with limited internal resources, the association is designed to extend the team by providing marketing exposure, business resources, industry connections and opportunities to share success stories with a wider audience.
Visit MSPAA.net to learn more.
By Doug Green
Recognized as GTIA Member of the Year at ChannelCon 2026, Lee discusses Rev.io’s AI-native PSA and billing platform, along with the importance of giving back to the channel community.
Rev.io is working to give managed service providers a more complete platform for operating their businesses, combining professional services automation, billing and payments on a native AI foundation.
“This is what a PSA should have been when they first came out,” said Brook Lee of Rev.io, speaking with Technology Reseller News at GTIA ChannelCon 2026. “This is truly a solution that you can use to run your entire MSP business from quote all the way to payments and cash.”
Lee said the platform is intended for everyone working inside an MSP, rather than being limited to technicians and engineers. Rev.io began as a telecommunications billing company and expanded its platform to support ticketing, service delivery, billing and other operational requirements.
During ChannelCon, Lee was also recognized as GTIA Member of the Year. She has helped develop a guide for finding, hiring and retaining women in technology, created a case study aimed at increasing company-wide participation in GTIA and served in several association leadership roles.
“I am extremely passionate about this community,” Lee said. “I hope that why I was voted in was because of the work that I do to give back to the community.”
Lee said the channel’s real value comes from the connections members build and their willingness to help one another solve problems.
“If it’s not me, I know a guy,” Lee said. “Maybe I can’t solve your problem, but you tell me what you’ve got going on, and I can go find somebody to try to help you solve it.”
Watch the podcast to learn more about Rev.io’s platform, Lee’s work with GTIA and why community remains central to the technology channel.
By Doug Green
“Join GTIA, but that’s not enough. You really need to get involved.”
At ChannelCon 2026, Raffi Jamgotchian of Triada Networks offered a member’s perspective on how active participation in GTIA can strengthen individual businesses while helping the technology channel address larger industry challenges.
Triada Networks is a managed service provider based in northern New Jersey that serves financial services companies across the United States. Jamgotchian joined CompTIA through his membership in the ASCII Group, but for several years remained largely inactive. That changed when an industry colleague encouraged him to contribute his experience and help shape the issues affecting MSPs.
Jamgotchian became involved in the security community, eventually serving as vice chair and chair. His work included initiatives related to business certifications, the Security Trustmark and broader efforts to raise the cybersecurity bar for managed service providers. Following the transition to GTIA, he joined the Member Champions group, which helps recruit new members and guides them toward the communities, research and resources available through the organization.
One of GTIA’s greatest strengths, he said, is its ability to bring MSPs and vendors together without the usual sales dynamic. “You’re no longer from Triada or Choice Security or Sophos,” Jamgotchian said. “You’re a person who has some knowledge and some experience that, together, we can use to solve industry issues and move forward.”
For MSP owners and channel partners considering membership, Jamgotchian’s message is direct: participation determines the value. ChannelCon provides relationships, meaningful conversations and a strong sense of community, but members should also find an area that interests them and contribute at their own pace. “You get what you put into it,” he said. “There’s always something to do, and there are a lot of initiatives that we need to move our industry ahead.”
The conversation also turned to artificial intelligence, which Jamgotchian described as the channel’s latest major inflection point—an opportunity, threat and change agent arriving all at once. His advice is to learn from people who are further ahead, help those who are behind and avoid leaving the future of the business to someone else. “If you’re not thinking about it, somebody is going to think about it for you,” he said.
Learn more about GTIA at gtia.org and Triada Networks at triadonet.com.
By Doug Green
“It was an ecosystem experience that I hadn’t seen in a while.”
CloudFest Americas is returning to Miami with a broader mission: bring together the cloud, hosting, domain, MSP and corporate IT communities in one place—and make the experience feel less like a conventional trade show and more like a working industry festival.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, recorded at GTIA ChannelCon 2026, Anthony Pombal of CloudFest and Mark Crall of MSP Global preview CloudFest Americas, scheduled for November 11–12 at Ice Palace Studios in Miami. The event is expected to attract approximately 2,000 attendees from North America and Latin America.
CloudFest Americas is derived from the long-running CloudFest event held at Europa-Park in Germany. Its audience includes cloud service providers, web agencies, hosting companies, MSPs, MSSPs, software and hardware vendors, corporate IT teams and other organizations looking for alternatives to the largest hyperscale platforms.
Pombal says the event is particularly relevant for companies seeking new products, services, partners and routes to market. Exhibitors can reach what he describes as the alternative cloud service provider market, along with web developers, hosting providers, managed service providers and businesses evaluating new infrastructure and software options.
The event is also co-located with NamesCon, creating a point of convergence between the cloud, hosting and domain-name communities. That overlap reflects a broader shift in the market as MSPs, hosting companies and cloud providers increasingly compete, partner and build services across what were once separate technology categories.
Crall says his experience at MSP Global in Barcelona demonstrated the value of bringing those communities together in a vendor-agnostic setting. Rather than focusing only on product pitches, the event combined technology education, thought leadership, lessons from industry practitioners and informal community building.
“To see that happen in an agnostic environment and actually learn something at the same time while having fun is kind of cool,” Crall says.
CloudFest Americas is designed around that same model. In addition to its exhibit floor and conference content, the Miami event will include a server-throwing competition, a domain auction, giveaways and locally inspired activities in the Wynwood arts district, including a live mural created by a graffiti artist.
The program will also feature forward-looking content and smaller community discussions. A new area called the Florida Room is planned as a birds-of-a-feather-style forum where groups can exchange ideas, discuss operating challenges and share practical lessons without turning every session into a sales presentation.
For technology resellers and MSPs, the event offers an opportunity to look beyond familiar vendor ecosystems. The convergence of cloud infrastructure, managed services, cybersecurity, software, hosting and domain technologies is creating new partnership and recurring-revenue possibilities for channel companies willing to explore adjacent markets.
Watch the podcast to learn how CloudFest Americas is building a cross-market community for cloud providers, MSPs, hosting companies, technology vendors and corporate IT leaders—and why Miami may become an important November meeting point for the wider channel ecosystem.
Event details: CloudFest Americas, November 11–12, Ice Palace Studios, Miami.
TouchPoint helps MSPs identify businesses with email authentication problems, begin conversations with a documented risk and open the door to broader managed services.
By Doug Green
“You are definitely missing the boat” if you are not pursuing this opportunity, says Alan Richards of EasyDMARC.
Recorded live at GTIA ChannelCon 2026 in San Diego, this Technology Reseller News podcast explores how MSPs can use email authentication problems as a practical entry point to new customers and recurring revenue.
Alan Richards of EasyDMARC explains that the company has spent years simplifying DMARC management for MSPs. Its platform brings DMARC, SPF and DKIM oversight into a single environment, helping partners keep customer email authenticated, aligned and deliverable.
EasyDMARC is now extending that value beyond management and compliance. Through its TouchPoint lead-generation platform, MSPs can identify businesses in their local markets whose DMARC configurations are out of alignment or not properly authenticated.
Instead of approaching a prospect with a generic pitch about IT services, the MSP can begin with a specific, documented problem. An exposed domain may be vulnerable to spoofing, malware and impersonation, while legitimate messages may also be rejected or routed to spam.
“Now you’re going to them and you actually have an issue,” Richards says. “You actually have a problem and you have a solution.”
That targeted approach can raise the prospect’s level of trust and create an opening for a wider managed-services conversation. Once an MSP helps correct the email authentication problem, it can introduce additional security, infrastructure and support services.
TouchPoint supports both outbound and inbound lead generation. MSPs can search geographically for organizations with DMARC issues, while an embeddable domain scanner can capture interest from visitors to the MSP’s own website. EasyDMARC can return information about the company, the domains scanned and relevant contacts, with CRM integration enabling rapid follow-up.
Richards says EasyDMARC also provides hands-on partner support, including growth managers and a 128-page MSP marketing playbook. The company helps partners install the domain scanner, understand the opportunity and guide customers through ongoing DMARC management.
The opportunity is not limited to one vertical. Legal, healthcare and financial organizations are especially sensitive to fraud and impersonation, but Richards notes that any business sending invoices, marketing messages or CRM-generated email needs properly aligned authentication.
For MSPs at ChannelCon, the message is straightforward: email authentication is more than a technical requirement. It can be a measurable security problem, a reason to contact a prospect and the beginning of a longer customer relationship.
Learn more: EasyDMARC MSP Reseller Program
Previous EasyDMARC podcast: EasyDMARC Turns Email Security Gaps into MSP Sales Opportunities
By Doug Green
“The tools now can make anyone look like a pretty attractive candidate for a job.”
Recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Paul Flaharty of Robert Half joins Technology Reseller News to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing hiring for MSPs and technology providers. AI can improve efficiency, but it is also making it easier to customize resumes, exaggerate technical abilities and even create uncertainty about whether an applicant is who they claim to be.
Flaharty says experienced recruiters and comprehensive screening processes are becoming increasingly important. Rather than replacing the human element in recruiting, AI has reinforced its value. Skilled recruiters can validate a candidate’s identity, evaluate whether the person can perform the work and look beyond an impressive AI-generated resume.
The conversation also examines how AI is affecting existing technology jobs. Flaharty says the greater risk may not be that AI eliminates a position, but that an employee is replaced by someone who knows how to use AI more effectively. Organizations are consequently moving forward with previously delayed technology projects and looking for professionals who can help develop and execute practical AI roadmaps.
For MSPs, hiring is only one part of the challenge. Retaining strong technical employees requires a proactive talent strategy that includes competitive compensation, flexibility, development opportunities and a visible career path. Flaharty says an effective upskilling program can sometimes be as powerful a retention tool as compensation.
Listen to the podcast to learn how MSPs can identify genuine candidates, streamline their hiring processes, develop existing employees and build teams prepared for an increasingly AI-enabled technology market. Learn more at roberthalf.com.
“The perimeter no longer exists.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Peter Lekas and Lauren Hextall of SpecterX discuss how organizations can maintain control of sensitive information after it leaves their managed environment.
SpecterX is a zero-trust data access platform designed to protect information shared with customers, vendors, partners and other third parties. The platform allows businesses to apply controls that travel with the data, including restrictions on forwarding, copying, pasting and taking screenshots.
Traditional security tools protect networks, endpoints and applications that an organization can directly manage. However, businesses increasingly rely on cloud services, SaaS applications and external collaboration, creating multiple locations where sensitive data may reside.
“Once that data is shared outside of your organization, you don’t know what that person is going to do with it,” the SpecterX team says.
Data loss prevention tools may block sensitive information from leaving an organization, but many business processes require that information to be shared. SpecterX is designed to provide continued governance after the transfer takes place.
This can be particularly important for organizations sharing regulated information, including healthcare data, intellectual property and documents governed by compliance requirements.
For MSPs, SpecterX creates an opportunity to expand beyond endpoint and network protection into data governance, risk and compliance services. Rather than adding another security layer around the environment, the platform protects the data itself.
Hextall says MSPs are well positioned to deliver these services because they understand their customers’ industries, workflows and business requirements.
“This isn’t something that can simply be mandated from above,” she says. “You need to understand the workflows of your customers.”
Visit SpecterX.com to learn more
“We’re giving MSPs a single pane of glass to protect email, file sharing and collaboration.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Zach Schwartz of Trustifi discusses the company’s new collaboration security platform for Microsoft 365 environments.
Trustifi traditionally provides email threat protection, encryption, data loss prevention, compliance management and security awareness training. Its latest platform extends that protection into Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint.
Schwartz says the new offering addresses a growing blind spot for MSPs and their customers. Although many attacks begin with email, compromised accounts and malicious content can quickly spread through collaboration and file-sharing tools.
“Once an attack surfaces, it can spread rapidly through Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive,” Schwartz says.
The platform gives MSPs centralized visibility across email, collaboration and file sharing. It can identify potential threats, account takeovers and DLP events while providing actionable alerts that help partners respond quickly.
For MSPs, collaboration security also creates an opportunity to expand Microsoft 365 services and offer customers a higher level of protection without adding more disconnected tools.
Trustifi offers free trials that allow partners to assess customer environments, uncover threats or compliance issues and produce reports outlining recommended remediation.
The company uses AI to analyze large volumes of security data and identify activity that requires immediate attention. Schwartz says MSPs are also increasingly concerned about criminals using AI to improve phishing and other attacks.
Trustifi is a 100 percent channel-focused company. Its platform includes multitenant management, MSP billing capabilities and policy templates for industries such as legal, financial services and healthcare.
New partners face no minimums or long-term commitments, and Schwartz says the platform can be deployed in approximately five minutes without coding or specialized training.
Visit Trustifi.com to learn more.
“Let your engineers get back to doing what makes you money.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Heather Harlos, Demetrios “Deme” Georgiou and Benjamin Morrell, of Coro Cybersecurity discuss how consolidating security tools can help MSPs reduce complexity, improve margins and serve more customers.
Coro brings email security, endpoint protection, EDR, data loss prevention, VPN, secure web gateway, security awareness training, cloud protection and backup into a single platform. It is designed primarily for SMBs and midsized organizations with limited internal IT and security resources.
Many MSPs recognize that they have a tool-sprawl problem but hesitate to replace products and vendor relationships they have relied on for years.
“Consolidation is a very big objective for channel partners,” the Coro team says. “The challenge is making that change their new normal.”
For MSPs, the value extends beyond lowering software costs. A unified platform reduces the time engineers spend moving between consoles, investigating alerts and managing separate systems. That additional capacity can be used to onboard customers, develop new services and increase revenue.
Coro uses AI to filter security noise and surface the information that requires attention. The platform is also designed to scale easily across customers of different sizes.
The team says smaller businesses are increasingly being targeted by phishing, ransomware and automated attacks. Although these organizations may lack enterprise security budgets, they still expect their MSPs to deliver effective protection.
At the same time, MSPs must differentiate themselves through service rather than simply reselling a collection of tools.
“Customers should buy from the channel partner because of the partner—not just because of the software being sold,” the team says.
By simplifying security operations, Coro aims to help MSPs support more customers without continually adding personnel. Time and resources can then be redirected toward higher-value services, including new AI projects and business growth.
Visit Coro.net to learn more.
“Mergers and acquisitions usually fail because of people.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Craig Fulton of Evergreen discusses what buyers are looking for in an MSP and how providers can build a more valuable, transferable business.
Evergreen is a decentralized holding company that acquires IT services businesses while allowing them to retain their brands, employees, customers and operating systems. Fulton compares the model to Berkshire Hathaway for IT services.
Although AI is helping MSPs improve service delivery and efficiency, Fulton says it does not yet command a valuation premium on its own.
“We’re not paying for AI in a business,” Fulton says. “We’re impressed with the impact it has had on the business.”
AI can increase value when it improves recurring revenue, scalability, customer retention and EBITDA. The outcome matters more than simply claiming to use the technology.
Evergreen also evaluates revenue, profitability, customer concentration, retention and management structure. An MSP may be harder to sell when one customer represents more than 20 percent of revenue or when the owner remains responsible for sales and several other essential functions.
Fulton recommends that owners planning to sell within the next three to five years begin building a management team and hiring a dedicated salesperson well before the transaction.
He also warns buyers and sellers not to overlook employees during an acquisition.
“You can have tools and processes all day long, but people want to work with people,” Fulton says. “People are what make a company.”
MSP owners should begin considering their exit strategy early and learn about potential acquirers before deciding to sell. Different buyers may be focused on financial performance, geography, talent, vertical expertise or customer relationships.
“You’re only going to sell a business once,” Fulton says. “Get to know who is out there so you don’t have regrets.”
Visit EvergreenSG.com to learn more.
“It’s not easy, but it is absolutely worth it.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Danielle Carpenter of Xceptional discusses how the San Diego-based MSP is helping small and midsized businesses strengthen security and navigate Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification requirements.
Xceptional supports a diverse SMB customer base, including organizations within the defense industrial base that handle sensitive government information. The company previously self-attested at CMMC Level 1 and is now preparing for a formal Level 2 assessment.
“We’ve walked alongside our clients and partners on that journey and learned a tremendous amount,” Carpenter says.
Xceptional has developed secure environments, reviewed licensing requirements and helped customers build security and compliance into their daily operations. The company is also working with a consultant, completing a mock audit and preparing for an assessment by a certified third-party organization.
Carpenter says the process examines every part of the business that may interact with controlled unclassified information. Once certified, organizations must maintain compliance, retain supporting evidence and undergo reassessment every three years.
The experience also allows Xceptional to provide practical, real-time guidance to customers undertaking the same journey.
For defense contractors, selecting the right technology provider is especially important because compliance responsibilities may be shared between the customer and its MSP.
“An MSP that is not following the proper security measures presents a very real threat to its clients,” Carpenter says.
Although some MSPs may hesitate to enter the defense market because of its complexity, she says the opportunity is significant—and the security mission is critical as threats increasingly target the government supply chain.
Visit Xceptional.com to learn more.
“Sales and marketing are two parts of the same coin.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Ranjan Chauhan of New Channel Marketing discusses why MSPs, vendors and channel partners should break down the traditional wall between sales and marketing.
New Channel Marketing helps technology companies reach the right audiences, strengthen market positioning and build programs that generate pipeline and revenue.
Chauhan has worked in both quota-carrying sales and marketing roles. He says the two teams often blame each other for weak leads, poor follow-up or stalled deals, even though they ultimately share the same objective.
“My purpose as a marketer is to generate pipeline that allows sales to generate revenue,” Chauhan says.
The buying process has also changed. Technology purchases are increasingly made by committees that may include finance, security, legal, compliance and other stakeholders. Sales and marketing must work together to identify those decision-makers, address potential objections and prevent unseen stakeholders from slowing or stopping a deal.
Chauhan says account-based marketing can help create that alignment by focusing both teams on agreed-upon target accounts and measurable business outcomes.
Marketing success should therefore be judged less by clicks, page views and other vanity metrics—and more by pipeline growth, sales velocity, customer acquisition and revenue.
“When sales and marketing work together, we see improvement in revenue, faster closing times and fewer leaks in the funnel,” he says.
For MSPs, the approach begins with shared goals, clearly defined target customers and mutual responsibility for moving opportunities forward.
Visit NewChannelMarketing.com to learn more.
“You are not selling technology anymore. You are selling an outcome.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Joe Rojas of Start Grow Manage explains why MSPs must evolve beyond technology management and become Business Solutions Partners.
Start Grow Manage provides an executive MBA-style program for MSPs focused on revenue growth, operational improvement and long-term business value. Rojas says participating providers commonly add recurring revenue in the near term while building a more scalable and valuable company.
The MSP industry has already moved through two major stages: from break-fix services to managed IT, and then from managed IT to cybersecurity. Rojas argues that AI represents more than another version of the traditional MSP model.
Customers are already adopting AI and looking for ways to use it. The opportunity for providers is not simply to sell another platform, but to solve clearly defined business problems.
“The customer does not care about the underlying technology,” Rojas says. “They care about the outcome.”
An MSP serving medical practices, for example, might focus on helping customers see more patients, reduce insurance-coding errors or improve billing. Security, cloud services and infrastructure remain essential, but they increasingly function as table stakes beneath the larger business result.
Rojas says smaller MSPs cannot become experts across dozens of industries. Instead, they should select a specific market, understand its most important problems and repeatedly deliver measurable outcomes.
“The narrower you get and the clearer the solution is, the faster you are going to acquire clients—and the more you can charge,” he says.
The shift also changes how MSPs sell. Rather than promising to fix technology problems, providers must demonstrate how they can increase revenue, reduce costs, improve productivity or accelerate a critical business process.
Visit StartGrowManage.com to learn more.
“It’s not about your products or services. It’s about what you can do for your customers.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, technology journalist Todd R. Weiss discusses why MSPs must remain focused on customer needs as AI, automation and new services reshape the channel.
Weiss has covered technology for more than 25 years and says the strongest technology stories are not centered on product announcements. They explain how a new service helps customers operate more efficiently, reduce risk or solve a business problem.
“MSPs have to focus on what their customers need,” Weiss says. “The smart MSPs are already doing that.”
He encourages providers to act as trusted advisers and explainers. Customers may approach an MSP with a new challenge or emerging technology and ask whether it is worth pursuing. The provider does not need to know every answer immediately, but it should be willing to research the issue and return with useful guidance.
AI can support automation, management and other operational tasks, but Weiss warns against using it as a substitute for relationships and communication.
“AI is not a human being, and customers often want a human being,” he says. “The human connection is always going to be critical to an MSP’s success.”
Providers that use technology to avoid conversations risk creating distance between themselves and their customers. Those customers may eventually move to an MSP that remains accessible, responsive and willing to listen.
At ChannelCon, Weiss is focused on learning what customers are asking MSPs to solve and how providers are using the event to find ideas, partners and services they can bring back to those customers.
Connect with Todd R. Weiss on LinkedIn to learn more about his work.
“It really is about what the customer wants us to do. We’re there to help them in any way they need.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Jae Han and Chris Young of OmniNet Plus discuss how the company helps small and midsized businesses identify cybersecurity risks, strengthen internal IT teams and meet growing compliance requirements.
OmniNet Plus is a security-focused MSP serving organizations across the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Its customers typically range from 20 to 250 users and often have internal IT staff but lack dedicated cybersecurity expertise.
“The IT staff aren’t always cybersecurity experts,” Han says. “They may have certain protections in place, but not others.”
OmniNet Plus begins with an assessment and gap analysis to identify vulnerabilities, unsupported systems and weaknesses tied to security frameworks or cyber-liability insurance requirements.
Young says the team then helps customers close or mitigate those risks.
“If something can’t be fully resolved, we look at how to reduce the severity of the risk,” Young says.
The company also provides co-managed services, giving internal IT teams access to security tools, alerts and guidance while allowing the customer to decide how responsibilities are divided.
OmniNet Plus works with associations, construction companies, homebuilders and other organizations with regulatory and security requirements. The company also partners with MSPs that need additional cybersecurity expertise without replacing the customer’s existing provider.
“We’ll come in and work alongside that MSP,” Han says. “It’s a partnership.”
Visit OmniNetPlus.com to learn more.
“We take away the people bottlenecks that prevent companies from scaling.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Julie Thiel and Grace Duwenhoegger of TTS Company discuss how growing MSPs can strengthen leadership, improve employee development and manage increasingly complex HR needs.
TTS Company provides fractional HR and leadership development services for businesses that may not need a full internal HR department. Its services include employee handbooks, compensation reviews, performance management and ongoing executive-level HR guidance.
Thiel says people management often becomes more difficult as a company grows beyond 30 or 40 employees.
“As you grow, you are going to have to add more people,” Thiel says. “There is a need for a minimum level of structure and different types of HR support.”
Leadership development in smaller doses
TTS Company is also launching The Vault, an app-based leadership development community designed to replace traditional, one-time training sessions with continuous learning.
The Vault provides weekly challenges, leadership training, practical resources and a question-and-answer feature that connects users with TTS Company.
“A lot of HR training is intimidating, expensive and can take an entire day,” Duwenhoegger says. “The Vault makes ongoing development more accessible.”
Rather than attending a seminar, receiving a binder and returning to old habits, users can access short lessons and practical guidance from a phone or computer when a specific workplace issue arises.
The resource library includes guidance for interviewing potential leaders, preparing for performance conversations and managing other common employee challenges.
“It is not a single event,” Thiel says. “Every week, you are getting new challenges and continuing to develop yourself.”
The Vault is available on Google Play and desktop, with an iOS version planned. TTS Company is offering ChannelCon attendees 60 days of complimentary access.
For smaller and family-owned MSPs, Thiel says formal HR practices may initially appear unnecessary. However, processes such as goal setting, coaching and performance reviews become increasingly important as the business expands.
“Your team needs you to be a better leader,” she says. “It is best done in bite-sized experiences.”
TTS Company is exhibiting at ChannelCon Booth 809.
Visit TTSCompany.com to learn more.
“I don’t think you can find a better distributor relationship than the one you can build with our team.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Nick Watson of SoftwareOne discusses the company’s expanding channel strategy following its acquisition of Crayon.
SoftwareOne combines software distribution, managed services and licensing advisory capabilities. Historically known for working directly with customers, the company is now applying Crayon’s channel-focused experience to build stronger partnerships with MSPs in the United States.
Watson manages MSP relationships, helping partners secure the right licenses, pricing and support. SoftwareOne can also provide licensing advisory, optimization expertise and support services that MSPs can co-sell or deliver under their own brands.
“We can give enterprise resources that SoftwareOne has to a traditionally much smaller MSP,” Watson says. “We can help them grow, become more efficient and make connections with referral partners.”
SoftwareOne made its first appearance at ChannelCon with a clear goal: change how MSPs view the company—from a direct competitor to a channel growth partner.
Watson says many MSPs approach SoftwareOne after experiencing poor service, limited licensing guidance or minimal support from traditional distributors.
“Through better experiences, partners are making more revenue, building happier customer relationships, retaining customers and ultimately growing,” he says.
MSPs can meet SoftwareOne at ChannelCon Booth 820 or visit SoftwareOne.com to learn more.
“There is enough business in America for every MSP. Let’s give some of the smaller providers a chance.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at ChannelCon 2026, Dave Jooste of the Managed Service Providers Association of America discusses how MSPAA helps managed service providers increase visibility, distribute content and connect with businesses looking for technology partners.
MSPAA operates a public directory where businesses can search for providers by location, specialty and service area. The association currently lists approximately 1,900 MSPs and limits membership to 2,500 providers.
Jooste says the website attracts between 80,000 and 100,000 visitors per month, including businesses actively searching for an MSP.
Many smaller providers struggle with marketing because owners are also handling sales, support, onboarding and daily operations. MSPAA helps members publish articles, social posts, videos and podcasts across multiple channels.
“One of the hardest things for MSPs is getting content out and creating awareness for their brand,” Jooste says.
He describes the platform as an “Amazon for MSPs,” offering businesses a more focused alternative to sorting through paid search results and unverified providers.
Jooste stresses that members receive the most value when they complete their profiles and participate in promotional opportunities.
“You are going to get out of this what you put into it,” he says.
Visit MSPAA.net to learn more.
“An MSP doesn’t need another tool. They need tools that generate opportunities, revenue and profitability.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Mike Anderson, Channel Director at EasyDMARC, explains how MSPs can turn email authentication, deliverability and DNS problems into qualified sales opportunities and recurring revenue.
EasyDMARC began as a DMARC compliance platform but has expanded into a broader email visibility and trust platform covering DMARC, SPF, DKIM, deliverability and DNS management.
“We enable the MSP to use our platform as a methodology to grow the business, not just do compliance,” Anderson says.
At the center of that strategy is EasyDMARC TouchPoint, a lead-generation platform built for MSPs. Service providers can embed a domain scanner on their website, identify email-security gaps, enrich prospect information and send qualified leads directly into their CRM.
MSPs can also create customized reports in seconds and deliver them to prospects while interest is still high.
“We’ve taken what used to take hours, collapsed it into about five minutes and made it an automated process,” Anderson says.
TouchPoint also supports proactive prospecting by allowing MSPs to search geographically, scan domains and identify organizations with visible DMARC, SPF, DKIM or deliverability weaknesses.
EasyDMARC is also expanding its platform with DNS Manager, which gives MSPs a centralized way to manage multiple DNS providers, identify configuration problems, find outdated records and assign DNS work across their teams.
The company is also introducing Sender Insights as email deliverability becomes a growing issue for businesses of every size.
“These requirements used to be mostly for the super senders,” Anderson says. “Now we’re seeing them come all the way down to the mom-and-pop businesses and everybody in between.”
For MSPs, these problems create an opportunity to offer ongoing email authentication, DNS management, deliverability monitoring and threat intelligence services.
EasyDMARC is exhibiting at ChannelCon 2026 at Booth 605.
Visit EasyDMARC.com to learn more.
By Doug Green
“Under pressure, communications become a lot more predictable.”
What can the language used by World Cup coaches teach businesses about artificial intelligence, customer engagement and human behavior?
In this Technology Reseller News and Cloud Communications Alliance podcast, Sophie Cheng, Chief Marketing Officer at Sinch, discusses the company’s xC — Expected Cliché — Tracker and what it revealed about how leaders communicate when the stakes rise.
Sinch analyzed coaches’ press conferences across six languages, comparing their comments against a dictionary of 205 familiar soccer expressions. AI identified recurring patterns, while Sinch’s editorial teams reviewed the results to account for cultural context, nuance and meaning.
The findings showed a clear shift as tournament pressure increased. Sinch found 50% more clichés after the group stage, with coaches moving away from tactical explanations and toward familiar expressions involving “heart,” “belief” and “togetherness.” References to mentality, spirit and courage rose from 8% of clichés during the group stage to 24% during the Round of 16.
“When you’re in a very high-stakes environment, people are watching your every word,” Cheng says. “It becomes easier and more familiar to refer back to clichés or standard terminology that we’re all used to.”
Those phrases may sound repetitive, but they can also give leaders a safe and recognizable way to communicate during emotional or uncertain moments.
The broader lesson extends well beyond sports. Organizations generate enormous volumes of conversational data through contact centers, email, messaging and voice interactions. AI-powered language analysis can help identify changing sentiment, recurring concerns and communication patterns that might otherwise be missed.
For service providers, partners and enterprises, the opportunity is to combine the speed of AI with human context and judgment.
Listen to the podcast to learn how Sinch used AI, multilingual analysis and human oversight to examine World Cup communication—and what the project reveals about communicating under pressure.
By Doug Green
“Modernization does not have to mean abandoning the reliability, security and control organizations already depend on.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Darrell Butler, Senior Director of Product Management at Avaya, discusses how Avaya Nexus™ is designed to modernize critical enterprise communications while preserving the resilience required by government, healthcare, financial services, defense and other highly regulated industries.
For years, enterprise communications strategies were often framed around a “cloud-first” approach. Butler explains why many organizations are now taking a more measured view—combining the automation, scalability and innovation available through the cloud with the operational continuity and local survivability traditionally associated with on-premises infrastructure.
Built on key components of the Avaya Aura® platform, Avaya Nexus provides a modernization path for existing Avaya customers without forcing them into a cloud-only deployment. Core capabilities can be delivered through the cloud while on-site gateways and endpoints help maintain communications if connectivity to the cloud is interrupted.
Darrell Butler“If you get cut from the cloud and you still need your hospital—or whatever the operation may be—to keep its phone calls up, we can do that with Nexus,” Butler says.
The conversation also examines Avaya’s continued commitment to Aura. Butler emphasizes that Aura is not going away and will continue to be supported and developed, while Nexus offers customers an additional path for modernizing their communications environments.
AI is another important part of the strategy. Nexus supports capabilities including speech transcription and translation and is designed to connect with AI services available through Avaya Infinity™ and third-party platforms. At the same time, organizations retain control over how and where their communications data is used—an essential consideration for regulated and security-sensitive environments.
Butler also discusses Avaya Government Cloud’s achievement of Impact Level 4 High authorization. The milestone strengthens Avaya’s position in the public sector and demonstrates its ability to support sensitive government communications and workloads.
“We wanted to make sure that it wasn’t a big, heavy lift from a customer perspective. We’ll do the heavy lift,” Butler says.
Additional Avaya Resources
- Avaya Announces Avaya Nexus™ Mission-Critical Voice Platform for Critical Communications in Highly Regulated Industries
- Avaya Government Cloud Achieves Prestigious IL4 H Certification, Reinforcing Commitment to National Security
- Journeys DC Panel: When Public Sector Communications Can’t Fail
About Avaya
Avaya is an enterprise software leader that helps organizations deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences. Its solutions enable enterprises and governments to orchestrate AI, intelligent workflows and human expertise across communications and customer interactions. Avaya supports cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment models to meet each organization’s operational, security and business requirements.
About Avaya Nexus
Avaya Nexus is a critical communications infrastructure solution designed for organizations where communications cannot fail. It provides a secure and resilient voice foundation that supports cloud and on-premises capabilities while integrating with operational systems such as notifications, workflows and radio communications.
By Doug Green
“The AI can only do so much.”
Organizations are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, CRM automation, call recording, transcription and customer-experience analytics. But according to Mike Wehrs, Chief Operating Officer at TieTechnology, many are overlooking the first and most important link in that technology chain: the device capturing the conversation.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Wehrs explains that AI cannot overcome poor information at the source.
“If you don’t get those underlying data sets cleaned up, the AI can only do so much,” Wehrs says. “It can’t make up information. If it does, we call that hallucination—and generally, that’s not a good thing.”
TieTechnology provides business-grade VoIP and communications services, but its role extends beyond simply connecting or recording calls. The company can process conversations, transcribe them, analyze sentiment, summarize the interaction and place the resulting information into a customer’s CRM platform.
That makes the quality of the original audio increasingly important.
A conversation is no longer something that is simply heard by two people. It can become searchable business data used for customer records, sales intelligence, compliance, employee coaching and AI-driven decision-making.
Yet the headset or microphone capturing that conversation may receive very little consideration.
“The people who do that are the same people who are ordering your coffee,” Wehrs says, describing how headsets are frequently selected without input from IT teams, speech-recognition specialists or the people responsible for AI and analytics.
A low-quality headset may still allow two people to understand one another. That does not mean the recording is suitable for transcription, sentiment analysis or business-intelligence applications.
“If you’re looking to make it searchable in a database and be able to run BI reports on it, that is nowhere close to the bar,” Wehrs says.
The challenge becomes even greater in modern offices where organizations are using multiple wireless devices, Bluetooth headsets and Wi-Fi networks. What appears to be a phone-system, application or network problem may actually be interference or an unsuitable endpoint.
TieTechnology helps businesses evaluate the complete communications environment, including employee roles, mobility requirements, workplace conditions and the applications that will rely on the captured voice data.
The objective is not necessarily to purchase the most expensive device. It is to select technology that is fit for its intended purpose.
“If the garbage that I get on the inbound, no matter how much I process it, I can’t make it less than garbage on the way out,” Wehrs says.
For businesses hoping to gain more value from AI, the lesson is straightforward: better results begin with better inputs.
“Improve the headsets that you’ve got that you’re letting your reps talk on,” Wehrs says.
Listen to the podcast to learn why microphones and headsets should be viewed not simply as communications endpoints, but as data-acquisition tools at the foundation of the AI technology stack.
By Doug Green
“Legacy out-of-band gets you in. Modern out-of-band should help you recover.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Todd Rychecky, President of Gearlinx, about how out-of-band management is evolving from a narrowly focused remote-access tool into a broader platform for network recovery, operational resilience and business continuity.
Modern infrastructure is increasingly distributed across data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, campus environments, edge locations and remote sites. When the primary network becomes unavailable, simply opening a console port may no longer be enough.
Organizations need to know what equipment has been deployed, where it is located, whether it is reachable and what actions can be taken remotely to restore service.
“The issue is not simply whether an engineer can reach a console,” Rychecky says. “It’s more about whether they can reach the console and still manage their business.”
Gearlinx combines secure out-of-band management, cellular connectivity, automation, centralized cloud visibility and lifecycle management into a unified network resilience platform. The goal is to help customers diagnose problems faster, reduce downtime and avoid costly truck rolls.
The company’s portfolio includes the NR4400 Network Resilience Platform for data center and high-density environments, along with Duckfone, a compact cellular connectivity device designed for edge and distributed locations.
Both are brought together through ZERO, the Gearlinx centralized cloud-management platform. ZERO provides visibility into devices, locations, serial numbers, warranties, subscriptions and licensing information.
That centralized approach addresses a common problem for enterprises and service providers: critical infrastructure information is often spread across spreadsheets, disconnected applications and separate vendor portals.
Gearlinx is also approaching lifecycle management differently. Customers can select one-, three-, five- or seven-year licensing terms, allowing them to align technology investments with their own asset-depreciation and replacement schedules.
Warranty coverage and subscriptions begin when equipment is activated through the cloud rather than when it is initially purchased. That can be particularly valuable for organizations that purchase equipment in volume and then deploy it gradually over several months.
The platform also supports simplified co-terming, allowing customers and partners to bring licenses, warranties, support and software updates under a common renewal date.
Rychecky says these capabilities represent the difference between basic network resilience and broader operational resilience.
Operational resilience means giving IT teams the information and management tools they need before, during and after an outage—not simply providing an emergency connection to a console port.
The solution is designed for organizations across manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, education, retail, AI infrastructure and other environments where downtime or dispatching a technician can be expensive.
For resellers, VARs and MSPs, Gearlinx also creates an opportunity to move beyond a one-time hardware transaction.
“Gearlinx enables partners to sell more than a console server,” Rychecky says. “It’s an annualized recurring revenue business model for the reseller and decreases capital spending for the customer.”
Partners can attach cloud-management licenses, cellular connectivity, managed services, lifecycle planning, support and legacy hardware-refresh programs.
That creates ongoing customer engagement and recurring revenue instead of ending the relationship after the initial equipment sale.
“It helps resellers lead the business continuity and operational resilience conversation—not just a networking hardware conversation,” Rychecky says. “Partners are not limited to selling a box. They can build an ongoing resilience practice around the customer.”
One discovery question can help partners begin that conversation: When your production network is unavailable, how does your team access, diagnose and recover that location?
Learn more at Gearlinx.com.
As UCaaS platforms become increasingly commoditized, Akixi says service providers can rebuild differentiation, customer value and revenue by connecting analytics, CRM, recording and AI into one experience.
By Doug Green
“Fragmentation doesn’t just cost service providers on renewal—it knocks their ability to win business too.”
UCaaS was once one of the communications industry’s clearest growth stories. Today, however, many service providers are facing slower growth, tighter margins and declining revenue per seat as the major platforms become increasingly similar in their core capabilities.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Andrew Cantle, Chief Revenue Officer at Akixi, explains why the next competitive opportunity is no longer the underlying communications platform alone. It is the connected experience that service providers and MSPs can build around it.
Akixi began as a provider of real-time communications analytics. The company has since expanded its portfolio to include CRM integrations, call recording, AI-powered call scoring and sentiment analysis. These capabilities are brought together in the Akixi CX Suite, a value-added services layer designed to sit above platforms including BroadWorks, Webex and Microsoft Teams.
Cantle says service providers are experiencing two pressures at the same time. Customer expectations are moving beyond basic reliability, while revenue per user continues to erode. The major UCaaS platforms now perform the fundamentals well, making it harder for providers to charge a premium based on the platform itself.
That leaves providers looking for differentiation in the services surrounding the platform. Yet many are still managing separate vendors, dashboards and logins for analytics, recording, CRM integration and other capabilities. The result can be a fragmented customer experience and an equally fragmented sales story.
At renewal, that fragmentation can push the conversation back toward price. A customer may value the individual services, but without a connected view of the business impact, the provider has little protection against a cheaper competitor. The same problem can hurt new sales when solution engineers must switch among multiple systems to demonstrate what is supposed to be one solution.
AI is accelerating the shift. Capabilities that recently appeared advanced are quickly becoming expected. Akixi uses AI to analyze and score calls, evaluate sentiment and review far more customer interactions than a manager could assess manually. Instead of sampling a small number of calls, organizations can examine nearly every interaction and identify patterns in near real time.
Cantle also points to compliance as an increasingly important use case, including for smaller businesses. AI can help organizations locate key statements, identify when specific terms were used and create a clearer evidence trail across call recordings, analytics and CRM records. Capabilities that were once affordable only to large enterprises are now becoming accessible to SMB customers through their service providers.
Success, Cantle says, means giving customers direct visibility into measurable business outcomes—not simply adding another reporting layer. A connected experience can reveal productivity gains, staffing needs, coaching opportunities, agent performance, cost optimization and compliance evidence in one place.
For service providers, the benefits extend beyond customer experience. Consolidating several value-added services under one vendor can simplify procurement, product management, training and support. It can also make it easier to develop a coherent proposition that sales teams can demonstrate and customers can understand.
The larger message is that service providers remain well positioned because they already own trusted customer relationships. Those that connect their value-added services, demonstrate measurable outcomes and move beyond disconnected point solutions may be better able to protect renewals, win new business and rebuild average revenue per user.
Listen to the podcast to learn why Akixi believes connected experience is becoming the new differentiator for UCaaS providers, MSPs and their customers.
Learn more: https://www.akixi.com/
By Doug Green
“We see some customers with 70% autonomous resolution—and I’m talking about real resolution, not just giving an answer, but actually doing it for you and resolving the ticket completely.”
AI vendors have filled the market with promises of productivity, automation and lower operating costs. Atera is taking a different approach: putting a measurable performance commitment behind its autonomous IT agent.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Tal Dagan, Chief Product Officer at Atera, about Robin, the company’s autonomous IT agent, and what it means to move from AI experimentation to demonstrable operational outcomes.
Atera began as an all-in-one professional services automation and remote monitoring and management platform. That foundation gives Robin access to both sides of an IT incident: the ticketing conversation with the employee and the device-level tools needed to diagnose and correct the problem.
Dagan explains that Robin does more than suggest a troubleshooting step. When an employee reports that a computer is running slowly, Robin can run diagnostics, identify a memory-hungry browser tab or cache problem, take corrective action, confirm that performance has returned to normal and close the issue end-to-end.
That distinction matters. Many AI tools provide answers or instructions, but the work still falls to the employee or technician. Robin is designed to carry out operations on managed devices and connected third-party applications, allowing the system to resolve qualifying incidents rather than simply recommend a response.
Atera is backing the product with a performance guarantee for qualified customers: Robin will autonomously resolve 50% of Tier 1 and complex Tier 2 incidents within 90 days, or the applicable fees are waived. Before deployment, customers can also test selected use cases in a proof of concept using real workflows and ticket data.
According to Dagan, the company is already seeing autonomous resolution rates above 50% among many customers, with some reaching approximately 70%. He emphasizes that these figures refer to complete resolution—not an AI-generated answer telling a user what to do next.
The podcast also explores where people remain essential. Customers determine which actions Robin is authorized to take and where an approval or technician should enter the process. For example, Robin can verify whether an employee belongs in an email distribution group, request a manager’s approval and then make the change. A more cautious organization can route the same request to a technician.
Even when Robin does not close a ticket autonomously, it can gather information from the employee, the device and connected systems before handing the case to a technician. That reduces diagnostic work, shortens resolution time and gives the technician a better starting point.
For MSPs, the larger opportunity is scale. Routine incidents, repetitive information gathering and approval-driven workflows consume significant technician time. Moving more of that work to an autonomous agent can enable an MSP to support additional customers without increasing headcount at the same rate, while allowing skilled staff to focus on complex problems and higher-value services.
The conversation points toward a new phase of enterprise AI adoption—one in which providers are measured not by demonstrations or broad claims, but by the percentage of real work completed, the speed of response and the operational burden removed from IT teams.
Listen to the podcast to learn how Atera is applying autonomous IT in the field, how customers set the boundaries for automation, and what guaranteed AI outcomes could mean for MSP growth.
About Atera
Atera provides an AI-powered IT management platform for enterprises and MSPs. Its autonomous IT agent, Robin, is designed to diagnose and resolve technical incidents end-to-end, reduce ticket volume and help IT teams scale operations.
Guest: Tal Dagan, Chief Product Officer, Atera
Tal Dagan on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/taldagan
Atera on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/atera-networks
By Doug Green
“Voice is a security channel now, and it deserves the same controls businesses already apply to email and their networks.”
In this Technology Reseller News and Cloud Communications Alliance podcast, Doug Green speaks with Chuck French of Mutare about the growing threat of voice-based attacks—and the opportunity for service providers to help customers close a major security gap.
French says the voice channel has quietly become one of the last unprotected entry points into many organizations. Traditional tools can label suspicious calls, but they do not give individual businesses control over which calls are allowed, blocked, challenged or routed.
The risk is growing rapidly as AI makes voice cloning, impersonation and convincing social-engineering scripts easier and less expensive to produce. Attackers can now imitate a bank, help desk or company executive in real time and at scale.
Mutare’s Voice Traffic Filter addresses this problem by providing what French describes as a voice firewall. The platform combines customer-defined policies, reputation data, STIR/SHAKEN information, threat-pattern analysis and a voice CAPTCHA that helps distinguish human callers from bots.
Unlike carrier-level spam blocking, Mutare allows each organization to establish its own rules. A hospital, financial institution or small business can therefore apply policies suited to its particular risks and customer needs.
Mutare has also developed a multitenant version of the platform for MSPs, CSPs and other channel partners. The cloud-hosted service requires no customer-premises equipment or major professional-services deployment. Providers can offer it as a recurring, consumption-based security service while retaining the customer relationship and setting their own pricing.
French says Mutare’s return to the Cloud Communications Alliance reflects this new service-provider model and its potential value to CCA members.
For service providers, the message is clear: voice security represents both an urgent customer need and a new recurring-revenue opportunity.
Listen to the podcast to learn how Mutare is helping businesses treat voice as a protected enterprise channel rather than an unguarded utility.
Learn more at mutare.com.
By Doug Green
“The people trying to scam consumers never rest.”
In this special Technology Reseller News and Cloud Communications Alliance podcast, Doug Green speaks with Paul Florack, Vice President of Product Management at TNS, about the newly released TNS Robocall Investigation Report.
The report examines how AI, social engineering and multimodal attacks are changing voice fraud. Scammers can now combine text messages with follow-up calls, imitate familiar voices and use information gathered from voicemail or communication patterns to make attacks appear legitimate.
Florack also explains the limitations of STIR/SHAKEN and A-level attestation. A-attestation confirms that the originating provider believes a caller has the right to use a phone number. It does not confirm that the caller’s intentions are legitimate.
TNS found that some spam, scam and spoofed calls continue to receive A-level attestation. The report also found that between 10% and 12% of calls receiving first-level authentication were still classified as spam or unwanted.
“STIR/SHAKEN is a valuable tool, but it is not—and never will be—a standalone silver bullet,” Florack says.
TNS recommends a multilayered approach that combines call authentication with analytics, spoof detection, risk indicators and verified branded calling. These tools can help providers block suspicious traffic while giving consumers more confidence that legitimate calls are safe to answer.
For carriers, enterprises, MSPs and channel partners, Florack’s message is clear: do not assume that authentication alone solves the robocall problem.
Listen to the podcast and read the new TNS report to learn how AI-enabled fraud is evolving and what communications providers can do to protect customers.
Learn more at tnsi.com.
By Doug Green
“AI goes blind at exactly the moment when you need it most.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Vishal Gupta, Director of Product Management at ZPE Systems, explains why AI-driven infrastructure management needs an independent path to the devices it is expected to monitor, troubleshoot and recover.
AIOps platforms have become increasingly effective at detecting problems, correlating events and automating routine infrastructure operations. The problem, Gupta says, is that these systems often run on the same production infrastructure they manage.
When a network outage or hardware failure occurs, the AI platform can lose both its connection to the affected equipment and access to the telemetry it needs to diagnose the problem.
“That is the gap out-of-band fills,” says Gupta.
Out-of-band management provides an independent management plane that remains separate from the production network. Even when the primary infrastructure is unavailable, IT teams—and increasingly AI agents—can still reach devices through console access, examine system logs and kernel messages, and take corrective action.
Gupta compares the architecture to an airport. Aircraft use the runway for normal operations, while emergency and service vehicles have separate roads and infrastructure. If the runway becomes unavailable, the service infrastructure can still reach the aircraft.
The same principle applies to resilient IT operations. An isolated management environment should have its own connectivity, security, routing, switching, storage and compute capabilities. It may also include failover connectivity through 4G, 5G or satellite services such as Starlink.
Building Out-of-Band for a Larger Edge
ZPE Systems developed its Nodegrid Net Services Router 2U, or NSR 2U, in response to customers operating increasingly large and complex edge environments.
These environments can include branch offices, remote facilities, ships, oil rigs, cell sites and other locations outside traditional data centers. They frequently contain more devices, require greater bandwidth and have fewer trained personnel available on-site.
The NSR 2U was designed around three priorities: greater capacity, increased resiliency and support for AI workloads.
The modular platform offers 10 expansion-card slots, allowing customers to configure the system around their particular deployment. It also includes redundant, field-serviceable power supplies and fans, two NVMe storage slots with RAID support, four native 10-gigabit SFP+ ports and an increased Power over Ethernet budget.
ZPE has even addressed the possibility that the out-of-band device itself could fail. Two NSR 2U systems can be interconnected so that one system can provide remote console, power and reset control for the other—effectively providing out-of-band management for the out-of-band infrastructure.
Taking NVIDIA Jetson AI to Remote Locations
ZPE Systems has also developed an NVIDIA Jetson AI Expansion Card for the Nodegrid NSR family. The card supports NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and Orin NX modules, providing local AI processing within the isolated management environment.
This allows organizations to deploy AI agents close to the infrastructure and data they manage, without relying entirely on a remote cloud connection.
A key capability is remote lifecycle management. IT teams can remotely flash the Jetson operating system, deploy or update AI agents and models, access the console, and power the device on, off or into recovery mode.
Ordinarily, updating or recovering an edge AI device may require someone to travel to the location and connect directly to the hardware. ZPE’s approach is intended to reduce those truck rolls while allowing organizations to manage distributed AI infrastructure centrally.
Potential applications extend beyond AIOps. The platform can support real-time video analytics, object detection, smart recording, manufacturing quality control, sensor-data aggregation and local automation. GPIO and I2C interfaces also allow sensors measuring conditions such as temperature, vibration or voltage to feed information directly into locally running AI models.
Asking the Hard Infrastructure Questions
Gupta says much of the AI conversation remains focused on models, software and the token economy. Those areas are important, but they can obscure fundamental infrastructure questions.
Where will an AIOps platform run? Can it survive the outage it is expected to resolve? Will it still have a path to the affected equipment? Can it access sufficiently accurate data to diagnose the problem and select the right recovery action?
“If you can’t answer these questions, then there’s a gap in your AIOps strategy,” Gupta says. “No software and no model will fix it for you.”
As AI becomes more autonomous, infrastructure resilience will determine whether AI agents can move beyond identifying failures to actually recovering from them. ZPE Systems is positioning isolated out-of-band infrastructure, the NSR 2U and edge-based Jetson AI processing as the foundation for making that transition possible.
More at Enterprise Network Management Solution | ZPE Systems
“The physical and the virtual can come together to deliver a consistent experience across everything the enterprise does.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Tony Lama, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Avaya Software, about how Avaya is extending customer experience beyond the traditional contact center.
The discussion focuses on Avaya’s work with avatarin, whose AI-powered robots can be deployed in airports, retail locations and other physical environments. Using Avaya Infinity, organizations can connect those interactions with virtual assistants, contact center agents and back-office teams.
The goal is to preserve context as customers move between physical, digital and human interactions. A robot may handle a routine request, for example, before seamlessly transferring a more complex or sensitive issue to a live person.
“We are not in the world of building robots,” Lama says. “We are building platforms that can be used for enterprise-wide orchestration.”
Lama also explains Avaya’s open approach to AI. Rather than locking customers into a single AI provider, Infinity allows enterprises and partners to connect their preferred models, applications and data platforms.
The platform can be deployed in the cloud, on premises or in a hybrid environment, giving organizations a path to modernization without sacrificing security, data sovereignty or existing Avaya investments.
For enterprises, MSPs and channel partners, Avaya’s message is clear: start with the customer experience, then connect the technologies needed to deliver it.
Listen to the podcast to learn more about Avaya Infinity, physical AI, agentic AI and enterprise customer-experience orchestration.
Learn more at Avaya.com.
“Sports has caught up,” says Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano. “I think there’s a big opportunity.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with longtime communications strategist and entrepreneur Andy Abramson about Comunicano’s return to the sports industry and the growing intersection of sports, technology, media, telecom and business.
Abramson began working in professional sports as a teenager, promoting the Philadelphia Wings and later helping build Hockey Central, an early fan-development organization associated with the Philadelphia Flyers. He went on to create programs that introduced thousands of young people to hockey and helped establish initiatives that continue decades later.
Comunicano eventually shifted its focus almost entirely to technology. Since then, Abramson says the agency’s work has contributed to 64 exits representing approximately $9.5 billion in value for founders, investors and executives.
Now, after nearly three decades focused primarily on technology and telecom, Abramson believes sports and technology are finally ready to come together in a more meaningful way.
“I think I took a 27-year retirement,” says Abramson. “I kind of feel like Gordie Howe coming out of retirement.”
The move has led to the launch of Comunicano Sports and DevLocker, a database containing hundreds of application programming interfaces (APIs), Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and other development resources. Abramson says these tools can help connect sports organizations, venues, technology companies and emerging AI applications.
The podcast also introduces Abramson’s role as the sports technology contributor to the new Technology Reseller Sunday Report. His coverage does not focus on scores, standings or betting odds. Instead, it examines the broader business of sports, including infrastructure, ticketing, media, retail, fan engagement, transportation, data and venue technology.
“Sports is more than the athletic event,” says Green. “There are a hundred industries wrapped into sports.”
One example is Abramson’s analysis of the changing economics of stadium and arena parking. Parking has historically generated millions of dollars for teams and venue operators, but ride-sharing services, autonomous vehicles and new transportation habits could substantially reduce that revenue.
“The parking lot is getting fired,” says Abramson.
For fans, ride-sharing can eliminate long walks, traffic congestion and concerns about driving after drinking. For sports organizations, however, fewer parked cars may mean the loss of a significant and dependable revenue stream. Abramson argues that teams must begin developing new ways to monetize arrivals, departures and the surrounding venue experience.
His broader message is that sports organizations cannot focus only on individual games, championships or short-term moments. They must build technology, revenue systems and operational infrastructure that deliver sustainable results.
“Systems matter and moments expire,” says Abramson. “It’s about how you build infrastructure to win consistently on the floor, on the ice and on the court—but most importantly, at the bank.”
Comunicano Sports will focus on the business, marketing and technology of sports, while TR Publications and Abramson plan to continue the conversation through a new series of sports technology podcasts.
Learn more and subscribe to Abramson’s coverage at Comunicano.substack.com.
“Over 100 million people a week are using AI for something related to mental health,” says Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace, about a growing but often hidden workplace issue: employees may already be turning to general-purpose AI tools for mental health support.
Rodio says the trend may be particularly relevant in IT and technology roles, where employees can face long hours, workplace isolation, limited mobility and high levels of stress. Traditional therapy appointments may not always fit easily into those working conditions.
Talkspace developed Tee, an AI mental health guide, to help bridge that gap. Tee is not therapy or a replacement for a licensed mental health professional. Instead, it gives users a private place to reflect on stress, process their feelings and begin engaging with their mental health.
“We envision that Tee will help people get to a place where they may be more open to thinking through what they’re feeling,” says Rodio.
The podcast also explores how employers and users should evaluate AI mental health tools. Rodio recommends reviewing privacy policies, understanding how the technology was developed, asking who owns the information entered into the system and determining whether licensed mental health professionals were involved in its design.
Talkspace developed T with input from psychologists, psychiatrists and other licensed mental health professionals. Rodio says privacy and transparency are especially important when users are discussing sensitive personal matters with AI.
“Trust is built on privacy standards,” says Rodio.
Learn more about Talkspace at talkspace.com and Tee at talkspace.com/tee.
“People are already using conversational AI to work on their mental health,” says Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace, about Tee by Talkspace, a proprietary AI mental health guide designed to offer a safer alternative to general-purpose AI tools.
Talkspace is a virtual behavioral health provider that connects people with licensed therapists and psychiatric providers. The company serves more than 200 million covered lives in the United States and offers care through insurance or direct payment.
Rodio says Talkspace developed Tee after recognizing that millions of people were already turning to conversational AI for mental health support, even though general-purpose large language models were not designed for that role.
“We saw not only an opportunity, but also an obligation,” says Rodio.
Tee is positioned as a mental health guide rather than AI therapy. Talkspace defines therapy as a relationship between a human client and a licensed human therapist. However, Tee can help users reflect on what they are experiencing, practice therapeutic skills and consider healthier ways of approaching difficult situations.
Unlike AI assistants designed to provide fast answers or agree with the user, Tee was developed with input from therapists. Rodio says the platform is designed to avoid reinforcing unhealthy thinking or offering overly simplistic advice.
“Therapists are trained to support you as a person without necessarily supporting behaviors or mental frameworks that can be counterproductive,” says Rodio.
Tee may suggest practical techniques such as box breathing for anxiety, ask users to explore why they feel a certain way, or challenge false choices such as immediately ending an important relationship after an argument.
The platform uses a proprietary model developed by Talkspace rather than simply placing a healthcare interface around a general-purpose AI service. Rodio says conversations are encrypted and the system was built using the security, privacy and compliance experience Talkspace has developed as a virtual healthcare provider.
For employers, MSPs, carriers and channel partners, Rodio says the central message is that employees and customers may already be using AI for mental health conversations. Organizations should consider whether those people have access to a purpose-built and responsibly developed alternative.
Tee may also provide an entry point for people who are not yet ready to begin therapy, helping bridge the gap between self-guided support and professional mental healthcare.
Learn more at talkspace.com or talkspace.com/tee.
“Every high performer has blind spots,” says Julie Thiel of TTS Company.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Julie Thiel of TTS Company about why coaching should not be reserved only for employees who are struggling.
Thiel says managers often spend most of their time helping underperformers while assuming top employees already know they are doing well. That can be a mistake. High performers may be taking on the most difficult work, preparing for leadership roles or developing habits that will not serve them at the next level.
“There’s even more bang for the buck in a conversation with an achieving employee about what they can do to take it to the next level,” says Thiel.
Thiel shares a lesson from her own career. Her manager told her that consistently working at 110 percent had helped her succeed as an individual contributor, but could lead to burnout if she carried the same approach into management.
“You have to know when to pick good enough,” Thiel recalls. “Where do you do 60 percent, where do you do 80 percent, and where do you do 110 percent?”
The podcast explores how managers can coach high performers without making the conversation feel like criticism. Thiel says leaders should make it clear that the employee’s current work is strong, then explain that the discussion is about future potential, new responsibilities and the skills needed for the next stage of the employee’s career.
Trust is essential. These conversations work best when they are part of an ongoing relationship rather than a sudden meeting after months of limited communication.
“Good leadership is one good conversation after another,” says Thiel.
Thiel encourages managers to invest in people before they ask for help, identify strengths they may not see in themselves and open the door to new possibilities.
TTS Company helps growing businesses remove people-related bottlenecks and supports larger HR departments with projects and added capacity. Thiel is also preparing to launch The Vault, a leadership development community offering ongoing training, practical challenges and peer support.
Learn more at thettscompany.com.
Jabra Evolve3 Headsets Bring Clearer Voice Input to AI-Powered Collaboration, Podcast, Jabra recently expanded the Evolve3 range with the Evolve3 65 Flex, Evolve3 65 and Evolve3 45, providing purpose-built options for hybrid professionals, open-office employees and desk-based callers
By Doug Green
| “Voice is becoming increasingly important in that collaboration with AI.” |
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Michelle Ritz, Headset Marketing Manager at Jabra, about the expanded Jabra Evolve3 professional headset lineup, the evolution of workplace audio and why high-quality voice capture is becoming essential for AI-powered collaboration.
Jabra recently expanded the Evolve3 range with the Evolve3 65 Flex, Evolve3 65 and Evolve3 45, providing purpose-built options for hybrid professionals, open-office employees and desk-based callers. The three models join the premium Evolve3 75 and Evolve3 85 to create a broader workplace audio portfolio designed around how employees actually work.
Technology Reseller News previously reported on the expanded portfolio in Jabra Expands Evolve3 Headset Range for AI-Driven Collaboration and published the complete product announcement in Jabra Expands Evolve3 Range.
Ritz explains why the traditional “one headset fits everyone” approach no longer works. An employee spending the day at a desk has different requirements from someone working in a noisy open office or moving between home, corporate offices, airports, trains and shared workspaces.
The Evolve3 45 is a lightweight on-ear headset designed for frequent desk-based calling. The Evolve3 65 adds stronger noise control for professionals working in busy offices, while the portable and foldable Evolve3 65 Flex is designed for hybrid and mobile workers who need professional call quality across multiple locations.
Although each headset is designed for a different workstyle, Jabra has brought important core capabilities across the range rather than reserving them exclusively for premium models. These include Jabra ClearVoice technology, professional voice pickup, in-call active noise cancellation and centralized device management.
A central theme of the podcast is the changing relationship between workplace audio and artificial intelligence.
As organizations adopt AI meeting assistants, voice is becoming an important data input. Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and other collaboration platforms can now use spoken conversations to produce transcripts, meeting summaries, action items and follow-up content.
However, the quality of those AI-generated results depends on the quality of the audio being captured.
Poor voice pickup can lead to incorrect transcripts, incomplete summaries and unreliable AI output. In sectors such as healthcare, financial services and law, even a small transcription error can change the meaning of an important conversation.
Jabra ClearVoice uses AI-powered deep-learning technology to isolate the speaker’s voice from surrounding conversations, office noise and wind. Ritz discusses how clearer voice capture helps the person on the other end of a call while also giving AI collaboration tools more accurate information to process.
The conversation also examines how employee expectations have changed. People increasingly expect workplace headsets to provide the comfort, audio quality, portability and ease of use they experience with personal technology. IT departments, meanwhile, need secure devices that can be deployed and managed consistently across an enterprise.
The expanded Jabra Evolve3 lineup is designed to address both needs: more headset choice for employees and a manageable professional audio platform for IT.
As voice becomes an increasingly important input for AI-powered meetings and workflows, a professional headset is no longer simply a peripheral for making calls. It is becoming part of the infrastructure that determines how accurately people—and the AI systems assisting them—can communicate.
Learn more at Jabra.com/evolve3.
NRS Helps Independent Retailers Embrace Unified Commerce—While Giving Back to the Communities It Serves, Podcast, “I feel the pain when I see a merchant that goes out of business,” Katz says. “We developed our point-of-sale register specifically to give tools to these merchants so that they could compete.”
By Doug Green
“We don’t just sell or do business as usual. We understand the humanity part of doing business as well.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I spoke with Elie Katz, CEO of National Retail Solutions (NRS), about two closely connected ideas: helping independent retailers compete in a rapidly changing commerce environment and maintaining a company culture built around giving back.
NRS Cares
Katz discusses NRS Cares, an employee-led initiative supporting communities through blood drives, food donations, school visits and disaster-recovery efforts. A recent blood drive at the company’s Newark headquarters was especially personal for Katz, who underwent double-bypass surgery approximately two years ago and understands firsthand the lifesaving importance of donated blood.
Giving back, he says, is not separate from the company’s business mission. NRS works closely with bodegas, convenience stores, liquor stores, tobacco shops, restaurants and other independent businesses—many of which face rising costs, tight margins, crime risks and increasing competition from larger retailers.
“I feel the pain when I see a merchant that goes out of business,” Katz says. “We developed our point-of-sale register specifically to give tools to these merchants so that they could compete.”
That hands-on approach also shapes NRS product development. Katz says he personally tries to visit 12 stores each month to speak with merchants, observe how they operate and understand their changing needs. The goal is to ensure that NRS technology is designed for the people who actually use it—not merely for engineers or product developers.
Juniper Research projects $41 trillion market
The conversation comes as Juniper Research projects the value of global point-of-sale transactions will increase from $30 trillion in 2026 to $41 trillion by 2031, driven in part by the convergence of in-store, online and mobile purchasing.
For independent merchants, that shift is already underway. Katz says credit-card usage has risen significantly across the approximately 35,000 convenience stores using NRS point-of-sale systems. Younger shoppers increasingly carry no cash—and often no physical credit cards—relying instead on smartphones and digital wallets.
Independent stores that remain cash-only risk missing an entire generation of customers. They may also expose themselves to additional security risks by keeping large amounts of cash onsite.
Modern point-of-sale technology offers much more than payment acceptance. It can help merchants monitor inventory, understand sales patterns, manage employees, access payroll and financing services, and participate in delivery platforms.
Katz says he continues to be surprised by the volume of orders flowing through NRS systems from DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber. Rather than being displaced by delivery services, neighborhood stores are increasingly using those platforms to extend their reach and serve customers beyond the physical storefront.
For MSPs, technology resellers and other companies serving small businesses, NRS also offers a channel opportunity. Partners can bring point-of-sale systems, payment processing, payroll, cash advances and related services to independent merchants that need help modernizing.
The broader message is that digital transformation does not have to leave neighborhood businesses behind. With accessible technology, practical training and local support, independent retailers can compete in unified commerce while continuing to play an essential role in their communities.
Learn more or explore the NRS reseller program at NRSplus.com.
RabbitRun and Crexendo Expand Recurring Revenue Opportunities for Channel Partners, Podcast , RabbitRun offers an integrated platform that brings together Always-On Internet, enterprise-class SD-WAN, cybersecurity, voice survivability, POTS replacement and business continuity. The goal is to help businesses remain connected and operational when internet connections, networks or other critical infrastructure fail
@ Doug Green
“There’s a tremendous opportunity for partners to deliver more value, improve customer retention and create new recurring revenue streams.”
RabbitRun has joined the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program, giving Crexendo, NetSapiens and channel partners new ways to deliver resilient connectivity, business continuity and managed network services to their customers.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, RabbitRun Founder and CTO Pat Saavedra discusses the partnership and the opportunity it creates for MSPs, service providers and telecom resellers.
RabbitRun offers an integrated platform that brings together Always-On Internet, enterprise-class SD-WAN, cybersecurity, voice survivability, POTS replacement and business continuity. The goal is to help businesses remain connected and operational when internet connections, networks or other critical infrastructure fail.
For channel partners, Saavedra says the opportunity extends well beyond simply selling another connectivity product. Partners can use RabbitRun to address real customer concerns surrounding uptime, security and operational resilience while creating new sources of recurring managed-services revenue.
As more business applications move to the cloud, internet connectivity has become essential infrastructure. A failed connection can interrupt voice services, payment processing, customer support, remote access and other core operations. RabbitRun is designed to identify network problems and move traffic to an available connection, helping businesses continue operating with minimal disruption.
The platform also gives partners greater visibility into customer networks, allowing them to identify performance issues, manage connectivity and provide ongoing support. That creates a more proactive relationship in which the partner is helping protect the customer’s business rather than simply responding after something goes wrong.
The conversation also explores the growing importance of voice survivability. Businesses may have backup internet connections but still discover that their voice systems fail during an outage. RabbitRun helps partners address that gap by protecting both data and voice communications as part of a broader continuity strategy.
POTS replacement represents another opportunity. As traditional analog lines become more expensive and difficult to maintain, businesses need alternatives for services such as alarms, elevators, fax machines and emergency communications. RabbitRun enables partners to incorporate those requirements into a modern managed connectivity offering.
By joining the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program, RabbitRun becomes more accessible to a large community of service providers already delivering communications through Crexendo and the NetSapiens platform.
Saavedra says this gives partners an opportunity to expand the value of their existing customer relationships. Rather than competing only on voice seats or connectivity pricing, they can provide a broader solution built around reliability, security and business continuity.
For MSPs and communications providers, the message is straightforward: protecting the customer’s ability to remain connected can become both an essential service and a meaningful recurring revenue opportunity.
Learn more about RabbitRun and its participation in the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program.
HP Builds AI-Powered Collaboration Ecosystem for the Hybrid Workplace, Podcast
“AI is changing collaboration by helping IT teams see, manage, and improve the entire workplace experience.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Brian Phillips, Director of Product Marketing at HP Inc., about HP’s InfoComm 2026 announcements and the company’s expanding vision for AI-powered enterprise collaboration.
The conversation focuses on how HP is bringing together meeting room technology, personal productivity tools, AI-enabled management, and workplace analytics into a more unified collaboration ecosystem. At the center of that strategy is the HP Workforce Experience Platform, or WXP, which is designed to give IT teams a broader view across devices, rooms, applications, and user experiences.
Phillips discusses how WXP, together with Poly Lens and new AI-powered capabilities such as Room Visualizer AI, helps organizations move beyond basic device management. Instead of simply monitoring endpoints, IT teams can gain more actionable insight into how rooms are configured, how devices are performing, and how collaboration spaces can be improved.
The podcast also covers HP Poly Studio Room Compute, VideoOS 5.1, and Poly DirectorAI, technologies designed to make hybrid meetings more engaging and equitable. These tools help meeting participants be seen and heard more clearly, whether they are in the room, working from home, or joining from another location.
Beyond the meeting room, HP is also expanding its personal workspace portfolio with products such as the Poly Focus 6 Series Bluetooth headsets and the HP Collaboration Keyboard. Phillips explains how these devices fit into the larger HP collaboration strategy by supporting productivity wherever employees work.
For MSPs, channel partners, and enterprise IT leaders, the message is clear: workplace collaboration is moving toward integrated ecosystems, AI-powered insights, and better experiences for both users and IT teams.
NCTC and ACA Connects on The Independent Show, AI, Mobility and the Future of Independent Providers, Podcast
As The Independent Show approaches, NCTC and ACA Connects say broadband, cable and communications providers are facing a fast-changing market where agility, collaboration and confidence matter more than ever.
“The conversations never end. You just have to be agile.”
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Grant Spellmeyer, President and CEO of ACA Connects, and Lou Borrelli, CEO of NCTC, about The Independent Show and the evolving landscape for independent broadband, cable and communications providers.
The discussion looks at the issues now shaping the independent provider community, including AI, mobility, network evolution, bundling, policy, competition and changing customer expectations.
Borrelli notes that independent providers continue to have an important advantage: they know their communities. Their local presence, customer relationships and ability to respond quickly remain powerful differentiators. At the same time, those providers are operating in a more competitive environment, with fixed wireless, satellite, larger providers and new service models entering markets that were once less contested.
Spellmeyer discusses the policy work ACA Connects is doing in Washington, including advocacy on behalf of smaller and independent operators as federal and regulatory decisions continue to affect broadband investment, competition and deployment.
Borrelli also explains how NCTC helps members access the content, technology, solutions and shared expertise they need to compete more effectively. The conversation highlights the importance of collaboration across the independent provider ecosystem, especially as members consider new opportunities in mobility, AI-enabled services and bundled offerings.
The Independent Show will bring these conversations together in one place, giving providers an opportunity to compare notes, learn from peers, meet technology and content partners, and return home with practical ideas for growth.
For independent providers, the message is clear: the market is changing quickly, but they do not have to navigate that change alone. With the right partnerships, tools and strategy, local providers can continue to compete, serve their communities and build for the future.
“The intelligent worker is the person who can balance knowledge with the use of AI tools,” says Iain Sinnott of the Cloud Communications Alliance.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast for TR Publications and the Cloud Communications Alliance, Doug Green speaks with Iain Sinnott, European Development Chief of the CCA, about AI, human capability, dyslexia, governance and the changing nature of work.
The conversation begins with Sinnott’s blue glasses, which he says became a useful icebreaker during COVID-era video meetings. But the discussion quickly turns to something deeper: how AI can help people with dyslexia and other challenges bring more of their talent into the workplace.
Sinnott explains that dyslexia has shaped how he works, learns and sells. While reading and writing have often been difficult, his oral memory and problem-solving skills have been strengths. AI tools, he says, are now helping reduce the impact of some of those weaknesses.
“I think in 41 years of business, I am now more efficient and less challenged than I’ve ever been,” says Sinnott.
But Sinnott also warns that AI must remain a tool guided by human responsibility. He says users must challenge AI, verify its work and avoid becoming overly dependent on it.
“We are responsible for making sure that this remains a positive tool, not a negative tool,” says Sinnott.
The podcast also explores AI governance, data sovereignty and security, especially in the European market. Sinnott says organizations need guardrails that protect data and manage risk, while still allowing employees the freedom to experiment, explore and improve workflows.
That balance, Sinnott argues, may lead to the rise of the “intelligent worker”: someone who can find information, challenge it, apply it and combine human judgment with AI-enabled tools.
The conversation also addresses the risk that companies may use AI only as a cost-cutting tool. Sinnott cautions that replacing junior roles too quickly could damage the long-term development of future senior talent.
“The human brain isn’t replaceable,” says Sinnott. “But some of the tasks we ask it to do are.”
Sinnott also discusses the work of the Cloud Communications Alliance in Europe, where sovereignty, communications policy, national security and critical infrastructure have become increasingly important issues. He says the CCA has a role to play in convening conversations and helping members develop thoughtful strategies that embrace innovation while protecting essential communications systems.
Learn more about the Cloud Communications Alliance at www.cloudcommunications.com.
John Dalrymple, Founder and CEO of Mobex, joined Technology Reseller News Publisher Doug Green to discuss how organizations can bring business voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and Microsoft Teams together into a single, compliant communications platform. Mobex, a member of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA), helps businesses simplify communications while improving management, security, and productivity.
Dalrymple explained that while business communications have expanded far beyond traditional voice calls, many organizations still struggle with disconnected tools and unmanaged mobile communications. Mobex addresses this challenge by integrating business calling, SMS, and WhatsApp directly into Microsoft Teams and VoIP environments, creating what he described as a “single pane of glass” for enterprise communications.
“We try to help our clients integrate those communication channels into what makes sense for them in their workflow and work process,” Dalrymple said.
A key benefit is improved compliance and governance. Rather than employees conducting business conversations on personal devices outside company oversight, Mobex enables organizations to route business communications through managed platforms that support recording, AI transcription, compliance requirements, and centralized management. The platform also provides business eSIM capabilities, allowing employees to separate personal and business communications while retaining native mobile phone functionality.
Dalrymple also highlighted opportunities for MSPs and channel partners. Because many already deploy Microsoft Teams, Mobex can be added as an integrated solution for business calling, texting, WhatsApp, compliance, and call recording, creating new recurring revenue opportunities with minimal deployment complexity. The company has also expanded into the UK, where WhatsApp plays a larger role in business communications than traditional SMS.
Learn more: https://www.mobex.biz/
TERRA Members Now Part of ITAD Association, Podcast, “For our membership that we have really been blessed with over the last seven years since we started this endeavor, we found them a good home,” Napoli said
TERRA founder Stephen Napoli says the move gives members “a good home” while bringing two important communities together in the electronics reuse, recycling and ITAD ecosystem.
In a special ASCDI podcast, Doug Green spoke with Stephen Napoli, president and founder of TERRA, about a milestone moment for the ITAD community: TERRA’s members are now becoming part of ASCDI — The ITAD Association.
The move brings approximately 80 TERRA companies into ASCDI, joining two communities that have long worked in the same orbit: ITAD, electronics reuse, e-scrap, certified recycling and the circular economy. Napoli said TERRA will cease operations, but its members will move into ASCDI with continuity, visibility and a larger industry platform.
“For our membership that we have really been blessed with over the last seven years since we started this endeavor, we found them a good home,” Napoli said.
Napoli founded TERRA to give certified electronics recycling and ITAD companies a stronger voice. The organization helped promote the value of certification, especially around standards such as R2 and e-Stewards, and worked to help customers understand why responsible reuse and recycling matter.
As Napoli explained, certified ITAD and recycling companies do more than process used equipment. They protect data, support reuse, keep electronics out of landfills, advance the circular economy and help make sure equipment is handled in ways that protect both people and the environment.
Asked why ASCDI — The ITAD Association was the right next home for TERRA members, Napoli pointed to ASCDI’s long-standing reputation, advocacy and history in the technology reuse market.
“They’ve been in this space for a long time and they have a very good reputation,” Napoli said. “They do a very good job of advocating for people that are in this space, which is what we’ve been doing. So it really was a natural fit.”
Napoli described the transition as bittersweet. TERRA began as an idea seven years ago and grew into a community of certified and allied companies across the electronics recycling and ITAD landscape. Now, he said, that work can continue through a larger association.
“I’m forever grateful,” Napoli said. “And really happy that it’s just not coming to an end, that I’m able to pass it along to the benefit of them and to another organization in the space to make this industry stronger.”
The conversation also reflected the personal side of the ITAD community. Napoli said that while companies in the space may compete, there is also a family quality to the industry, with many people sharing a common commitment to reuse, responsible recycling and doing the right thing with technology at the end of its first life.
“I found a gem,” Napoli said, reflecting on his entry into the industry. “It has been the joy of my career to be part of it.”
Visit ASCDI — The ITAD Association to learn more.
SmarTrak.ai Turns Cisco Data Into Partner Growth, Podcast
Cisco 360, AI, refresh cycles, and multivendor migration are creating new openings — and SmarTrak.ai says partners have a timely opportunity to grow more strategically.
“We help them manage their practice, grow their practice, and increase their profitability around it,” says Ted Lee of SmarTrak.ai.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, recorded following Cisco Live, Doug Green speaks with Ted Lee of SmarTrak.ai about the company’s expanding role in helping Cisco partners turn Cisco data into actionable business intelligence.
Lee describes SmarTrak.ai as a platform built to help Cisco partners manage their Cisco practice by ingesting data from Cisco APIs and other sources. The goal, he says, is to give partners better visibility into customer environments, including hardware assets, software, services, service contracts, subscriptions and enterprise agreements.
For end customers, SmarTrak.ai provides visibility into Cisco infrastructure and spending, helping organizations optimize their environments while giving partners a more strategic way to support long-term customer retention.
The discussion focuses heavily on Cisco 360, one of the major themes at Cisco Live. Lee says SmarTrak.ai announced a Cisco 360 module designed to help partners understand how they can perform under the program, identify opportunities to improve their scores, and increase profitability with Cisco.
“We announced at Cisco Live that we had a 360 module that we are releasing that gives predictability into how they can perform, how to optimize it,” Lee says. “Since we have their entire estate with every one of their customers globally, we can then give them opportunities with which they can raise their scores in order to increase their profitability with Cisco.”
Lee also points to a larger market moment for Cisco partners. With major refresh cycles, end-of-life events, new AI-enabled products and changing customer infrastructure requirements, partners have an opportunity to move from reactive selling to more strategic planning.
SmarTrak.ai is also putting that intelligence directly into the hands of sales teams. The company announced a mobile application designed for sellers and solutions engineers who are meeting customers in the field, giving them access to forward-looking intelligence around sustainability swaps, end-of-life replacements, AI replacement SKUs and other Cisco-driven opportunities.
“Sales reps are not sitting at their desks,” Lee says. “These partners are out with their customers, and we are putting this wealth of intelligence in the hands of their sales reps and their solutions engineers.”
The podcast also covers SmarTrak.ai’s multivendor migration capabilities. Lee notes that customer environments are rarely Cisco-only. Partners often encounter Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Aruba, Ruckus, HPE and other installed platforms. SmarTrak.ai’s migration platform allows partners to ingest those install bases and build forward-looking roadmaps for when it may make sense to replace other platforms with modern Cisco solutions.
Lee says the platform can help customers budget, help partners quote more effectively, and help move opportunities toward higher-level Cisco buying programs such as enterprise agreements.
The conversation also touches on audit readiness. Lee says SmarTrak.ai has helped partners pass CX Expert and advanced audits by providing the visibility and health scoring needed to support certifications, partner status, rebates and incentives.
“We are a full Cisco practice engine to help them take advantage of the wealth of data and opportunity in front of them and turn it into revenue and profitability with the end customers,” Lee says.
AI is also part of the SmarTrak.ai story. Lee says the company was founded in early 2023, as large language models were becoming more widely accessible, and recognized an opportunity to use AI against Cisco’s large data universe. SmarTrak.ai is SOC 2 Type II and is pursuing ISO 27001 certification, Lee says, emphasizing that the company is “security first” while using AI to help partners analyze data faster and identify new sales opportunities.
Lee describes the result as “agentic lifecycle intelligence,” enabling partners to generate forward-looking Cisco practice plans, budgets, replacement strategies, enterprise agreement eligibility, and takeover opportunities across large customer bases.
“One of our customers has nearly 10,000 Cisco customers,” Lee says. “They can view any customer in the world with a few clicks of their mouse, and they can create a five-year forward-looking internal or external Cisco practice plan.”
The podcast offers a look at how SmarTrak.ai is positioning itself as a Cisco partner growth platform: helping partners make Cisco data more usable, make customer conversations more strategic, prepare for Cisco 360, manage refresh cycles, and turn infrastructure intelligence into recurring revenue opportunities.
Learn more at smartrak.ai.
Steve Brock, Senior Vice President of Sales at Airsys Cooling Technologies, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, about a growing infrastructure challenge that is often overlooked: cooling. As AI workloads, 5G deployments, and increasingly dense telecom equipment drive power consumption higher, Brock explained why efficient thermal management is becoming as important as the computing infrastructure itself.
Airsys has specialized in mission-critical cooling for more than 30 years, serving telecom operators, modular data centers, and edge infrastructure around the world. Brock noted that the industry has moved beyond simply installing air conditioners in telecom shelters. Today’s operators are demanding intelligent systems that combine variable-speed technology, economizers, advanced controls, and predictive maintenance to reduce energy consumption while maintaining reliability. “Remove the thought process from 10 or 15 years ago that cooling was an afterthought,” Brock said. “Let’s spend time on the most efficient solutions.”
The discussion explored how AI and next-generation wireless networks are changing infrastructure requirements. As 5G evolves and AI workloads move closer to the edge, telecom shelters and remote network sites are becoming significantly more power-dense. That creates new cooling challenges in locations where maintenance is difficult and uptime is essential. Brock explained that operators are increasingly looking for longer-lasting equipment, better energy efficiency, and systems capable of identifying maintenance needs before failures occur.
Brock also described Airsys’ continued investment in manufacturing and customer support, including its new 300,000-square-foot production facility in Woodruff, South Carolina, where products are designed, manufactured, and customized for customer requirements. Combined with global manufacturing operations, parts availability, and hands-on training programs for contractors and channel partners, Airsys is focused on supporting mission-critical environments where reliability is paramount.
Learn more about Airsys: https://airsysnorthamerica.com/
Spirent: 6G Is Coming Sooner Than Expected, Podcast, Pre-commercial 6G trials could begin in 2028, with commercial deployments arriving as early as 2029
“Six G leaders are now going to be judged on how resilient the network is, how adaptive, how quickly it can recover from an issue,” says Stephen Douglas of Spirent, a Keysight company.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Douglas about the accelerating 6G timeline and why service providers may need to begin planning for 6G business models sooner than many expected.
For years, 2030 was widely viewed as the point when the industry would begin looking seriously at 6G. Douglas says that assumption is changing. Pre-commercial 6G demonstration systems are now being discussed for 2028, with the first commercial 6G equipment and operator deployments potentially emerging in the mid-to-late 2029 timeframe.
The shift is being driven by rapid movement in standards, including 3GPP work on 6G radio, core network architecture, security, APIs, application enablement, management, orchestration and AI-based operational support. Douglas says this creates a compressed window for operators, vendors and ecosystem partners to test, validate and prepare for a new network generation that may arrive sooner than expected.
The podcast also looks at how 6G may differ from previous mobile generations. Rather than treating AI as an add-on, Douglas describes 6G as an AI-native network architecture, where AI is built into operations, orchestration, security, APIs and even the radio layer itself.
“What you’re seeing is a big shift, and AI is at the heart of that,” Douglas says. “That big shift is moving from an AI-assisted network to an AI-native network.”
That could allow networks to predict congestion, reconfigure network slices, detect threats, expose capabilities to third parties in real time and support new AI-driven services at the edge.
A major theme of the discussion is monetization. The 5G era delivered important technology advances, but many operators struggled to translate those advances into new revenue. Douglas argues that 6G gives service providers an opportunity to avoid repeating that pattern by developing new services, ecosystems and pricing models during the deployment phase, rather than waiting until after the network is built.
The conversation highlights several emerging 6G opportunity areas, including AI and communication, integrated sensing and communication, ubiquitous connectivity, immersive communication, massive communication and hyper-reliable low-latency communications. Douglas points in particular to integrated sensing, where the network could support services that use radio infrastructure to understand objects, environments and movement while also carrying traditional communications traffic.
Douglas also discusses the growing role of edge AI. As more AI inference moves from centralized data centers toward edge locations, devices and regional infrastructure, operators may have an opportunity to participate more directly in the AI economy. Instead of acting only as transport providers for AI traffic, service providers could support sovereign AI, low-latency inference, industrial computer vision and other AI-as-a-service models.
The key message for operators is that they do not need to wait for 6G to begin preparing. Douglas says 5G Advanced can serve as a bridge, allowing operators to test business models around sensing, edge compute, AI services and network-based awareness today, while building a roadmap toward 6G.
The winners in the 6G era, Douglas says, may not simply be the providers with the fastest networks. Success may be defined by intelligence, sensing and resilience — and by the ability to turn 6G capabilities into services that customers are willing to pay for from day one.
Learn more at keysight.com.
“If you don’t give feedback, you’re not helping them improve,” says Julie Thiel of TTS Company.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Julie Thiel of TTS Company in the latest installment of an ongoing series on leadership, hiring and better management practices.
This episode focuses on one of the most common leadership challenges: the feedback conversations managers often delay. Thiel says many managers avoid these conversations because they hope the issue will resolve itself, they do not want to create awkwardness, or they simply do not know how to begin.
But waiting has a cost. Small performance issues can become repeated habits, and repeated habits can become larger organizational problems. Thiel says managers may also become increasingly frustrated, while employees are left unclear about what needs to change.
“One small action becomes ten small actions, which becomes a big problem,” says Thiel.
Thiel recommends a practical rule of thumb: if something happens once, give the employee some room. If it happens twice, there may be a knowledge or skill gap. By the third time, the manager needs to address it.
The conversation also offers a simple preparation framework for managers before giving feedback:
What specifically needs to improve?
Why does it matter?
What support can I provide?
What does success look like?
Thiel says feedback should not be viewed as criticism. Done well, it is a way to help the employee succeed, strengthen trust and build a better team.
“It really does build trust because people know where they stand,” says Thiel.
The podcast also discusses how managers can protect the relationship while giving feedback. Thiel encourages leaders to stick with observable facts, assume positive intent, listen as much as they talk, and ask questions such as, “What am I missing?”
TTS Company helps growing companies get HR and people issues off the plate of CEOs and founders, while also supporting larger HR teams with projects and added capacity. Thiel also previews The Vault, a leadership development community designed to provide practical, ongoing support for technology leaders.
Learn more at thettscompany.com
“The regulatory environment is actually forcing everybody to take some action,” says Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast for the Cloud Communications Alliance, Doug Green speaks with Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, about a new reseller opportunity around YouMail Protective Services.
Quilici says YouMail’s mission is to protect phone numbers. While YouMail is widely known for its consumer app that blocks robocalls, scam texts, spam calls and unwanted voicemail, the company is now bringing that intelligence to telecom providers, enterprises and resellers.
YouMail Protective Services uses data from consumer reports, app activity and the National Spam Reporting Center to help carriers and enterprises see what is happening with phone numbers from the outside. Quilici says this gives providers a broader view than traditional honeypot-based monitoring.
“Bad guys will target real consumer mobile phones,” says Quilici. “They’ll never show up anywhere else.”
The podcast outlines four core services: Score, a phone number reputation service; Watch, which monitors carrier networks from the outside; an enterprise version of Watch for call centers and business numbers; and Quash, which helps disrupt bad actors impersonating brands.
For resellers, Quilici says the opportunity is to add YouMail Protective Services to existing carrier offerings, including phone numbers, SIP trunking, compliance tools and robocall mitigation services. The services can be white labeled and integrated through an API into existing dashboards.
“This is a natural extension of more monitoring, more compliance,” says Quilici.
Implementation can be simple. Quilici says Watch can begin with something as basic as an SPC code, allowing YouMail to provide feedback on calls associated with that carrier identity. More advanced integrations can include phone number lists, CDRs and API connections.
Quilici says demand is being driven by regulation, compliance exposure and the growing need for carriers to demonstrate that they are taking robocall mitigation seriously.
“You can’t just point and say it’s somebody else’s problem,” says Quilici.
For resellers and MSPs, YouMail Protective Services offers a new way to help carriers and enterprises protect phone numbers, improve compliance and identify bad behavior earlier.
Learn more or request a demo at youmailps.com.
By Doug Green
“The telecom industry is really in a state of need to migrate and evolve into a new state,” says Joe Dechant, Vice President of Product Transformation at TNS.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Dechant about why communications service providers are rethinking voice infrastructure as legacy switching environments age, maintenance costs rise and specialized telecom expertise becomes harder to find.
“Voice is still mission critical,” Dechant notes, and that means modernization has to happen without disruption. CSPs are under pressure to support modern services such as UCaaS and CCaaS, but they also need to protect the reliability customers expect from core voice services.
Dechant discusses how TNS Voice Transit and Hosted Cloud Connect give providers a managed path away from aging infrastructure, helping them simplify operations, reduce complexity and move toward more flexible, cloud-based architectures.
The conversation is not just about replacing old switches. It is about giving CSPs a foundation for trusted, secure and scalable communications.
Telecom #TechnologyResellerNews #CSP #VoiceInfrastructure #CloudCommunications #UCaaS #CCaaS #ManagedServices #NetworkModernization
At Viirtue Connect in Nashville, John Christian, Vice President of Marketing at Akixi, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how Akixi is helping MSPs and telecom providers stand out in an increasingly commoditized communications market.
Akixi delivers value-added analytics, CRM integration, and call recording solutions that enhance cloud-based telephony and UCaaS platforms. “We exist to help our partners solve business problems—whether that’s missed revenue, productivity challenges, or customer experience gaps,” Christian explained. “In a world where everyone is selling the same call control, Akixi helps service providers differentiate.”
A channel-only company, Akixi focuses on scalability, ease of provisioning, and simple billing—making it easier for MSPs and service providers to package and deliver advanced reporting and analytics alongside their UC offerings. Christian noted that some partners now lead with Akixi when selling their communications platforms because the real-time call analytics and visualization tools deliver immediate value to business customers.
During the discussion, Christian highlighted a growing industry trend: specialization. “The MSPs that are succeeding are those who understand their customers’ specific challenges—whether in healthcare, recruitment, or retail—and build tailored solutions around those needs,” he said. “Specialization builds trust and reduces perceived risk for customers transitioning away from legacy systems.”
As MSPs look ahead, Christian believes differentiation will come from layering insights, integration, and intelligence on top of standard UCaaS platforms. “We help our partners move beyond selling technology to delivering outcomes—and that’s where the real opportunity lies.”
To learn more about Akixi, visit www.akixi.com.
At Viirtue Connect in Nashville, Jason Moravec, Senior Channel Account Manager at Xima Software, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how Xima’s advanced contact center solutions are helping MSPs expand revenue, strengthen customer relationships, and enhance user experience.
Xima Software delivers cloud-based contact center and customer experience platforms designed to integrate seamlessly with leading UC systems like NetSapiens, which powers Viirtue and other Crexendo partners. “We focus on helping businesses communicate more effectively across every channel—voice, SMS, email, chat, and WhatsApp,” Moravec explained. “It’s all about elevating the customer experience.”
Through its integration with NetSapiens, Xima offers white-label, multi-channel contact center solutions that partners can brand as their own. The platform enhances standard UC capabilities with detailed analytics, cradle-to-grave reporting, and intelligent call routing—all designed to help MSPs deliver a premium service that customers can’t easily replace.
“Contact centers are incredibly sticky,” Moravec said. “When partners win the contact center, they often win the entire business. It’s one of the most profitable and high-value parts of the UC ecosystem.”
Xima also integrates AI and speech analytics to improve agent productivity and customer outcomes. From sentiment and tone detection to AI-powered chatbots and voice assistants, the platform uses automation to reduce call volume, speed up responses, and provide data-driven training insights.
“Our AI isn’t about replacing humans—it’s about getting people to the right place faster and making agents more effective,” Moravec emphasized.
For MSPs and Viirtue partners, Xima’s solutions represent a powerful opportunity to differentiate, expand service offerings, and grow recurring revenue.
To learn more about Xima Software, visit www.ximasoftware.com.
At Viirtue Connect in Nashville, Bruce Widener, CEO of STRATA7 Technology, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss STRATA7’s customer-first approach, its growing partnership with Viirtue, and the new business opportunities emerging from the event.
Based in Louisville, Kentucky, STRATA7 Technology is a business-to-business unified communications provider dedicated to helping organizations increase efficiency, improve profitability, and drive growth. “We wake up every day looking forward to helping our customers solve problems,” Widener said.
STRATA7 has partnered with Viirtue for the past 18 months, leveraging its network services, SIP trunking, and carrier technology to enhance its solutions portfolio. Widener described Viirtue as “a good, solid partner,” adding that the company is now evaluating Viirtue’s buy-billing platform to further streamline operations and strengthen integration.
Reflecting on the conference, Widener emphasized the value of in-person collaboration: “It’s been great meeting the different partners in the Viirtue ecosystem — people we’ve talked to for months. These conversations help us expand what we can offer our clients.”
STRATA7 is exploring several new technologies and services unveiled at the event, from hardware innovations to enhanced faxing and communication tools, which Widener plans to bring back to his operations team for review.
To learn more about STRATA7 Technology, visit www.strata7.net.
At Viirtue Connect, Purav Maisuria, General Manager at Phonesuite, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how Phonesuite is helping MSPs tap into new opportunities in the hospitality market through purpose-built communications solutions.
Founded in 1988, Phonesuite provides voice and communication platforms designed exclusively for the hospitality industry, serving more than 10% of the global hotel market. The company is brand-approved by major hotel groups including Hilton, Marriott, and IHG, meeting each brand’s strict requirements for reliability, security, and compliance.
Maisuria noted that many MSPs already handle hotel networking and Wi-Fi but overlook telephony — a critical element of guest experience and operations. “It’s a great opportunity,” he explained. “Hotels are looking for cybersecurity, better networks, and full IT support. By adding Phonesuite’s voice solutions, MSPs can deliver a complete 360-degree service.”
Phonesuite’s hosted hospitality platform simplifies deployment and introduces features that directly address hotelier needs, such as missed call alerts, enhanced reporting, and mobile access for managers. These tools help prevent lost reservations and improve customer service by ensuring every call is answered — even after hours.
“The front desk is the hotel’s heartbeat,” Maisuria said. “When calls are missed, revenue is lost. Our solutions ensure staff stay connected and responsive, wherever they are.”
To learn more, visit www.phonesuite.com.
At Viirtue Connect in Nashville, Jon Brinton, Chief Revenue Officer at Crexendo, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss Crexendo’s sustained growth, partner momentum, and the innovations driving what Brinton calls a “renaissance in voice services.”
Crexendo, the parent company behind the NetSapiens platform, now serves nearly 7 million users worldwide through its expanding network of over 235 partners. Brinton credited the company’s success to a partner-first strategy that allows resellers to achieve higher margins and faster growth than the overall market. “Our partners grow at about double the rate of the market,” Brinton noted. “We design our model to make them more profitable—and that fuels sustained expansion.”
Brinton also previewed Crexendo’s upcoming NetSapiens Platform User Group Meeting at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, where partners will explore new applications of AI, digital channels, and conversational intelligence to enhance customer experience. “We’re helping partners make customer data actionable and relevant,” he said. “There’s a renaissance happening in voice services—where the human conversation is once again central to business intelligence.”
A key theme for Crexendo’s ecosystem is flexibility—allowing partners to own, subscribe to, or host the platform in their preferred environments. Combined with a growing ecosystem of 60+ technology partners, the company enables tailored solutions for specific markets and verticals.
“Our mission,” Brinton added, “is to keep voice at the center of meaningful human interaction—while giving partners the innovation and tools they need to compete and win.”
To learn more, visit www.crexendo.com or www.netsapiens.com.
At Viirtue Connect in Nashville, Adrian Andrews, Founder of AspireOn Networks, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how his company is delivering comprehensive telecommunications, connectivity, and security solutions to businesses across Central Florida and beyond.
AspireOn Networks provides business-class telecom services, including fiber connectivity, telecom expense management, and security system installations. “We partner with all the carriers in the country,” Andrews explained. “If you’re looking for fiber optics or a backup solution, we shop all the carriers and come back with the best options—so our customers don’t have to.”
In addition to telecom solutions, AspireOn offers access control and security camera systems for businesses with physical locations, helping customers strengthen both digital and physical security. The company also performs quality control for fiber construction projects, ensuring network builds meet safety and technical standards.
Headquartered in Central Florida, AspireOn Networks serves Orange, Seminole, Volusia, and Hillsborough counties, with clients across the U.S. and internationally. The company’s success, Andrews noted, is supported by strong partnerships — including with Ideal Technologies in Tampa Bay and Viirtue, with whom AspireOn maintains a close working relationship.
To learn more, visit www.aspireonnetworks.com.
At WebexOne, John Ortiz, Technology Sales Manager at MiaRec, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how MiaRec is using AI to reshape the way businesses analyze and improve their customer interactions.
MiaRec’s platform leverages large language model (LLM) technology to deliver insights across three key use cases:
- Automated QA: Using AI to review and score 100% of customer interactions, ensuring that agents meet performance and compliance standards while eliminating the limitations of manual quality assurance.
- CX Intelligence: Automatically generating metrics such as customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), effort scores, and churn risk, giving companies a real-time understanding of customer sentiment and retention trends.
- Revenue Intelligence: Tracking sales opportunities and performance metrics across calls — including upsell and cross-sell effectiveness, objection handling, and missed revenue potential — to help managers identify top performers and training needs.
Ortiz emphasized that the platform’s customizable LLM framework allows businesses to extract any metric they need, regardless of industry or use case. “Every customer we get has different goals,” Ortiz said. “Having the flexibility to extract custom insights is absolutely key.”
MiaRec integrates seamlessly with leading communication platforms such as Webex Calling, Webex Contact Center, RingCentral, NICE, Five9, and Twilio, while remaining platform-agnostic for clients with mixed environments.
To learn more, visit www.miarec.com.
“Think of it like a voice firewall—protecting enterprises from spam, robocalls, and social engineering before the phone even rings,” said Vicki Sidor, Head of Sales and Channel at Mutare.
At WebexOne, Sidor and Brian McDonald, Director of Product Development at Mutare, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, about how Mutare is reshaping enterprise voice security.
Best known for its early innovations in voicemail and transcription, Mutare has pivoted in recent years to become a leader in voice threat defense. McDonald explained that while most organizations invest heavily in data and network protection, the voice channel remains a major vulnerability—one increasingly exploited by scammers, robocalls, and deepfakes.
Mutare’s solution acts as a pre-call voice firewall, analyzing and scoring inbound traffic before it reaches users. Beyond blocking malicious calls, it provides enterprises with visibility and analytics to identify suspicious patterns within their voice environments.
At WebexOne, Mutare previewed its newest innovation—Voice Traffic Score for Webex Calling. The tool integrates directly into Cisco’s Control Hub, allowing administrators to manage incoming calls based on security scoring. “Even for organizations not using Webex Calling, our solutions fit across Cisco’s entire ecosystem—from SBCs to contact centers and carrier networks,” McDonald said.
With partnerships across platforms such as Avaya, Genesys, NICE, and Five9, Mutare remains the only platform-agnostic voice firewall designed to safeguard businesses from social engineering and other voice-based threats.
“Every enterprise has email and network firewalls,” Sidor added. “It’s time they had one for voice.”
More at Mutare.
“PC-as-a-Service makes fast, secure deployments possible without having to contract with a series of vendors for devices, connectivity, support, and replacement services — all with a competitive, predictable monthly payment,” says John Tonthat, CRO of Cellhub, in a new Technology Reseller News podcast.
Cellhub, a premier primary agent in T-Mobile’s Channel Partner program, has teamed with Lifetime Endpoint Resources (EPR) to introduce a first-to-market PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) program. Powered by T-Mobile’s industry-leading 5G network and anchored by Lenovo® ThinkPad™ devices, the program is designed to give MSPs and solution providers a full-stack, fixed-price computing environment to deliver to end-users.
Key features of the program include:
- Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 laptops – ready-to-go, preconfigured
- Built-in 5G connectivity – 75 to 125 GB/month for mobile-first access
- Embedded security agent and remote wipe – enterprise-grade protection
- 24/7/365 help desk support – powered by distributor D&H Distributing
- Advanced exchange – replacement devices shipped before the old ones return
- Fixed 36-month pricing – predictable IT costs in volatile markets
- Microsoft 365 + Copilot – AI-enhanced productivity
Tonthat explains that Cellhub’s mission is to represent and advance T-Mobile solutions, but this launch also positions the company as a systems integrator and lifecycle enabler for MSPs. By unifying connectivity, devices, support, and software in one bundle, PCaaS helps partners offer a premium 5G-enabled workplace while creating new streams of recurring revenue.
The program is aimed squarely at small and mid-sized businesses, helping them gain enterprise-grade computing power without the burden of upfront capital expenditures. “Cellhub is thrilled to provide a superior, comprehensive 5G solution that can accelerate outcomes for small businesses, especially those who might not be able to maintain their own in-house IT teams,” Tonthat adds.
Listen to the full conversation with John Tonthat of Cellhub on Technology Reseller News.
Connect with Cellhub & John Tonthat
John Tonthat on LinkedIncellhub.comCellhub on LinkedIn
Cellhub, a premier primary agent in T-Mobile’s Channel Partner program, is working with asset lifecycle management provider Lifetime EndPoint Resources to launch a first-to-market PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) program for the channel, powered by T-Mobile. This end-to-end 5G connectivity solution provides high-performance Lenovo® ThinkPad™ computing devices connected by T-Mobile, the largest 5G network, bundling 24-hour help desk services, advanced exchange services, and Microsoft Office 365 and Copilot for the devices. Cellhub considers PCaaS a next-gen model for comprehensive device lifecycle management in the channel, positioned to drive the category forward. The PCaaS program is delivered over a 36-month term at a competitive (and tariff-resistant) monthly recurring fee as opposed to an up-front capital expenditure. PCaaS allows MSPs to offer a fully-managed, set-price computing bundle, complete with cutting edge 5G connectivity, Lenovo-branded devices, “always-there” support, and expedited exchange of devices when issues arise. It’s ideal for a variety of modern workplaces, especially companies whose employees are distributed among different locations, like visiting nurses services or attorneys’ offices, translating to reliable, consistent connectivity with minimal downtime and long-term optimized computing.
“The days of the old virtual bot type of experiences are slowly going away. End consumers will now experience a more personalized, human-touch type of interaction with AI,” said Chang Chang, Sr. Director of Product, Cloud CX Solutions at Webex.
At WebexOne, Chang joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to share how Cisco is transforming customer experience (CX) with AI-driven innovation.
Chang explained that Webex AI is designed not to replace human agents but to augment their productivity—from enabling 24/7 support to providing suggested responses, wellness tools, and sentiment analysis. Unlike chatbots, the new Webex AI Agents are fully autonomous, able to perceive context, manage interruptions, and respond empathetically in natural conversation.
A highlight of the announcements was Webex AI Quality Management, a breakthrough that applies to both AI and human agents. “You can’t scale quality management with humans listening to every call,” Chang said. “AI makes it possible to review 100% of interactions, score them, and recommend improvements—bridging a long-standing quality gap.”
Chang also addressed broader themes of future-proofing, emphasizing Cisco’s vision of Connected Intelligence that integrates AI at the edge, in the cloud, and in control systems to create seamless, secure, and scalable CX. Integrations with Microsoft Dynamics and other open-platform partnerships reinforce Webex’s commitment to meeting customers wherever they are.
“Ultimately, it’s about sweating the entire end-to-end experience for the consumer,” Chang noted. “AI isn’t a trend—it’s fundamental to future-proofing customer experience.”
More at Webex.
“Two, three, five years from now, the workforce could easily be people working with people, people working with AI, and maybe even AI working with AI,” said Amit Barave, VP of Product Management for Webex.At WebexOne, Barave joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss Cisco’s vision for Connected Intelligence and how Webex is positioning AI not as a replacement, but as a workforce enhancer.Barave explained that Webex’s new AI Agents are designed to eliminate everyday productivity gaps—capturing meeting notes, recommending attendees, or automating follow-up actions—while keeping human creativity and judgment at the center. “These are tools built for those ‘I wish I had done this’ moments,” he noted.The Webex AI strategy rests on three pillars: AI at the Edge – enabling low-latency, privacy-conscious responses. AI in the Cloud – delivering high-performance compute and complex inference. AI in Control – simplifying management, troubleshooting, and service assurance.Barave also emphasized Webex’s commitment to an open ecosystem, ensuring seamless integration with enterprise applications, workflows, and vertical software systems. This approach, he said, helps enterprises and partners future-proof their collaboration strategy in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.“From just being a calling and meetings platform, Webex Suite has become an AI-powered conversations and communications platform for the enterprise,” Barave said. “That makes it a compelling choice for customers and partners alike.”More at Webex.
“Asynchronous messaging respects customers’ time—and when you meet people where they already are, CSAT, revenue, and retention follow.” — Gareth Bray, Premier CXGareth Bray, Business Development Director at Premier CX, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how WhatsApp is becoming an essential business channel worldwide.Premier CX, originally known for IVR audio and FAQ videos, now leads organizations through a “zero to amazing” journey on WhatsApp, helping them design, integrate, and scale conversational experiences.Bray explained why WhatsApp is booming: Global adoption — >90% of consumers in India & Brazil already use it to talk to businesses; Europe and the U.S. are rapidly following. Convenience — Asynchronous messaging beats long hold times and tethered web chats. Trust — WhatsApp sits alongside family and friends, making it highly personal and effective.The results are clear: companies report higher productivity, lower costs, stronger CSAT, and increased sales and retention. Bray shared examples from retail and utilities where WhatsApp journeys cut handle time, empowered customers, and improved outcomes for all parties.Bottom line: Just as websites once became essential, WhatsApp is the next wave of customer engagement—and businesses that delay risk being left behind.Learn more and try Premier CX’s WhatsApp demo at premiercx.co.uk.
"There are over a billion copper lines worldwide that will disappear in the next five to ten years," says Jake Jacoby, CEO of TELCLOUD. "That’s why we built our platform from day one to be global—so our partners can meet this challenge anywhere their customers do business."In the latest episode of the TELCLOUD POTS and Shots Podcast Series, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sits down with Jacoby to discuss the international scale of the POTS replacement opportunity. While the U.S. still faces the conversion of more than 25 million commercial lines, the global market represents an even larger transformation—with more than a billion lines of legacy copper that must be replaced over the coming decade.Jacoby explains that TELCLOUD’s success in the U.S. has driven demand abroad, with active deployments now in Canada, Mexico, Germany, the UK, and additional markets in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America. By engineering devices and a platform ready for worldwide deployment, TELCLOUD enables resellers and carriers to address regional regulations, dial plans, and connectivity challenges while still relying on a single global backend.For channel partners, this means two things: Cross-border opportunity – Many customers already operate in both the U.S. and Canada or Mexico, making international coverage a natural next step. Global scalability – TELCLOUD’s cloud-native design and partnerships with providers like AWS GovCloud ensure compliance and reliability, even in highly regulated environments.Jacoby also highlighted the broader industry shift away from aging copper toward fiber, wireless, and satellite connectivity, noting that TELCLOUD’s mission is to bridge the gap—supporting legacy equipment with modern, resilient infrastructure that delivers long-term reliability.This episode marks the 20th edition of the POTS and Shots series, and Jacoby reflected on the journey so far: “What started as a creative way to talk about technology has become an educational platform that’s helping resellers rethink their role in the copper sunset. We’re excited for the next 20.”And true to the Shots tradition, Jacoby shared a special tasting from his travels: the Arete Gran Clase Extra Añejo, a four-year-aged tequila brought to Shanghai as a gift for international partners—underscoring the global theme of this episode.Next in the series: “The Hidden Costs of Doing Nothing.”For more information, visit telcloud.com or call 844-900-2270.
“At TeleMate, our job is to make IT and communications troubleshooting easy,” said Reginald Pearson, VP of Sales & Strategy at TeleMate.At WebexOne in San Diego, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Pearson about how TeleMate delivers observability across the entire Cisco collaboration suite.Pearson explained that TeleMate provides end-to-end visibility for Webex Calling, Webex Contact Center, and messaging platforms—while also supporting hybrid environments that combine on-premises and cloud technologies such as Cisco Call Manager and CUBEs.With a single-pane-of-glass interface, TeleMate aggregates logs, traces, alarms, and analytics to ensure full service assurance for enterprise IT and communications teams. The platform is vendor-neutral, designed to simplify troubleshooting and performance monitoring across complex UC ecosystems.TeleMate’s value proposition: faster troubleshooting, better visibility, and proactive assurance that keeps collaboration platforms running smoothly.Learn more at www.telemate.net.
“Our approach is simple: remove the PII from the data stream, and you don’t have to worry about compliance,” said Bill Placke, President, Americas at SecurePII.At WebexOne in San Diego, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Jason Thals, COO of BroadSource, and Placke of SecurePII about their finalist recognition in Cisco’s Dynamic Duo competition. The joint solution, built on Cisco Webex Contact Center, is designed to unlock AI’s potential by enabling enterprises to leverage large language models without exposing sensitive personal data.SecurePII’s flagship product, SecureCall, was purpose-built for Webex (and also available on Genesys) to deliver PCI compliance while removing personally identifiable information from voice interactions. This enables organizations to deploy AI and agentic automation confidently, without the regulatory risk tied to data privacy laws across the U.S., GDPR, and beyond.Thals emphasized BroadSource’s role in delivering services that complement CCaaS and UCaaS platforms globally, while Placke framed the opportunity for Cisco partners: “This is a super easy bolt-on, available in the Webex App Hub. Customers can be up and running in 30 minutes and compliant.”The collaboration, already proven with a government-regulated client in Australia, is industry-agnostic and scalable from small deployments to 50,000+ users. For Cisco resellers, it represents a powerful, sticky service that integrates seamlessly into channel models while helping enterprises stay compliant as they modernize customer engagement.Learn more at BroadSource and SecurePII.
After a long career as a CTO with companies like NASA, Fannie Mae and Raytheon for the last 18 years, Julian Zottl was really looking forward to his retirement.Hold on – Not so fast! After a short respite, he started getting calls for help from different organizations. It did not take too long for Julian and his wife to recognize that they needed to incorporate and turn this into an engineering and consulting company.Julian discusses the company's future including: Bidding on federal contracts and Partnering with other countries International consulting workJulian ZottlJulian also touched on the future of cybersecurity noting that it is complex, evolving and filled with ongoing challenges.With the rapid evolution of cyber threats Julian noted that the decreasing cost and time required to develop advanced cyber capabilities has led to a significant acceleration in cyber-attacks. He explained how artificial intelligence and machine learning are being used to create vulnerabilities and execute tasks. Julian also touched on the use of AI to predict and exploit complex multi layered efforts in cyber operations highlighting the challenges posed by those advanced threats.What We Do at Azgard Tek! Systems Engineering: Nation-scale secure systems engineered using our aZgard Engineering Process (ZEP). Precision Intelligence: Ubiquitous surveillance, HTIO, SIGINT, and full-spectrum intelligence support—including cultural and geopolitical analysis. Cybersecurity Solutions: Zero Trust with Resiliency, Red Teaming, threat analytics, IR/Mitigation, and robust device testing. Data & AI/ML: Generative and Agentic AI solutions that automate and empower data fusion, threat detection, and mission intelligence at speed.For more information, go to: https://www.azgardtek.com
“We started this company on the belief that the customer experience needs to be better,” says Jim Eckes, Founder of TieTechnology, in a new interview with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News. That belief has guided TieTechnology’s 100% referral-based growth, and it now drives the launch of Jeannie, the company’s newest innovation.Jeannie is an all-inclusive softphone designed to work seamlessly with any CRM platform in the world. By unifying voice and customer data, Jeannie empowers businesses to deliver more personalized, efficient, and informed interactions. Unlike traditional softphones, Jeannie integrates directly into customer workflows, ensuring teams don’t have to waste time switching between systems.For Eckes, Jeannie is the realization of a long-term vision: “This is my baby, my dream finally put into software.” He explains that Jeannie is not only about customer experience (CX), but also about improving employee experience (EX) — giving teams tools that are easy to use, reliable, and built to simplify communications.Importantly, Jeannie has been designed to be accessible for smaller businesses, ensuring that organizations of all sizes can access enterprise-grade capabilities without the enterprise-level complexity. This democratization of telecom tools reflects TieTechnology’s commitment to building solutions that work seamlessly for everyone.Learn more about TieTechnology at www.tietechnology.com.
“It’s doing a serviceable job as being an intelligent director—as if you had multiple cameras and a live operator switching views,” said Darren James Knapp, Director, Poly Channel Business Development, North America at HP | Poly.At Navigate 25, Knapp joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, for a live demo of Poly’s Studio E70 camera, highlighting its Director AI technology. The system identifies active speakers through face recognition and microphone triangulation, automatically framing the conversation to create a more natural, engaging virtual meeting experience.Also featured in the demo was Mike Hubach, Sr. Business Development Manager – Service Providers at Jenne, who noted that Jenne distributes the full Poly portfolio, including headsets, voice, and video solutions. Together, the team demonstrated advanced features such as group framing and people framing, designed to dynamically adjust views as participants join, ensuring remote meetings stay focused and engaging.Knapp emphasized the roadmap ahead: Poly’s conferencing solutions will soon feature multi-camera collaboration, enabling multiple Studio E70s in the same room to coordinate and deliver even more immersive meeting experiences powered by AI.For more information, visit hp.com/us-en/poly.html and jenne.com.
“Despite what some people might say, voice is not dead. There’s still the need to communicate in that fashion,” says Dave Manfredo, Vice President of RLEC Sales at Sinch.At Navigate 25, Manfredo joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how Sinch is helping rural local exchange carriers (RLECs) and other service providers evolve their communications strategies while balancing current needs with long-term migration.Sinch, a member of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA), has grown from its roots in SMS and MMS into a global leader in cloud communications, operating its own network to deliver voice, messaging, and multimedia services. While Manfredo’s focus remains on the voice side, Sinch also enables service providers to leverage text, multimedia, and emerging rich communications services.A key challenge for many RLECs is moving from costly TDM circuits to SIP-based solutions. “Our responsibility is to help customers migrate from older technology into SIP so they can enable other solutions for their end users,” Manfredo explained. With Alianza’s acquisition of MetaSwitch giving smaller providers more time to plan, many are asking critical questions about the future of voice switching and how to prepare for the next decade.For more information, visit sinch.com.
“We offer a three-year advance replacement warranty—something none of our competitors do,” said Antoine Karachekhlian, Channel Director, North America – Canada at Snom Americas.At Navigate 25, Karachekhlian sat down with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to highlight Snom’s continued innovation in IP phones and DECT mobility. A centerpiece of Snom’s presence at the event was the M500 series DECT solution, featuring a desk set, handset, and ruggedized handset. Unlike traditional phones, the system requires only power—no network cabling—connecting wirelessly through a secure, voice-dedicated DECT base. It can even emulate a key system mode for added flexibility.Karachekhlian emphasized Snom’s heritage, dating back to its pioneering role in the late 1990s and its acquisition by VTech in 2017, which has strengthened the company’s resources and reach. Today,differentiates itself through responsive customer support, channel-first distribution, and regional warehouses in the U.S. and Canada that ensure product availability.For Alianza partners, iLECs, and carriers, Snom’s message was clear: innovative, channel-friendly devices backed by robust service and reliability.Learn more at snomamericas.com.
“There are 15 million ILEC subscribers across the U.S., often in the most hard-to-reach areas. We help them modernize while maintaining their TDM needs,” says Maximilien Le Sieur, CEO of TelcoBridges.At Navigate 25, Le Sieur spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, about how TelcoBridges is partnering with Alianza and ILECs to ensure reliable, future-ready voice networks while keeping regulatory compliance intact.When Microsoft ended support for the UMG, MetaSwitch selected TelcoBridges as its integration partner, embedding the company’s T-Media gateways into the MetaSwitch suite. With Alianza’s acquisition of MetaSwitch, that collaboration has deepened—allowing ILECs to modernize networks while meeting NECA requirements and maintaining universal service funding.Le Sieur noted that TelcoBridges’ T-Media line continues to provide rock-solid performance in the field, while the company works closely with Alianza to support ILECs facing UCaaS competition. “Service providers are excited about delivering great UCaaS services for their business customers,” he said. “We play a small role in making sure the infrastructure is up to date and ready.”Looking ahead, TelcoBridges is focused on expanding partnerships with Alianza, MetaSwitch, and rural carriers with legacy systems. “We’re excited to support this ecosystem of service providers across the U.S.,” Le Sieur emphasized.For more information, visit telcobridges.com.
“We are telecom people—and we are here to help service providers grow,” says Melissa Frenyea, VP of Customer Success at CommSoft.At Navigate 25, Frenyea and Bill Griffin, Business Development Officer at CommSoft, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how the company’s decades of experience in billing and operations support systems (BSS/OSS) is helping providers—especially rural carriers—succeed in a rapidly evolving communications landscape.CommSoft, originally founded as Communication Software Consultants, delivers billing, provisioning, service order, and trouble-ticketing systems, as well as staff augmentation and full billing department services. Beyond software, the company leverages hundreds of years of combined telecom expertise to help providers run their businesses more efficiently and strategically.Griffin emphasized that the industry is shifting from competition to collaboration: “A bedfellow you would have considered a competitor five years ago is now a partner. Partnerships are paramount in 2025 to give carriers the best solutions in a very different landscape.” Frenyea added that integration is key: “We connect customer data, networks, and services so providers can monetize new opportunities—from AI-powered services to advanced analytics.”As Alianza and Metaswitch unite to expand opportunities for service providers, CommSoft sees its mission clearly: empowering providers to build the future while ensuring reliable, high-quality communications for every community.For more information, visit commsoft.net.
“It’s a $50 billion market—but it can only be captured with diligence, the right hardware stack, and the right partners,” says Tina Telson, Founder & CEO of SouthLight Services.At Navigate 25, Telson joined Jake Jacoby, Founder & CEO of TELCLOUD, in conversation with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how their partnership is helping enterprises and service providers address the urgent challenge of replacing legacy POTS lines.SouthLight, a voice-focused boutique MSP founded in 2024, has made POTS replacement a core service, backed by TELCLOUD’s flexible backend platform. The collaboration allows SouthLight to deliver code-compliant, monitored, and future-proofed alternatives for fire alarms, elevators, and other mandated life-safety systems.Telson emphasized the ground-level realities of the opportunity: “Replacing these lines is not easy. It takes preparedness in order to be successful. You can’t just slam something on a wall and hope that it works—you have to plan for it.” Jacoby agreed, highlighting that TELCLOUD’s role is to empower resellers like SouthLight: “We built this platform for partnerships. Resellers bring the expertise and customer relationships. We deliver the engine behind the scenes.”The pair also pointed to the nuances of compliance—passing fire marshal inspections, ensuring 24-hour battery backup, and integrating with platforms like Alianza and Metaswitch through APIs. Their joint approach reduces risks for customers while enabling MSPs to scale into a multi-billion-dollar opportunity without cutting corners.For more information, visit southlightservices.com and telcloud.com.
“Fire alarms, elevators, emergency phones—these systems are mandated by law, and they require reliable communication paths,” says Jake Jacoby, Founder & CEO of TELCLOUD.At Navigate 25, Jacoby spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, about the growing urgency of replacing traditional copper POTS lines as carriers abandon legacy infrastructure. With deregulation driving up costs and carriers shifting investment to wireless and fiber, millions of POTS-dependent systems are at risk.TELCLOUD provides a backend platform that enables reseller partners to deliver next-generation POTS replacement services. Unlike one-size-fits-all box solutions, TELCLOUD’s flexible platform integrates with partners such as Ericsson, Digi, Peplink, and others, ensuring reliable connectivity, 24-hour battery backup, and compliance with NFPA, CAL FIRE, and local fire department codes.Jacoby emphasized that POTS replacement is no longer optional modernization but a legal requirement. “Elevator phones, fire panels—if those lines go down, buildings become unsafe and unusable. Our platform ensures compliance, monitoring, and future-proof reliability.”TELCLOUD has also built direct API integrations with Metaswitch and Alianza, allowing partners to bring their own switching infrastructure and leverage TELCLOUD’s expertise to deliver code-compliant solutions. “We’re not customer-facing—we’re the engine behind the resellers. Customers trust their providers, sometimes for decades. We help those providers deliver POTS replacement the right way.”For more information, visit telcloud.com.
“Taxes are a monster, but we tame it and make it digestible,” says CeeJay Barber, Vice President of Business Development at Datagate.At Navigate 25, Barber sat down with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to explain why billing is one of the toughest challenges facing managed service providers (MSPs)—and how Datagate is helping them streamline the process.Datagate provides a billing platform purpose-built for MSPs in telecom. The system automates everything from call detail record (CDR) ingestion and taxation to PSA integration and unified invoicing. With over 500 service providers on the platform, Barber stressed the importance of compliance in an increasingly fragmented regulatory landscape: “If you try to take it on by yourself, you’ll overcomplicate your processes, overspend, and still risk getting it wrong.”One highlight of the discussion was Datagate’s new Halo PSA integration for AT&T’s Apex channel. The solution allows provisioning, billing, and customer management to occur within a single workflow, eliminating the need for multiple AT&T portal logins and ensuring billing flows seamlessly back into Datagate.Barber emphasized that Datagate is deeply API-driven, making it a strong fit with Alianza and Metaswitch partners. “Any Alianza partner can work with Datagate,” he noted. “If you’re providing voice and need it billed and taxed accurately, we can integrate it into your workflow.”With AI-driven innovation, regulatory complexity, and growing MSP demand for bundled services, Barber positioned Datagate as a critical enabler for service providers looking to scale without sacrificing compliance.For more information, visit datagate-i.com.
“We were a small fish in a big pond. Now we can focus on our niche and what we’re good at.” – Chris Robinson, Director of Sales, Vault CPSAt Navigate 25, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Chris Robinson, Director of Sales at Vault CPS, to discuss the launch of a new brand built on decades of expertise. Formerly part of Ingram Micro under names such as NetXUSA and CSS, Vault CPS (Vault Communication and Payment Solutions) is now operating as an independent company specializing in hardware lifecycle fulfillment, provisioning, configuration, and payment solutions.Robinson explained that Vault CPS serves large enterprises, service providers, MSPs, and payment processors with critical behind-the-scenes services—such as device configuration, key injection, and software loads—that ensure seamless communication and payment experiences. With one of the industry’s most extensive key libraries, Vault CPS delivers value by managing the complex touch points others avoid.The decision to debut the brand at Navigate reflects the company’s longstanding role in enabling service providers through platforms like Broadsoft and Metaswitch. Robinson praised Alianza’s forward-looking vision, noting that the event emphasized ecosystem thinking—solutions that extend beyond endpoints to include the full technology stack.Vault CPS carries forward the systems, people, and expertise from its Ingram Micro heritage but now has the freedom to sharpen its focus on customer needs. “It’s an exciting time,” Robinson said. “We can take all of that legacy knowledge and build a brand for the future.”Learn more about Vault CPS at www.netxusa.com.
“AI isn’t just a buzzword—it’s transforming how contact centers and collaboration tools deliver value.” – Gary Pesta, Collaboration Account Executive, WebexAt Navigate 25, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Gary Pesta of Cisco’s Webex team to explore how Cisco is helping enterprises and service providers meet customer needs with flexible, AI-powered solutions.Cisco’s focus, Pesta explained, is on enabling seamless collaboration across voice, video, and customer engagement channels. A centerpiece of that strategy is the Webex Contact Center, now enhanced with AI-powered agents. These can be scripted for predictable tasks or run autonomously, offering customers a real glimpse of what “AI in action” looks like.Pesta also highlighted Cisco’s expanding role in CPaaS, where organizations such as utilities and local telcos are using messaging to proactively inform customers of outages, billing, and service updates—meeting customers before frustration turns into a support call.Another innovation drawing attention at the event was the Cisco Desk Pro, a 27-inch AI-enabled collaboration device with built-in noise cancellation and platform flexibility. Whether customers run Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Webex, the Desk Pro adapts—showing Cisco’s commitment to being platform-agnostic while delivering premium quality.As enterprises shape their “back-to-office” strategies, Cisco sees its AI-enabled devices and collaboration platforms as central to enabling hybrid work and customer engagement. Pesta also underscored Cisco’s ecosystem partnerships, noting that Cisco’s new 9800 series phones are certified for MetaSwitch and Alianza, aligning with the spirit of collaboration at Navigate.For more information on Cisco’s collaboration and AI solutions, visit Webex.
“Compliance missteps can shut a company down, but the right legal partner can also unlock growth.” – Jonathan Marashlian, Managing Partner, The CommLaw GroupAt Navigate 25, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Jonathan Marashlian of Marashlian & Donahue, The CommLaw Group, to discuss the evolving communications ecosystem, regulatory risks, and why specialized legal guidance has never been more critical.Marashlian reflected on his firm’s two decades advising communications providers, from the early days of VoIP through today’s cloud-native era. He highlighted the impact of Alianza’s merger with Metaswitch as a pivotal ecosystem development—one that positions providers to meet demand for both legacy and cloud services in a diverse, fast-evolving market.Key insights from the conversation: Execution matters: Acquisitions alone don’t guarantee success; vision, agility, and customer understanding are essential. The compliance burden: States such as California and Massachusetts are extending regulatory authority into VoIP, adding to already complex federal and tax compliance rules. Legal specialization is essential: Telecom law requires industry-specific expertise; general counsel may not anticipate emerging risks like robocall mitigation enforcement. Ecosystem thinking: The CommLaw Group, together with its companion Compliance Group, blends legal and consulting services—providing scalable options from fixed-fee compliance work to high-level legal strategy. Growth through guidance: Beyond avoiding penalties, effective legal partnerships help providers navigate expansion, M&A, and new market opportunities.As Marashlian stressed, the pace of technology far outstrips regulation. Providers that invest in experienced legal and compliance partnerships are better positioned not only to survive but to thrive.Learn more at The CommLaw Group.
“We work with a lot of MSPs to help automate accounting and bookkeeping tasks they might still be doing manually,” says Alexa Vilca of FlexPoint, speaking at the MSP Summit.FlexPoint offers a purpose-built accounts receivable solution designed to improve cash flow and visibility for MSPs. The company’s white-label payment portal allows end customers to log in, make payments easily, and choose flexible options, including credit card, debit, ACH, and even short-term financing.Vilca notes that the short-term financing option comes at no risk to the MSP, while enabling providers to extend flexibility to their clients and accelerate receivables. By streamlining collections and automating manual AR tasks, FlexPoint helps MSPs reduce overhead and focus more time on core business.Learn more: https://getflexpoint.com
“Something that really sets us apart is that we sell exclusively through our channel partners and managed service providers,” says Matt Stimax of Wildix, speaking at the MSP Summit in Orlando.Wildix, a global provider of unified communications software, continues to strengthen its position as a channel-first vendor, focusing on enabling MSPs to expand their portfolios with advanced UC and AI-driven solutions. At the Summit, Stimax highlighted the company’s no-code agentic AI tools for voice bots and chat bots, designed to help partners quickly deliver intelligent customer engagement without the need for complex development.The approach underscores Wildix’s long-standing commitment to MSPs: giving them technology that is easy to adopt, fast to deploy, and profitable to resell, while avoiding direct competition with their own customers.“MSPs want solutions that bring value right away,” Stimax noted. “Our AI capabilities and unified communications platform are designed to deliver just that.”Learn more: https://www.wildix.com
“Q1 is right around the corner—are you ready?” asks Stephanie Benzik of GreenStar Marketing.Speaking at the MSP Summit in Orlando, Benzik noted that the transition into a new year often brings new product launches, fresh goals, and renewed demand for polished branding and digital presence. For many MSPs and tech companies, that means confronting outdated websites, stale collateral, or branding that no longer reflects the business they’ve become.To help partners get a head start, GreenStar Marketing is rolling out Q4 specials that include: Discounted website and hosting services Graphic design support Branding refresh options“Whether it’s a new look, updated collateral, or a complete rebrand, we’ve built a program to help MSPs enter Q1 with confidence,” Benzik explains.GreenStar Marketing works exclusively in the tech and telecom space, leveraging deep industry experience to deliver fast, effective marketing outcomes for MSPs, carriers, and IT providers.Learn more: https://gstarmarketing.com/
“At GreenStar Marketing, we only work in the tech and telecom ecosystem—and we do it on purpose,” says Stephanie Benzik, who along with Kenny Coulter represented GreenStar Marketing at the MSP Summit in Orlando.In a conversation at the event, the team explained why GreenStar stands apart from generic marketing agencies: its staff bring deep backgrounds in technology and telecom, allowing them to understand client solutions and audiences without a steep learning curve. That expertise translates into faster ROI, with content that “says it the right way” and connects directly with customers.“When we create marketing for you, it’s practically ready to go,” Coulter added. “You just give it a quick check, maybe an edit or two—and you’re good to launch.”Green Star Marketing specializes exclusively in the telecom and IT channel, working with MSPs, carriers, and technology companies to streamline branding, messaging, and campaigns that resonate with target buyers.The Orlando MSP Summit provided the perfect backdrop: “It’s a great turnout here,” Benzik noted. “If you’re at the event, come see us. If not, reach out—we’d love to become part of your marketing solution.”Learn more at: https://gstarmarketing.com/
At the recent MSP Summit, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Kyri Davis, Co-Founder of Legion at Kraft Kennedy, to discuss how the firm is helping MSPs strengthen their cybersecurity offerings.Kraft Kennedy, a New York–based MSP with more than 40 years of expertise in the legal and financial services sectors, recently launched Legion, a division dedicated to “left side of boom” cybersecurity. Legion partners with MSPs to deliver penetration testing, security assessments, and vCISO services, enabling smaller providers—many with fewer than 10 employees—to offer enterprise-level security capabilities to their clients without losing ownership of the customer relationship.Davis, who holds the distinctive title of Aquilifer (standard-bearer in the Roman legion), explained that his role is to carry forward Legion’s vision: building partnerships with MSPs, supporting compliance needs in regulated industries, and educating end customers on security and AI usage.“Our mission is simple,” Davis noted. “MSPs shouldn’t have to choose between protecting their clients and protecting their business. We handle the security burden so MSPs can focus on growth.”Legion leverages Kraft Kennedy’s decades of credibility while expanding into broader regulated markets such as healthcare and financial services. The model allows MSPs to outsource advanced security functions while generating new opportunities for their own service portfolios.Learn more about Kraft Kennedy and Legion at https://www.kraftkennedy.com/.
“The real alternative is a trusted home, a trusted partner, not just a replacement,” says Roman Semionov, Sales Director at CaaB. “VMware’s model shifts have shattered trust, and MSPs are looking for stability.”In a new Technology Reseller News podcast, Publisher Doug Green speaks with Semionov about why CaaB is positioning itself as a partner-first cloud infrastructure provider at a time of massive turbulence in the virtualization market.With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware leading to sharp cost hikes, licensing complexity, and a shrinking partner ecosystem, many MSPs are scrambling for alternatives. Semionov argues that this upheaval presents an opportunity: MSPs can now re-examine how they deliver cloud services and align with providers that prioritize transparency and predictability.CaaB offers infrastructure-as-a-service with industry-leading margins, white-label branding, and global reach. The platform emphasizes price visibility—partners know their monthly costs before deployment—plus free migrations, 24/7 live support, and regular hardware upgrades without hidden tiers.Semionov shares the story of a New Jersey-based MSP that faced a 600% cost increase under VMware. After migrating to CaaB, the company saved roughly $200,000 annually, allowing them to expand sales staff instead of cutting headcount.Looking ahead, Semionov predicts a shift toward hybrid strategies, reduced vendor lock-in, and growing ecosystems around alternative providers. “VMs are still around, but their dominance is broken,” he notes. “MSPs need a stable, predictable, partner-first option—and that’s where CaaB comes in.”To learn more, visit https://caab.cloud
At the MSP Summit, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer at CallTower, to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing MSPs as they prepare for 2026.Rubio emphasized that success in today’s environment requires MSPs to choose the right partners rather than simply chasing products. With CallTower’s expertise in cloud communications—including Microsoft, Cisco, Zoom, and CCaaS platforms such as Genesys and Five9—the company positions itself as an enabler for MSPs seeking to strengthen their portfolios without taking on every capability themselves.“It’s not about selling a product—it’s about building a partnership that helps MSPs grow their business and support their customers,” Rubio said.Key themes of the conversation included: AI adoption reality: While AI dominates conversations, only about 5% of businesses have actually adopted it. Rubio urged MSPs to take “baby steps”—simple automation projects that build champions and credibility inside customer organizations—before pursuing large-scale deployments. Cybersecurity opportunities: Rubio highlighted the importance of proactive communication. Instead of only responding to attacks, MSPs should show customers the value of the thousands of threats they’ve already blocked and explain vulnerabilities that could become future risks. The human factor: Despite the excitement around AI, Rubio stressed that relationships remain central. “AI is driven by what humans tell it to do,” he noted, underscoring that trust and tough conversations with customers are key to long-term success. Looking to 2026: MSPs must refine their self-awareness—knowing their strengths, defining their ideal customer profile, and planning thoughtfully whether to double down in a vertical or expand through partnerships.As Rubio summed it up, the MSPs that thrive will be those who plan carefully, partner wisely, and maintain strong customer relationships—balancing technology with the human element that drives growth.More at CallTower.
“You can have the best program in the world, but if nobody knows about it, it won’t make a difference,” says Todd Jordan, who leads United Way of Greater Kansas City’s 2-1-1. “That’s why we run a 24/7/365 contact center—to guide people to real help with a kind, empathetic voice.”In this special Technology Reseller News podcast, Publisher Doug Green brings together Todd Jordan (United Way 2-1-1, Kansas City), Jill Blankenship (CEO, Frontline Group), and Thomas McCarthy-Howe (CTO, VCONIC) to explore Empathy at Scale: how vCon (styled vCon) data and AI—implemented with strict privacy and security—are transforming community helplines and complex, multi-agency referrals.The Scale - and the StrainUnited Way’s 2-1-1 covers 23 counties and roughly 2.5 million people across the Greater Kansas City region. Demand has surged since the pandemic: 155,000+ calls last year and nearly 500,000 total contacts (calls, web, email, even USPS), with average call times around 7.5 minutes—well over a million minutes of conversations. The mix spans urban, suburban, and rural needs, multiple languages, and highly sensitive situations (from rent and utilities to domestic violence and mental health crises). Protecting privacy is paramount.From Corridor Conversation to PilotBlankenship describes how a hallway conversation about vCon—a new IETF-developed file format for conversations—sparked a collaboration. Frontline Group packaged the idea inside Frontline Quest, their agent-enablement and professional services program, while VCONIC, a spin-out dedicated to vCon technology, provided the protocol and secure data handling. The trio launched a live pilot with United Way 2-1-1 to transcribe calls, structure insights, and surface actionable “signals” for quality, safety, and service improvement—without compromising caller confidentiality.“vCon is designed to feed AI and protect people,” says Thomas McCarthy-Howe. “Bringing IETF-grade security and openness to conversational data lets us see the dark operational signals—safely—and use them to help people faster.”What Changed for 2-1-1 Quality & Care Signals: Real-time indicators help supervisors coach empathy, spotting where agents can lean in—and where secondary trauma support is needed for frontline staff. Searchable Conversations (Not Just Dispositions): Instead of relying on boxes and notes, leaders can now query full conversations to answer urgent policy questions. Jordan asked the system to compare eviction-prevention resources across Kansas vs. Missouri; the synthesized, data-grounded view matched the team’s lived experience and revealed precise gaps. Multilingual & Multichannel Reality: With 70–80 languages in some school districts, vCon-backed transcription and analysis improve consistency across interpreters and channels—phone, web, email, and more.Why It MattersFor a nonprofit with finite resources, the team needed technology that is secure, lean, and humane—helping callers in crisis without forcing agents to split attention between empathy and note-taking. The pilot is doing exactly that: safeguarding sensitive data while unlocking insights that mobilize funding, target interventions, and strengthen outcomes.“We’re at the tip of something transformative,” Jordan says. “Real-time data from our community voices helps us advocate better—and care better.”About the participants: United Way of Greater Kansas City 2-1-1 serves 23 counties and ~2.5M people, fielding 155k+ calls annually. 2-1-1 is a North American network covering ~99% of the U.S. and much of Canada. Frontline Group is a contact center BPO and professional services firm; its Frontline Quest program integrates vCon to enhance agent experience and operational insight. VCONIC specializes in vCon technology—a conversation file format being developed in the IETF, the internet standards body behind protocols like TLS and OAuth.Learn more: United Way 2-1-1 (Kansas City),
“Cybersecurity has been oversold for too long—expensive, complicated, and not user-friendly. What small and mid-sized businesses really need are affordable, effective protections delivered with education and consultation,” says Tomas Sjostrom, CISSP and President of Technology Services at James Moore Technology Services.At the MSP Summit, Sjostrom sat down with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss his session, Establishing a Successful Managed Security Program: The Consultation Imperative. His message to MSPs was clear: success depends on understanding both the client’s business and the end user’s experience.Key insights from the conversation include: Listen first, then recommend: Understanding the client’s culture and user needs is as important as the technology itself. Focus on education: Solutions like multi-factor authentication (MFA) can initially feel inconvenient to users, but with training, they quickly see the security benefits. Avoid tech-first thinking: Deployments fail when MSPs expect technology alone to solve problems without preparing end users for change. Partnerships extend reach: To provide personal, local service across the Southeastern U.S., James Moore Technology Services developed a technical services partnership program, enabling trusted partners to step in as direct resources for clients.By blending consultation, training, and the right level of protection, James Moore Technology Services is helping small and mid-sized businesses stay secure without unnecessary complexity.Learn more at jmco.com.
“The Broadcom acquisition changed VMware’s business strategy—and prices—overnight. Our job is to make the exit as simple as possible,” says Peri Uday Bhaskar, of DartIQ.In this Technology Reseller News podcast recorded at MSP Summit, Publisher Doug Green speaks with Bhaskar about DartIQ’s focus: accelerating and de-risking VMware workload migrations to customers’ preferred destinations—public cloud, private cloud, or on-prem.Bhaskar notes that VMware’s long-time stability masked how dependent many organizations became on its licensing model and partner ecosystem. After Broadcom’s acquisition, customers reported steep subscription price increases and a shift to bundled SKUs—from roughly 8,000 products to just a handful of bundles—forcing buyers to pay for features they don’t need. He adds that discounts frequently require 3–5-year commitments, and many smaller customers are now confronting a minimum 72-core buy that doesn’t fit their footprint. The result: VMware line items that jump 4x to 10x and a rush to evaluate alternatives.DartIQ’s answer is vMigrate, a hyper-automated platform that consolidates the multi-step migration toolchain—discovery, assessment, planning, landing-zone build-out, and cutover—into a single workflow, which Bhaskar says can deliver up to 60% time savings compared with traditional approaches. Key capabilities include: Workload analysis & customized cloud planning: Breaks VMware estates into workload packages, validates readiness, and models target-cloud cost, architecture, and trade-offs before a move. Automated landing-zone assignments: Translates on-prem VMware constructs into the correct public/private cloud equivalents and builds the plumbing (networking, policies, placements) to ensure workloads run on day one. Destination flexibility: Supports migrations to public cloud, private cloud, or back to modernized on-prem—wherever the business case lands.“VMware is a feature-rich, solid platform,” Bhaskar says. “But when costs spike tenfold, customers—especially small and midsized organizations working through MSPs—need a clear, automated path to right-sized alternatives.”This DartIQ offering is purpose-built for MSPs: the company engages through the partner channel and provides assessments, planning, and migration execution with the goal of reducing both project complexity and services spend for end customers.Learn more: Visit DartIQ’s website and the team’s blog (referenced as datakey.ai in the conversation) for migration primers, cost-modeling insights, and MSP scheduling via Calendly.
"This isn’t a business where you swap technology every two years—these are life safety lines that need to work for the next 20," says Jake Jacoby, CEO of TELCLOUD. "That’s why our approach is about doing the right thing for customers and giving partners confidence that what they deliver today will stand the test of time."In the latest episode of the TELCLOUD POTS and Shots Podcast Series, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sits down with Jacoby to discuss what happens beyond the initial POTS replacement sale. While much of the conversation around POTS migration focuses on technology and cost, Jacoby emphasizes that the real value for resellers lies in becoming a trusted advisor—guiding customers toward solutions that are reliable, future-proof, and backed by TELCLOUD’s long-term investment strategy.Jacoby explains that while some vendors offer quick fixes using VoIP for life-safety lines, those solutions will fail within a few years. By contrast, TELCLOUD has taken the more difficult but necessary path: building direct IP connections to alarm central stations, ensuring reliability and compliance for decades to come. For resellers, this means confidence in recommending TELCLOUD solutions—knowing they are protecting both customer relationships and recurring revenue streams.The episode also highlights TELCLOUD’s 100% white-label model, allowing partners to brand solutions as their own while relying on TELCLOUD’s engineering, monitoring, and backend support. From “one and done” installs to continuous remote monitoring, TELCLOUD eliminates repeat truck rolls, giving partners the ability to scale while maintaining customer trust.And, true to the POTS and Shots tradition, the conversation shifts to tequila. This time, Jacoby introduces Código Extra Añejo, a sweet, caramel-forward sipping tequila aged in oak barrels—perfect for the close of a business day.Next up in the series: “Tales from the Road: Global Momentum for POTS Replacement.”For more information, visit telcloud.com or call 844-900-2270.
“AI has eaten software for lunch, but it might be eating communications for dinner,” says Dario Betti, CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), in a wide-ranging conversation with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News.In this podcast, Betti discusses his recent article, The AI Gold Rush Isn’t Going Elon Musk’s Way, and explores how mobility has become the front line in the AI revolution. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT generating $2 billion in consumer spending from its mobile app—compared to Elon Musk’s Grok’s estimated $25 million—Betti argues that AI’s future is already in the hands of mobile users.For channel partners, MSPs, and UCaaS/CPaaS providers, the implications are profound. Enterprises must rethink how end-users are accessing services today and how they’ll expect to interact in the next five to ten years. “Seventy percent of AI integrations in enterprises have failed,” Betti warns, “but doing nothing is not an option. If you don’t experiment, you’ll be left behind.”The discussion spans: Why mobile is the true AI battleground The legal and competitive drama between Apple, OpenAI, and Elon Musk’s Grok The risk of subscription fatigue—and why users still pay for AI today How AI may reshape UCaaS, CPaaS, and contact center experiences Practical advice for MSPs and resellers preparing for 2026Betti emphasizes that enterprises and partners alike must begin experimenting, even at the risk of failure. The stakes are too high to wait.To learn more about MEF, visit mef.mobi.
“At events, don’t chase 200 badge scans—set a KPI like 25 real conversations that turn into 15 meetings and 10 closes,” says Charlene Ignacio, founder of Fornix.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Ignacio about Fornix’s mission: unite MSPs and vendors to win more deals through aligned sales-and-marketing execution. Fornix operates as a fractional Channel Chief/CMO/CRO, bringing CEO-level discipline to planning, pipeline creation, and partner programs.Ignacio outlined three common ways companies waste event spend—and how to fix them: No strategy. Don’t exhibit to “use the budget.” Attend first if needed, verify audience fit, and set outcome KPIs tied to pipeline, not swag. No pre-work. Coordinate sales + marketing, book meetings before wheels-up, and craft channel messaging (not just brand marketing). No qualification. Replace mass badge scans (“trick-or-treaters”) with meaningful, scored conversations that feed a defined follow-up plan.On execution, Fornix treats the booth like a live sales floor: pre-show training, clear roles, proactive outreach, and contingency logistics (“hand-carry” critical assets; ship early if needed). Their MSP Village model curates vendors, generates energy (headshots, video, panels), and centers everything on people and community—extended through intimate, ROI-driven dinners instead of costly, low-yield giveaways.Post-show success starts before the show: lock the follow-up plan, owners, and timelines so cards don’t languish in a box. For channel teams, Ignacio stresses a simple, measurable funnel: 25 qualified conversations → 15 appointments → 10 closes, with remaining prospects nurtured.Learn more at fornixmarketing.com.
“We’re the unmanaged service provider—we don’t want to do what MSPs do. We provide the infrastructure so they can grow,” says Andrew Natour of Leaseweb USA.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Tim Mandell and Andrew Natour to discuss how Leaseweb partners with MSPs to deliver flexible, scalable infrastructure without requiring massive CapEx investments.Leaseweb, a Dutch-based global cloud infrastructure provider with 28 data centers worldwide (nine in the U.S.), works across industries—from gaming and retail to SaaS, ad tech, and AI. But for Mandell and Natour, MSPs are a uniquely strategic partner. “We want to take the journey with them,” Mandell explained. “We provide the infrastructure, they deliver the managed services. It’s a true symbiotic relationship.”By offering options ranging from dedicated hardware to virtual private servers, colocation, and cloud services, Leaseweb enables MSPs to scale as client needs evolve. Their reseller model also allows partners to generate new revenue streams while maintaining customer ownership.For MSPs, the message is clear: focus on what you do best, while Leaseweb supplies the infrastructure backbone. Or as Natour put it: “We can frame the house, furnish it, or leave it unfurnished. The choice is yours.”Learn more at leaseweb.com.
“Technology is just a tool—we help businesses maximize its use and apply AI correctly to drive efficiency,” says Mahmud Khan of CMIT Solutions.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Khan, who recently launched CMIT Solutions of Greater Burlington, New Jersey. As a new franchise owner, Khan is tapping into CMIT’s national resources—over 260 locations and 9,000 technicians—to deliver enterprise-grade IT services with a local touch.Khan’s practice focuses on small to mid-sized businesses, from real estate firms to health clinics, supporting environments from just a few endpoints up to 100 devices. His mission is to help clients optimize their IT investments, secure their networks, and embrace AI for business process improvements.Attending MSP Summit as both a learner and participant, Khan highlighted the value of sessions on AI applications and the connections made in the exhibit hall. “We came away with new knowledge and new vendor relationships that we can put into action immediately,” he noted.By combining the scale of CMIT’s national network with on-the-ground service in Burlington County, Khan says his franchise is positioned to help local organizations navigate rapid technological change.Learn more at cmitsolutions.com.
“Noncompliance isn’t just risky—it can mean lost licenses, lost trust, and lost business,” says Joe Garner of dmarcian.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, caught up with Garner and colleague Billy Muldoon to discuss why DMARC—the standard for authenticating email—should be a top priority for MSPs and their clients.Founded by Tim Draegen, the primary author of DMARC, dmarcian’s mission is to spread adoption of the open standard across the email ecosystem. DMARC builds on earlier protocols (SPF and DKIM) by providing visibility, daily reports, and strong policy enforcement—giving organizations the ability to stop phishing and spoofing attacks at the domain level.For MSPs, the opportunity is clear: DMARC not only protects customer brands but also creates billable project work and recurring revenue streams. By moving client domains from “none” to “reject” policies, MSPs can deliver compliance, reduce support tickets, and demonstrate measurable value.Muldoon emphasized that while AI dominates industry headlines, DNS and email remain critical points of vulnerability. “Email is still the biggest attack vector,” he said. “MSPs can’t overlook DMARC—it’s both a defensive necessity and a revenue opportunity.”With Google, Yahoo, and now Microsoft requiring DMARC alignment for bulk senders, enterprises must act or risk delivery failures. dmarcian provides MSPs with the tools to visualize mail streams, track compliance, and guide customers through the journey to strong DMARC policies.Learn more at dmarcian.com.
“CRM shouldn’t suck—but for too many companies, it does,” says Christopher Smith, Founder of Empellor CRM. “The good news is, when implemented correctly, it can finally deliver on its promise of productivity.”At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Smith about why so many organizations feel burdened by CRM systems—and how Empellor CRM helps MSPs and their customers unlock real value.Smith, who has spent nearly 20 years implementing CRM, explained that the technology itself isn’t the problem. Instead, it’s often misaligned with business goals, poorly integrated, and treated as a silo. Sales teams end up spending hours entering data that benefits leadership reporting, but not the seller—leading to widespread frustration and weak ROI.To address this, Smith authored the book CRM Shouldn’t Suck and is giving away 2,000 copies to help businesses “unsuck” their CRM strategies. His approach emphasizes aligning CRM with strategic goals, cleaning data, and tailoring implementations to real business needs.Smith pointed to Microsoft Dynamics 365, integrated with Copilot AI, as the platform that is finally delivering on CRM’s original promise. Features like automated meeting summaries, instant follow-up emails, and task creation free sales teams from hours of manual updates, enabling them to focus on relationships and revenue growth.“CRM is finally able to deliver on its promise of improved productivity,” Smith said. “With Dynamics 365 and Copilot, nothing falls through the cracks—and salespeople get their evenings back.”Learn more at empellorcrm.com.
“Noncompliance in certain cases is not an option—and it can put a company out of business,” says Rick Mancinelli, CEO of C3 Complete.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Mancinelli and Shash Patel, VP at C3 Complete, to discuss why compliance has become one of the most pressing challenges—and opportunities—for MSPs.C3 Complete is a multifaceted service provider offering cloud, managed services, connectivity, security, and compliance solutions. Their team is seeing heightened demand across industries as regulators tighten rules, from HIPAA and FINRA to SOC 2, PCI, FTC mandates, and FCC enforcement actions like Section 214. “Just this year, more than 1,200 carriers lost their licenses for non-compliance,” Mancinelli noted.For MSPs, compliance represents both risk and reward. Clients—whether healthcare clinics, financial institutions, or telcos—need guidance to navigate ever-changing requirements. MSPs that avoid compliance conversations risk losing trusted relationships, while those that embrace compliance can differentiate and grow. “It’s a pain point clients can’t ignore,” Patel explained. “If you can’t help them, they’ll find someone who can—and that puts your entire customer relationship at risk.”C3 approaches compliance as a long-term risk management engagement, blending vCISO services, assessments, penetration testing, and vulnerability management with hands-on guidance to mature client processes over 12 to 36 months. The payoff goes beyond passing audits: compliance maturity strengthens security, opens new recurring revenue streams, and deepens MSP-client trust.“The opportunity right now is huge,” Patel emphasized. “Compliance isn’t stagnant—it’s evolving every day. That makes this the right time for MSPs to partner and deliver real value.”Learn more at c3-complete.com.
“Left of boom cybersecurity doesn’t have to be overwhelming—and we’re here to help,” says Nett Lynch, CISO at Kraft Kennedy and Emperor of Legion.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Lynch about Legion, a new division of Kraft Kennedy dedicated to helping MSPs deliver enterprise-grade security services without the cost of building them in-house.Kraft Kennedy, founded in 1988, has long specialized in IT for the legal sector. Legion extends that expertise to the broader MSP community, offering services such as vCISO, assessments, and penetration testing. The goal: to fill the knowledge and compliance gaps that many small and mid-sized MSPs face while letting them retain focus on their core IT services.Lynch, drawing on 30 years in IT and two decades in the MSP space, stressed that MSPs don’t need to reinvent the wheel to provide strategic security. Through partnerships, Legion enables MSPs to deliver more value to clients, while also maturing their own operations. “Clients don’t get excited about tools,” he explained. “They care about how technology aligns with business outcomes.”By making high-level security expertise accessible and digestible, Legion helps MSPs protect customers, open new recurring revenue opportunities, and build long-term trust.Learn more at kraftkennedy.com or connect with Nett Lynch on LinkedIn.
“We complete your portfolio—but never compete with your secret sauce,” says Raul Garrido, Director of Sales & Implementation at C3 Complete.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Garrido and Darin Gull, Director of Business Development, about how C3 helps MSPs strengthen their offerings while preserving customer relationships.C3 Complete provides voice and collaboration, managed services, private cloud, and increasingly, advanced security solutions such as vCISO services and pre-compliance readiness. Their approach is built on partnership: MSPs retain ownership of customer relationships, while C3 provides the expertise and services needed to fill gaps and create recurring revenue streams.“We help MSPs monetize what they may not be able to do on their own,” Gull explained. “It’s always a win-win-win for the partner, the customer, and C3.” The team emphasized that empathy, listening, and tailored solutions are at the core of their model. Rather than pushing standard SKUs, C3 designs bespoke solutions for each customer’s unique challenges.With a strong focus on relationships and culture, Garrido and Gull stressed that C3 is not about being flashy—it’s about building trust, solving problems, and helping MSPs thrive in uncertain economic times. “AI may be powerful, but it will never replace human empathy,” Gull added. “That’s what defines C3.”Learn more at c3-complete.com.
“Start tinkering. You’ve got to start somewhere—and now is the time,” says Jacci Robinson, Vice President – Go-to-Market & Growth (North America) at Anunta.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Robinson after her panel appearance to discuss how MSPs can begin their AI journey. She noted that many providers are unsure where to start with AI adoption, but waiting is not an option. By experimenting with existing tools, cleaning up data, and testing small internal projects, MSPs can build the foundation for AI-driven efficiency.Robinson emphasized that the most successful use cases to date have come from operations—not flashy product launches. By automating back-office tasks, MSPs can reclaim hours of productivity, uncover hidden revenue opportunities, and prepare their organizations for larger AI-driven transformation. “Be customer zero,” she advised, urging MSPs to apply AI internally before bringing solutions to clients.She also highlighted Anunta’s unique approach to digital employee experience. Their service-as-a-software platform uses AI agents to simulate a war room, pulling in data from network, infrastructure, and desktop tools to resolve issues in real time—often before end users even notice a problem. This “zero-incident framework” lowers ticket volumes and reduces operational costs for both MSPs and their customers.“AI isn’t just a toolset—it’s a mindset,” Robinson said. “It’s about reframing growth, not by adding headcount, but by leveraging technology to deliver more with less.”Learn more at anuntatech.com.
“Organizations spend heavily on prevention, but incidents still happen. What makes the difference is how well you respond—and you can’t do that by flipping through a 50-page Word document,” says Noam Morginstin, CEO and Co-Founder of Exigence.At the MSP Summit in Orlando, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Morginstin to discuss how Exigence helps enterprises and MSPs shift from static documents to a dynamic, platform-based approach to incident readiness.Exigence provides organizations with the ability to build, practice, and execute cybersecurity incident response plans—as well as broader crisis plans such as disaster recovery or business continuity. For MSPs, the company offers a multi-tenant platform with ready-to-use templates and tabletop scenarios, making it simple to onboard clients and provide ongoing value.Morginstin stressed that effective incident response requires three steps: Create a plan. Practice it through tabletop exercises. Execute it when an incident occurs.By moving this entire lifecycle onto a platform, MSPs can eliminate outdated or inaccessible documents, improve client preparedness, and create a scalable, profitable service offering.“The hackers don’t discriminate between large and small companies,” Morginstin explained. “Every business needs to be prepared to respond efficiently when—not if—an incident occurs.”Learn more at exigence.io.
SkySwitch Customer Journey: From Prospect to Partner, Podcast, The power of white-label UCaaS for business growth and how it helps MSPs, VARs, ILECs, Interconnects, and ISPs expand their offerings
Customer Journey Podcast Series
“Ultimately, we’re trying to be our partner’s one-stop shop. for their telecommunications needs and then give them the ability to manage their customers, both contractually and as well as controlling their profitability,” says SkySwitch Channel Account Executive Rudy Kubin. “Ultimately, our partners get to build equity within their business, offer their customers a service, and they’re able to support that customer throughout the partnership and throughout the service with their customers.”
In the podcast, SkySwitch’s Rudy Kubin, and Technology Reseller’s Doug Green dive into the prospecting and sales stage of the SkySwitch Customer Journey. We discuss the power of white-label UCaaS for business growth and how it helps MSPs, VARs, ILECs, Interconnects, and ISPs expand their offerings while unlocking new revenue streams. We’ll also look at the streamlined sales process that makes partnering with SkySwitch a game-changer.
About SkySwitch
This is a multipart podcast exploring the SkySwitch customer journey. SkySwitch offers its partner customers a white-label approach, training, support, and many options. SkySwitch is a BCM One company, a UCaaS leader with more than 275 employees, a long-standing presence with integrity in the marketplace and rock-solid technology.
Visit www.skyswitch.com
SkySwitch Customer Journey
https://youtu.be/p27vTGPT34E
On Tuesday, we reported that Alianza, Inc. signed a Definitive Agreement to Acquire Metaswitch from Microsoft https://lnkd.in/gJCgU596
In this short interview, Jon Brinton gives us his take on the news. Brinton says that for service providers, the NetSapiens platform is a preferred choice for organizations migrating from Metaswitch.
“We’re champions of the independent service provider community. We give them a platform that’s fully brandable because of that sessions-not-seats models. They have very good pricing power or very high margin capabilities that they can achieve. with our platform. And we’ve got a proven track record of success with over 225 partners globally. We are on the road to 6 million. We’re adding about 100,000 users a month. That growth clip hasn’t changed, except that we continue to add some great new partners to our community that help us to multiply that story even further as they take the NetSapiens platform to market.”
Computer Instruments Thinks We Can Do Better
If you ask nothing more than “How can I help you today?” you are off to a good start. The simplicity of that question should be the foundation for building the intelligence behind your AI Attendant. Listen to contact center conversations and concentrate on repetitive responses. An AI Attendant is an educated Voice Chat Bot, and it’s your challenge to make sure it has, at its disposal, everything it needs to answer the call. To do that correctly, below are five questions you should ask to discover and define the purpose of the AI Attendant.
Detta Donoghue, Director of Strategic Alliances at Computer Instruments, tells us about a familiar bad auto attendant experience with a local utility company. Detta shows us a different path that her company has developed that sees the AI-assisted attendant greet callers with a more customized experience, and ultimately better CX.
Visit https://instruments.com/
Join us as we explore the cutting-edge world of software innovation with David Hirschfeld, CEO & Founder of Tekyz Inc., a leader in AI-driven solutions and transformative methodologies for startups and established businesses alike. From their groundbreaking Launch 1st Methodology—designed to help startups achieve product-market fit with minimal risk—to bespoke AI transformation and workflow automation services, Tekyz is redefining how businesses harness technology for growth. We’ll dive into the expertise of founder David Hirschfeld, a 35-year veteran of the tech industry, as he shares insights into AI’s role in reshaping industries, strategies for scaling startups, and his passion for fostering innovation. Whether you’re an emerging entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, this conversation promises actionable strategies and a glimpse into the future of tech-enabled business success. At Tekyz, we specialize in delivering innovative software solutions, automating workflows, and AI transformation across various industries, including law enforcement, healthcare, real estate, finance, entertainment, etc…
Visit www.tekyz.com
“People were looking for high-quality experiences to be able to make their meetings as productive as possible from home,” says Tyler Troutman, Strategic Market Development at Shure. In this podcast, we look at where we are with the migration of employees, in some cases, back to the office and, in other cases, to a remote or hybrid model. Shure, one of the world’s leading microphone manufacturers, is active in this environment by looking at how their technology can meet workers where they are to deliver better and best experiences.
“We’re seeing the ROI, not just out of the conference space with fantastic audio, but the ROI on things like our investments in Microsoft Copilot. We want to make sure that these productivity tools are being used and they’re being used effectively within the organization,” adds Tyler. We learn about how Shure is deploying AI and how Shure is developing products that work with popular platforms.
Visit www.shure.com
This podcast will explore how CallCabinet can help enterprises optimize their Avaya environments through advanced compliant recording and analytics solutions. We will discuss navigating the challenges of managing legacy systems, and how CallCabinet’s platform and data migration capabilities offer a future-proof solution. We’ll address the critical importance of compliant call recording in today’s regulatory landscape, emphasizing the need to protect sensitive data.
Furthermore, we’ll explore how CallCabinet supports diverse communication environments, including cross-UC platform setups and hybrid deployments (cloud, prem, hybrid), talk about the role of AI and explore the future trends in communication technology, enabling businesses to stay ahead of the curve.
About CallCabinet
CallCabinet is the premier cross-platform SaaS provider for end-to-end compliant call recording, AI-driven conversation analytics, call QA, and custom business intelligence reporting. Serving calling, conferencing, and contact centers for all industries, CallCabinet continuously evolves, offering the latest call recording and analytics technology via a single pane of glass UI. Visit www.callcabinet.com.
The telecom industry faces a crucial need to improve customer experience (CX) as organizations industry-wide consistently receive poor marks. In this podcast, UneeQ Founder and CEO Danny Tomsett discusses ways AI Digital Humans can improve CX by engaging in lifelike conversations at scale and in real-time across various touchpoints and communication channels along the customer journey.
“This technology is particularly effective in addressing the emotional needs of a customer,” Tomsett says. “If you’re going to make a purchasing decision, it’s not all logic. There are emotions like intimidation or doubt and addressing those is crucial so that people feel confident to make the right decision based on information that it’s been personalized to them.”
About UneeQ
UneeQ is a global leader in digital human technology, providing lifelike and emotionally intelligent AI-powered virtual beings for businesses seeking to elevate customer experiences. UneeQ’s platform enables organizations to create highly personalized interactions that drive engagement, foster trust, and deliver exceptional value.
digitalhumans.com
“We’ve grown the company 225% over the course of 2020 to 2023,” says Doug Gaylor, President and Chief Operating Officer of Crexendo. “And that’s what Deloitte highlighted in recognizing us for our growth and our success. One of the core metrics was simply the number of end users you’ve achieved. Yeah, so if you look at our growth, our growth is directly corresponding to the growth of our platform and the growth of our end-user customers out there. So, we announced in September that we eclipsed 5 million users on our platform. We’re currently adding about 100,000 users per month on our platform. And that, according to Frost and Sullivan, puts us as the fastest-growing UCAS platform in the country. When you look at the amount of success that we’ve got, it’s really being driven by the fact that we’ve got our licensees out there that are growing tremendously using the Crescendo platform as the foundation for their business, plus a strong retail offering as well. We’re adding new customers on our retail offering directly to Crexendo.”
Crexendo was recently named one of the fastest-growing companies in North America on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America, now in its 30th year. Crexendo grew an impressive 225% during the award time period of 2020-2023 and ranked as the 6th fastest-growing company in the Communications/Networking category.
“If you look at Cisco and Microsoft, two of the largest companies in the world, and their UCaaS offering is just a small component of what they do. For Microsoft, it’s a rounding error. For Cisco, it may be a little bit bigger portion of their business, but it’s not their core competency. For us, UCaaS and being the best UCaaS provider out there is our one and only core focus.”
Crexendo, Inc. is an award-winning software technology company that is a premier provider of cloud communication platform software and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offering, including voice, video, contact center, and managed IT services tailored to businesses of all sizes. Our cloud communications software solutions currently support over five million end users globally, through an extensive network of over 230 cloud communication platform software subscribers and our direct retail offering.
Visit https://www.crexendo.com/
CIO’s face what Jeff McCullough, VP of Sales at NetAlly, describes as the CIO Agenda, a term or a challenge originally described by Gartner. “I use the term or have somewhat borrowed the term to talk about what I think are the top challenges that CIOs face, as well as their top priorities. it’s really about balance. How do customers balance the priorities that they have, what are the things that they’re most focused on achieving, the business goals that they have while handling the challenges, the things headwinds, the things that slow down their progress, that are obstacles for them to overcome in achieving their business objectives? The CIO agenda is balancing the priorities and the challenges and ultimately helping customers, especially executive level customers, with the solutions they need to address both.”
Jeff is a 25-year veteran in IT channel sales whose resume includes leadership roles at SolarWinds, NetApp, and HP Inc. Jeff also serves as a founding advisory board member of the Sales Community, the leading social network for global tech sales professionals. In this podcast, we learn about the challenges CIOs face and how NetAlly is moving to help enterprise customers tackle those challenges and win. Driving product diversification to enter new IT verticals and increase partner revenue. Jeff plans to fuel customer growth opportunities for managed service providers by demonstrating the value of on-site network and edge security assessments.
NetAlly offers products that validate and troubleshoot vitally important wired and wireless networks.
Visit www.NetAlly.com
Businesses are facing increasing pressure to innovate cost-effectively amidst increasing investments driven by Generative AI, traditional AI, and cloud expansion, expect greater pressures on IT budgets as well as a bigger need for transparency and governance over IT costs
In 2025, the pace of technological advancement shows no sign of slowing, and businesses are facing increasing pressure to innovate cost-effectively amidst increasing investments driven by Generative AI, traditional AI, and cloud expansion. This leads to greater pressures on IT budgets as well as a bigger need for transparency and governance over IT costs. Tangoe, the 25-year pioneer in technology expense management, makes five key predictions of tech costs and the revenue opportunities they present for Channel Partners.
Chris Ortbals, Chief Product Officer at Tangoe, unpacks these five predictions and their impact on decision-makers and technology advisors:
- Innovation will Become the Biggest Financial Threat
- 2025: The Year of the Private Cloud Comeback
- Mobile Data Prices will Become a Sea of Sameness
- The End of BYOD is Near
- Mobility Leaders will be Deceived into Thinking Overspending has Been Solved
In addition to his predictions, Chris offers Channel Partners a detailed action plan including specific revenue opportunities, tips for how advisors should guide clients in the future, and consulting service offerings to get Partners off to a strong start in the year ahead. Don’t miss his Technology Reseller News article here.
About Tangoe
Tangoe pioneered technology expense management more than 25 years ago, and today we’re the industry leader driving innovation through AI-powered automation, 70+ patents, and the largest ecosystem of global partners. We specialize in helping enterprises of all sizes save money, utilize IT resources more effectively, and gain visibility and control over their spending and mobile devices. With the industry’s first complete solution for telecom, mobile, and cloud cost optimization alongside the largest technology spend under management, Tangoe is the preferred partner for those seeking cost savings, financial predictability, and ROI for digital innovation. Visit us at Tangoe.com.
With more organizations operating in the cloud, the network security landscape has changed. The enterprise perimeter has become more distributed, causing cybersecurity threats to increase in prevalence and difficulty due to their constantly evolving nature. Factor in the demands of AI integration across products and the need for optimum network visibility and security is now more crucial than ever.In this podcast, Aviatrix SVP Chris McHenry discusses these challenges and what Aviatrix is doing to help organizations overcome them. This includes the launch of Aviatrix’s Cloud Network Security Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) recently showcased at AWS re:Invent, as well as recent integrations with Microsoft’s Security Service Edge solution and Microsoft Security Copilot.Aviatrix® is the cloud network security company. We're on a mission to make cloud networking simple so companies stay agile. Trusted by more than 500 of the world's leading enterprises, our cloud networking platform creates the visibility, security, and control needed to adapt with ease and move ahead at speed. Combined with the Aviatrix Certified Engineer (ACE) Program, the industry's leading multicloud networking and security certification, Aviatrix empowers the cloud networking community to stay at the forefront of digital transformation. Learn more at www.aviatrix.com.
One.Demarc by TELIN: Seamlessly Survive Your ISP Outages, One.Demarc by TELIN: Seamlessly Survive Your ISP Outages@Telin BlogWhat is One.Demarc?TELIN’s One.Demarc solution integrates cutting-edge SD-WAN technology with Peplink SpeedFusion and eSIM capabilities to create a secure and reliable voice network. Designed to ensure seamless communication, One.Demarc enhances voice service quality by connecting your local network directly to TELIN’s data centers via a robust VMPLS connection.How Does It Work? Edge Device IntegrationTELIN provides an edge device that integrates seamlessly with your existing network. Secure RoutingPhone traffic is routed securely through the device using SpeedFusion VPN, ensuring consistent and direct transmission to TELIN’s data centers. Automatic FailoverAn embedded eSIM enables automatic failover to a cellular network during ISP outages, ensuring uninterrupted calls.Who Benefits from One.Demarc? Partners: Elevate your offerings with a reliable solution that adds value for your clients. End Users: Experience consistent, high-quality communication that’s built to handle any challenge.Key Features Zero Disruption: Automatic failover ensures seamless communication during outages. Enhanced Connectivity: Combine ISP and cellular networks for faster, more reliable connections. WAN Smoothing: Eliminate latency and packet loss for superior call quality. SpeedFusion Technology: Enterprise-grade SD-WAN guarantees network reliability. Direct Connectivity: Private, secure links to the PSTN bypass carrier issues for unmatched reliability.Who is TELIN?TELIN is a unique telecom company with a distinct distribution model, acting as your single source for unified communications. As a preferred provider of 3CX licensing, SIP trunks, hosting, and VoIP solutions, TELIN empowers partners to consolidate all telecom infrastructure components needed to deliver exceptional service.With decades of expertise in security, redundancy, and compliance, TELIN offers unmatched white-glove service at a wholesale level.Why Partner with TELIN? One provider for all your cloud and voice services One service level agreement for simplified management One expert support team with over a century of combined experience Freedom to control your margins Next-gen cloud infrastructure delivering enterprise-grade performance and cost savings White-label billing with tier-2 and tier-3 support An unrivaled partner success program designed for growthDiscover how TELIN’s One.Demarc can transform your communication infrastructure and deliver unmatched reliability. Partner with TELIN today to unlock the future of unified communications.Got questions or need more info? Reach out to our team today! Let's connect your business to the future.Partner with us: Telin Partner Success Program | Telin | Unified CommunicationsEmail: sales@telin.comCall us: +1 855-550-0514Visit: www.telin.oneTelin One.Demarc solves customer challenges, offers brand damage rescue, Podcast
Vodia Networks Inc. recently announced that the Vodia Networks Inc. PBX is now certified for Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams provides enterprises and SMBs with an unrivaled set of features for communication and collaboration, making it an indispensable tool for increased productivity.In this podcast, Christian Stredicke walks us through the announcement. Teams is the dominant ecosystem. Vodia Networks Inc. can integrate and connect Teams to a wide range of functionality and experiences.Combined with the Vodia PBX, any organization can now use Microsoft Teams as an office phone system while benefiting from Vodia’s rich B2B communication feature set. The solution provides secure, integrated voice services to Teams collaboration environments.A Session Border Controller (SBC) is responsible for protecting and managing the flow of IP communication. Microsoft selects and certifies SBC vendors whose products support Direct Routing, and Vodia PBX has been certified with Microsoft Teams. Direct Routing allows companies using Teams calling to directly manage the interconnection to the service provider, so users can make and receive calls to/from the public telephone network and to/from the company IP-PBX within Teams. Vodia is now a member of the elite class of Microsoft Teams-certified devices that support Direct Routing. The certification expands the scope of applications for our solutions and enables our partners to bolster and enrich their unified communications and collaboration service offerings.Teams users can dial and receive calls to the Vodia PBX. When calling from Teams, the Vodia PBX will connect calls to SIP trunks or devices that are registered with the PBX. For example, this makes it possible to make public announcements from Teams or speak to a person on a door phone. In hospitality environments, it is now possible for front desk staff can call hotel rooms from a Teams extension. Vice versa, it is possible to call Teams users for example from hotel rooms. This opens up a large range of new opportunities to expand the usage of Teams in several industries.
This podcast will discuss how CallCabinet’s solutions empower enterprises to capture, archive, and transform Microsoft Teams conversations into actionable insights, offering data-driven value across compliance, customer experience, and operational strategy. CallCabinet’s unified compliant recording and AI-powered solutions are seamlessly integrated, with features unique to Teams.Additionally, when CallCabinet’s solutions are deployed in hybrid environments, capabilities extend beyond call recording. Delivering secure, compliant insights across mixed-use communications setups and/or a combination of on-premises and cloud-based configurations.Visit www.callcabinet.com
DE-CIX recently announced their sixth internet exchange in the US, established in Houston. DE-CIX Houston offers 100G ports and low latency connectivity to more than 150 networks in neighboring Dallas and beyond. The company is home to the largest neutral interconnection ecosystem in North America.Mareike JacobshagenDr. Thomas KingThis podcast features Dr. Thomas King, the CTO of DE-CIX, and Mareike Jacobshagen, the Head of Global Business Partner Program at DE-CIX.This episode explores the evolving landscape of Internet infrastructure and interconnection services in North America. Dr. Thomas King examines the fundamental aspects of internet exchanges, their impact on network performance and the significance of neutrality in the connectivity ecosystem.Mareike Jacobshagen explains the services resellers can monetize and DE-CIX's channel partner program. Learn about the company’s partner service offerings and the support they provide to resellers.https://www.de-cix.net/
Intermedia to power cloud-based Unified Communications and Contact Center servicesOn October 29, 2024 - Intermedia Cloud Communications (https://www.intermedia.com/), a global leader in AI-powered cloud communications and collaboration solutions, announced an expanded partnership with Astound Business Solutions (https://www.astound.com/business/), an award-winning nationwide provider of secure, high-capacity connectivity. Building on a successful history of collaboration with Intermedia’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions, Astound will now leverage Intermedia’s comprehensive Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform to deliver a fully managed, turn-key solution that enhances connectivity and engagement for its customers.In this podcast Allister Quinteros of Intermedia, discusses the partnership and how this is good news for service providers and MSPs.
Navigating FTC compliance can be a daunting task which C3 Complete can help you through. Jonathan Cox, VP of Information Security can guide you on building a cybersecurity program that aligns with the latest FTC mandates while providing guidance for creating templates for policies, procedures, and controls that align with both FTC requirements and NIST CSF. Speak to Jonathan further via C3-Complete.com.
Dan Anderson of Oculum has a video conferencing solution for Service Providers. The solution is 100% white label. OmniUC™ is a white label video conferencing and unified communications platform designed specifically for the telecom industry. OmniUC is a turnkey solution that easily layers into existing voice applications with minimal development. Fully developed on WebRTC, OmniUC requires no apps, plug-ins or downloads and is compatible across all modern browsers and mobile devices. Customizable branding enables telecom providers to set the appropriate look and feel for their customers while a rich feature set offers options such as conferencing, collaboration, messaging, encryption, among many others. To learn more about Oculum’s OmniUC™ white-label video conferencing and unified communications platform solutions, click here. Oculum is a PaaS (Platform as a Service) modeled technology leader and innovator of video conferencing for Telecom Service Providers and select technology industry verticals. With the support of 19 years of proven unified communications (UC) platform development, 110+ patents, and millions of subscribers, Oculum is uniquely positioned to deliver world-class virtual experiences on any type of user’s device (mobile or browser).https://www.oculumvc.com/omniuc
Rick Mancinelli, CEO of C3 Complete at Channel Vision CVx2024, looks at growth for MSPs Founded in 2009, C3 Complete is an award-winning technology consultancy headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida. The company specializes in providing outcome-driven, relationship-focused solutions to a diverse client base nationwide. With a commitment to excellence, C3 operates a geo-diverse infrastructure offering advanced solutions in infrastructure, virtual desktops, backup, disaster recovery, and more. The company prides itself on its team of certified network engineers and 24×7, in-house, bilingual customer service.
$1,000 to $2,000 a day. That is the type of revenue MSPs are achieving with RYTHMz and RYTHMz enables MSPs to enter the event space. Leonard Joseph DiMiceli, Channel Chief, RYTHMz, spells it outRYTHMz Wi-Fi leverages cutting-edge networking hardware and software-defined networking (hashtag#SDN) principles to deliver fast, secure internet connections. SDN allows for the dynamic, programmable management of network resources, enabling intelligent routing and optimized traffic flows. Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) allows latency-sensitive applications to be executed closer to users, improving performance and user experience. Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) enables seamless transitions between wireless networks, enhancing network capacity.These key software elements come together in RYTHMz Wi-Fi hardware, which features portable, compact, and ruggedized options, all with advanced antenna systems to extend optimized coverage. Our industry-leading hardware and software ensure high-speed, consistent, responsive connectivity in any environment.
Product launches are challenging. It's easy to fail. Charlene Ignacio or Fornix Marketing has a better way to make that journey. Charlene thinks that your path to selling the firm begins with things like launches, plus the many day-to-day things MSPs do. Charlene is also talking to companies that want to buy MSPs.
"I want change," says Adam Courchaine, DMS, PA-C of Ascent Concierge Health. In this podcast, Adam discusses the personal challenges that we face. How do you stay healthy in a conference show environment? How do we balance competing needs?
@Amy Slater of the #MSPAA discusses partner opportunities. The #MSPAA provides community and resources for MSPs. Amy focuses on the #SMB scale MSPs. Smaller scale companies that can find support in the MSPAA.
Alan Borck tells all about net2phone, net2phone is looking for MSPs who seek an opportunity to sell into active markets. Check out Alan's numbers- they are very good for MSPs. net2phone is a leading provider of innovative and affordable cloud based communications services for businesses worldwide. net2phone has built a robust and flexible communication platform to advance business communications into today’s modern environment. With the new hybrid work environment and ever increasing number of ways to communicate and collaborate, we’ve integrated a full suite of tools to complement traditional voice.
Jerry Hilecher, CEO of Synpact LLC, is buying #MSPs. In this special podcast for MergerWorld.News, we learn how Jerry looks for just the right MSPs to achieve growth and synergy.
BPO, business process outsourcing, is a great idea for your #MSP. In this podcast, Todd Chisholm of IFT maps out a plan to fire up your MSP's abilities by doing #BPO on things your MSP is less efficient on.
Randall Deetz introduces My Ransom Shield, a super-easy tool for recovering after a hack. It is priced for #SMBs, easy to launch, and perfect for MSPs to offer.
Amanda Stone, the The Managed Service Providers Association of America® #MSPAA member relationship advocate, tells us about #MSPAA, a place where #MSPs can find resources, community, and support.
CallCabinet’s automated call quality assurance helps ensure consistency in customer interactions.“Compliance is the heart of what we do and is a huge piece of the business that we solve, businesses we solve for, says Ravel Todd, CMO of CallCabinet. Now, AI has created an opportunity to do more. There exists the ability to move the needle on EX and CX. “How do I look at employee experience? How do I look at optimizing processes? Or how do I optimize team happiness from a culture perspective? How do I identify when things are going south in that area so that I can jump in more proactively to save somebody from potentially leaving the business who is critical to the business?”In this podcast, we learn how CallCabinet is platform-agnostic, ready to go in the real-world environment where people, be they employees, vendors, associates, or customers, are very likely to come to the conversation on different platforms. CallCabinet keeps the organization in compliance, but now the data has become an asset. Ravel explains how the information your organization is already generating can be used to identify hard-to-see employee challenges, training gaps, legal vulnerabilities, places to sharpen service, and so on, We hear that CallCabinet’s solutions lead to improved EX which leads to better CX outcomes. CallCabinet’s automated call quality assurance helps ensure consistency in customer interactions.Visit www.callcabinet.com
AURA is Huvr's groundbreaking AI brain, designed to support organizations by learning from sensor data, fostering communication, and enhancing efficiency. In this podcast, AURA’s proud father, Herman DeBoard CEO of Huvr walks us through AURA and the many ways AURA can serve organizations, be they enterprises or smaller businesses, with assets to watch.Huvr Inc. is a technology company with products that focus on video and fiber optics using AI and machine vision capabilities for both marketing and security purposes. Huvr's Video product is a real-time, interactive video streaming & marketing platform connecting brands to their audience via virtual tours, events, and customized experiences. Virtual experiences can be public or private and come complete with cloud-based storage for viewing again and again. Huvr allows large enterprises, small businesses, and individuals alike to create real-time virtual events, invite up to 15,000 viewers, and collect valuable data along the way. Its innovative virtual services platform is leading the way in Higher Education, Healthcare, Recruiting, Entertainment, and Government applications. Founded in 2019, Huvr is a private company and is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Huvr's OpticSense product is a multi-patented Fiber Optic Ring Interferometer (FoRi) that uses machine vision and ai to protect assets and analyze human and machine activity in a given area where it sends real-time textual reports and analysis of the potential situation to help organizations respond fasterDeBoard outlines use cases, and channel opportunities and we discuss steps made to make people more comfortable by their new AI-powered helper, which goes beyond yet another algorithm.Visit huvr.com
Understanding the Federal Universal Service Fund, Podcast ,Three Methods for Determining FUSF Contribution“It's not a tax. It's a fee,” Jeff Lytle, of Sandy Beaches Software. “And it's assessed on telecommunications companies.” According to the FCC, “Prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Universal Service Fund (USF) operated as a mechanism by which interstate long-distance carriers were assessed to subsidize telephone service to low-income households and high-cost areas. The Communications Act of 1934 stated that all people in the United States shall have access to rapid, efficient, nationwide communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the traditional definition of universal service - affordable, nationwide telephone service to include among other things rural health care providers and eligible schools and libraries.” In this podcast, Jeff, whose company and career have been dedicated to helping organizations stay in compliance with the FUSF, brings us up to date on what that challenge looks like today.“Every telecom company in the United States, VoIP or otherwise, contributes to the Universal Service Fund, and this funds the libraries, and hospitals. It funds the phones for poor people or the undeserved and allows them to have communication services. the fund was created in 2000 and at that time the rate was 5.7 percent and now it's grown to where it's 35.8 percent of the build revenue. Now, when the FCC created this back in 2000, they gave three different methods for calculating your contribution rate. It's called a contribution. It's not a tax, dog It's a contribution you're making to fund these services. The government'sBut if you don't pay it, you do get heavy fines.”When a tax is not a tax, and fee might not be a feeAs we learn in this podcast, the FUSF is not so cut and dry. As a specialist on this matter, Jeff outlines how companies can be looking at a less steep fee. But you will need a deep understanding of this matter, and likely, specialized help.Jeff and his team at Sandy Beaches Software are headquartered in Oklahoma City, a city noted for sunshine, but often beaches. We learn that their made (and supported) in the USA offer, also represents an advantage. “If you were working in all 50 states and had to file for every single jurisdiction, you'd have 48,000 returns per year that you would be filing. You need a compliance company at that point. When you're only working in one, two states, a lot of times you can do it on your own and you don't need that third party. But your billing company works in between all of these folks to make that happen. You need a solid billing company that's experienced with the tax piece to get it right.”Visit www.sandybeachessoftware.com
The telephone has come a long way since its creation 175 years ago.On its 175th anniversary, we look ahead to where #telecommunications is headed, especially with the advancement of services such as RCS (Rich Communications Services) and the invention of chatbots. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday fast approaching, Sinch reports that over a quarter of Americans will use RCS to complete their shopping.In fact, Sinch data found that; 75% say great customer service would make them more loyal to a company 41% are more likely to shop with a brand that shares personalized texts with them.50% of respondents predict #AI and #chatbots will dominate customer experiences within the next decade.Julia Fraser, Executive Vice President, North America at Sinch, shares what’s ahead for the future of business communications, especially when it comes to personalization on Technology Reseller News.Visit www.sinch.com
First Orion branded calling with logos for enterprises, Podcast“If you're a brand, if you're a business and you're making phone calls, you can now brand your phone calls, not just with your name, but also now with your logo,” says Jeff Stalnaker, Co-Founder of First Orion.First Orion, Transaction Network Services (TNS), and TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) announced at Mobile World Congress, in October, the availability of branded calling with logos across the top three U.S. wireless carriers. The partnership ensures branded calls with rich content are verified with end-to-end authentication, providing a secure method to help prevent call spoofing. With the addition of logo delivery to the portfolio of rich content, the partnership expects a continued increase in secure branded calling adoption before the end of 2024.In a joint statement at Mobile World Congress, the companies said, “Despite the many digital communication channels available, the phone call is the preferred channel for addressing personal, complex, and high-value business situations. Companies must consider leveraging the benefits of authenticated branded calling to build long-term brand affinity and improve engagement. This becomes even more vital to financial service firms that have experienced a dramatic uptick in fraudulent activity, which can negatively impact their brand and customers.”We've got to focus on restoring the trust.“Scammers and spoofers and all of the fraudulent activity in the voice channel have all made us scared. We're worried. And so businesses have lost interest in making phone calls. We've got 90 percent of the people of these phone calls go unanswered. We've got to focus on restoring the trust. And First Orion does that really with two primary offers. The first one is we work with the mobile operators and we're looking at all the calls and all the traffic trying to find the perpetrators, the bad guys. And we'll put something on your phone that says scam likely or some other advice of risk. And we don't want you to answer those. Don't answer those if you get them. And so that's stopping the bad guys. But along this journey of 16 years, we figured out that the better we get at stopping the bad guys, the more we realize we could do for the good guys. The more you know about legitimate businesses making legitimate phone calls, it helps you stop illegitimate phone calls. And so we launched this thing called Branded Calling a couple of years ago, and it absolutely makes a difference for businesses and certainly us as consumers when we know who's calling.”Visit www.firstorion.com
eSIM is an MSP opportunity, but who you get them from matters, GigSky Podcast “If you remember the AT&T outage in February, our European customers that were in the US, we were able to move them over to a different operator when AT&T went down. They all stayed connected. So those are some examples of things that we can do on the consumer side because it's our network,” says Sam King, Chief Commercial Officer of GigSky. GigSky is one of a handful of eSIM companies that are network operators that supply their own US-based eSIMs. As a mobile operator, the company can diagnose and fix issues if they arise. Purchasing an eSIM from an actual network operator also has other benefits, including an easier installation process with just a few taps of the screen.“Unlike our competitors, we also have a B2B postpaid business. We're very strong in the verticals of aviation, and logistics. We've also done some work in mining. We offer custom networking solutions for our enterprise customers. We can whitelist and blacklist websites on the network level, so you don't have to invest in an MDM client to be able to do that. We can do custom VPN solutions, traffic routing, and other things that a big telco won't usually do for their enterprise customers.”In this podcast, we learn that eSIMs are an excellent channel opportunity, but picking the right partner, matters. GigSky has already had success in a number of verticals such as aviation, mining, logistics, and government.Visit www.gigsky.com https://youtu.be/4sofWLxqPI8
Creo Solutions brings Context Register solution to service providers and their clients to meet Campaign Registry deadline, painlessly, PodcastStarting December 1, all A2P SMS campaigns will be blocked if they have not already been approved by The Campaign Registry via their 10DLC process: The process is time-consuming and confusing“Everybody's kind of kicking the can almost in circles as we're looking at this registration process. And as we think about what this is going to mean once we get to this December 1 deadline, is your local florist, who is texting out to people with updates, taking orders potentially over SMS, those capabilities are gonna go away if they haven't already registered their campaigns and their traffic with TCR,” says Robert Galop of Creo Solutions. “We're seeing a lot of gaps in this entire registration process in getting that done, which is why we're excited that we've got Sabeeh (Sabeeh Hameed) and what he's built put in front of the service providers.”Starting December 1, all A2P SMS campaigns will be blocked if they have not already been approved by The Campaign Registry via their 10DLC process. This includes 1:1 SMS messages coming from UCaaS and CCaaS users. The implications are huge for businesses (losing their ability to communicate with customers) and providers (losing a key capability and seeing a potential hit to revenue). CSPs and UCaaS/CCaaS providers are scrambling to get their customers' 1:1 SMS messaging capabilities registered with TCR ahead of the deadline, but it is a very cumbersome and error-prone process.“If you take a look at this form and think about this from the perspective of a florist or a car dealer or what have you they're not going to know what any of these pieces are. All they're going to know is that on December 2nd, when they come in and start to text people, they're not going to see their text messages going through and they're going to call their service provider and then the service provider is going to call the texting provider and it's going to be a lot of tickets going back and forth.”Sabrhub has created a painless, super-reliable, and super-quick solution that enables providers to register all of their customers quickly and reliably before December 1. Creo Solutions has partnered with Sabrhub to get this to all CSPs and UCaaS/CCaaS providers who are struggling to beat the deadline.In this podcast, Sabeeh Hameed, Founder of Sabrhub, walks us through his solution.“With our platform context register, we're looking at this problem in a holistic way to not only simplify the actual information that we're collecting from the brands,” says Sabeeh. “We're abstracting away a lot of the complexity in the process, but we're also giving them what they need using our quick comply functionality. What that does is it provides a line of that a brand is able to just add their Wix website or Squarespace or Shopify or whatever have you.” Sabeeh explains that his QuickComply functionality, we give them this one line of code that's shown here on the right-hand side. And that gives them essentially a fully compliant opt-in experience. The service streamlines compliance and helps people avoid easily made errors and oversites. There is also pre-vetting before registration.https://www.creosolutions.tech/https://youtu.be/_N63KnxGIb4
IoT Made Easy, Secure and Reliable, Digi PodcastIn today’s increasingly mobile and connected world, organizations require end-to-end IoT solutions beyond simple hardware. They require connectivity, remote management, security, and always-on customer support. In this podcast, Digi International GM Tony Puopolo discusses the company’s initiative to be a complete solutions provider, its revamped vision for the channel and key partnership with T-Mobile.“We’ve made some pretty major changes and we’re really excited about it,” Puopolo said. “We've simplified our channels and made it easier for people to come on-board, sell our products and partner with us to bring our customers the best experience.”Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII) is a leading global provider of IoT connectivity products, services, and solutions. It helps companies create next-generation connected products and deploy and manage critical communications infrastructures in demanding environments with high levels of security and reliability. Founded in 1985, Digi has helped customers connect more than 100 million things and counting. For more information, visit www.digi.com.https://youtu.be/Mw4VL_Odvus
Wayne SelkCompTIA’s recently released State of Cybersecurity 2025 report which says that although U.S. cybersecurity employment is projected to grow 267% above the national growth rate, there remains a disconnect between planned investments and perceived results.As October’s cybersecurity awareness month wraps up, Wayne Selk - vice president of cybersecurity programs, CompTIA Community - will discuss all things cybersecurity and how cybersecurity affects the IT channel businesses.Selk discusses CompTIA’s recently released State of Cybersecurity 2025 report which says that although U.S. cybersecurity employment is projected to grow 267% above the national growth rate, there remains a disconnect between planned investments and perceived results. Across the six global regions surveyed in CompTIA’s State of Cybersecurity 2025 study, only 25% of individuals feel that the overall direction of cybersecurity is improving dramatically, and only 22% would characterize their organization’s cybersecurity efforts as completely satisfactory - Selk discusses his team’s plan to address this area with training aligned to the Cybersecurity Trustmark.Selk examines why it’s essential for companies, including MSPs and their clients, to have cybersecurity measures in place, what are the leading cyber threats that MSPs currently face and what might be some emerging threats as the New Year approaches.Lastly, he will highlight what MSPs can focus on to protect themselves and their customers as well as offers advice to companies who are interested in protecting their business from a cybersecurity standpoint.About UsCompTIA CommunityThe CompTIA Community is the leading global, vendor-neutral technology channel association for MSPs and other technology companies. Membership in the CompTIA Community gives you more opportunities to build a trusted community of peers, access exclusive tools and resources needed to build a thriving business and contribute to the growth of the channel.The connection to CompTIA—the most respected place to help launch and succeed in a tech career—provides even greater benefits, including discounts on valuable CompTIA certifications and other programs to build your workforce. Plus, when your company joins, every single employee can access membership benefits.[GU1]I can discuss our team's plan to address this area with training aligned to the Cybersecurity Trustmark.
“The way we see it is messaging is on the rise,” says Igor Boshoer of Clerk Chat. Clerk Chat is designed to enable native text messaging (SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage) inside of Webex, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack utilizing your existing business phone numbers. No porting or switching of providers is required, and they help businesses navigate the complexity of the new brand registration rules to ensure business messages are always delivered.80% of consumers prefer texting to calling a business. When we're building out Clerk Chat, we're thinking, ‘How do you help a business become conversational? So how can a business engage with their customers and make it on a personal level’? If a sports team is looking to engage with their fans, it might be like a million fans or like whoever comes to a game, 80 000 plus people. How do you make each message personalized for each person?”Igor gives us a live demonstration of the service.In the podcast – Igor tells us about: Consumer demand for personalized experiences in the medium they prefer – 78% of consumers wish they could text with a business, Conversational messaging – Clerk Chat helps make text messaging conversational by using AI to customize responses and respond to frequent customer inquiries. Igor provides a demo activating text messaging within Microsoft Teams in under 2 minutes. How Clerk Chat complements offerings from MSPs and service providers to provide a full comprehensive UCaaS solutionVisit https://clerk.chat/
“That is one of our key themes: interconnection,” says Trish Sale, Vice President of Product at iQmetrix. In this podcast, Sale tells about something she calls “magical moments of connection”, and experiences that in-person retail shopping can deliver. Sale explains that SummitX is for people who run telecom retail stores because the event delivers vendors, products and ideas that enable telecom retailers to develop unique buying experiences. Sale tells us about the SummitX Vendor Showcase and Product Showcase. At this event, these showcases, reflecting the exhibitors, will be highly integrated into the overall show."It is the only event of its kind in North America. It's the only time that we bring together all the stakeholders, retailers, carriers, manufacturers, and vendors that support the industry and allow those conversations and connections to happen. And that's really where the magic happens. The event brings together these stakeholders and allows both the networking conversations but also the really interesting, focused conversations about the challenges and the problem spaces within the industry and how collectively we solve them."Visit iqmetrix.com/summitx
Vanson Bourne study commissioned by Tangoe, Offers Trends for Cloud Communications Community, MSP opportunity driven by AI AI and GenAI are the top two reasons cloud spending is rising. Another giant driver is automation. As Generative AI and other AI technologies continue to reshape the tech landscape, we are witnessing a dramatic surge in cloud expenditures. A recent study by Vanson Bourne, commissioned by Tangoe, reveals that cloud spending has risen by 30% YoY on average due to GenAI, with a staggering 72% of IT and financial leaders finding these costs unmanageable. In this podcast, Chris Ortbals, Tangoe’s Chief Product Officer walks us through the report’s key findings.With the GenAI-cloud boom, unchecked cloud spending could make innovation financially unsustainable. The new study provides actionable insights and strategies to help companies manage cloud expenditures, prevent overspending, and maximize their IT investments.“And what we saw is nearly all organizations are planning to re-repatriate some portion of workloads to private cloud,” says Chris. “Some workloads are getting repatriated back to the private cloud because that's their ideal space for operating… It's very much a public and private cloud world, or as everybody likes to say, a hybrid world in this regard.” Chris outlines how the report offers insights into how resources can be well invested and how efficiencies remain to be found. People will not only want to look to sell services but to help customers achieve real gains in productivity.As we learn, the report presents a timely opportunity for technology advisors to consult with their customers on their cloud transformation results and any ongoing challenges. Teaming with a cloud expense management partner adds value to customer relationships while also offering recurring revenue streams for channel partners. Read the news https://telecomreseller.com/2024/10/02/genai-and-ai-drive-cloud-expenses-30-higher-and-72-say-spending-is-unmanageable/ Get a copy of the report https://www.tangoe.com/report/state-of-cloud-the-critical-role-of-third-party-finops-in-cloud-spending-control/
Industry-leading partnership to deliver five billion authenticated, branded calls across the top three U.S. wireless carriers in 2024Just after this month’s MWC, we sat down with James Garvert, who's the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Communication Solutions Team at TransUnion. We learn about their show announcement regarding branded calling.Earlier this month, First Orion, Transaction Network Services (TNS), and TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) announced the availability of branded calling with logos across the top three U.S. wireless carriers. The partnership ensures branded calls with rich content are verified with end-to-end authentication, providing a secure method to help prevent call spoofing. With the addition of logo delivery to the portfolio of rich content, the partnership expects a continued increase in secure branded calling adoption before the end of 2024.In a joint statement at Mobile World Congress, the companies said, “Despite the many digital communication channels available, the phone call is the preferred channel for addressing personal, complex, and high-value business situations. Companies must consider leveraging the benefits of authenticated branded calling to build long-term brand affinity and improve engagement. This becomes even more vital to financial service firms that have experienced a dramatic uptick in fraudulent activity, which can negatively impact their brand and customers.”
Recorded at GSMA's MWC24 Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas, Powell tells us that GSMA is working to democratize AI. Focusing on AI Partnerships for GSMA we learn how these organizations are delivering new AI-driven solutions and experiences.“As the GSMA, we represent 1,200 members across the tech ecosystem, heavily focused in the telco industry. We see that AI is business-critical for our members. However, it's unevenly spread. As you can imagine, countries and operators who have high resources, lots of technology, lots of data, and lots of access to computing are charging ahead and we're seeing some amazing innovation. But also, there are over 800 operators around the world where not everybody has those same resources. So how do we make sure that those operators who are less able to scale still get the benefits of AI, allowing them to grow their business?”Visit https://www.gsma.com/
Hacktivists Escalate Sophisticated, Multi-Vector Assaults on Banking and Financial Services, Government, and UtilitiesIn this podcast episode, we will explore the evolving threat of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting telecom carriers, as revealed in NETSCOUT’s latest DDoS Threat Intelligence Report. With 5G connectivity rapidly expanding—from 12.6 million subscriptions in 2019 to an anticipated 2.8 billion by the end of 2024—cybercriminals are exploiting the increased attack surface presented by 5G-connected devices. Join us as we dive into the report’s findings and discuss the implications of this alarming trend with Richard Hummel, NETSCOUT’s director of threat intelligence.About NETSCOUTNETSCOUT is a leading provider of performance management, cybersecurity, and DDoS attack protection solutions. The company helps organizations monitor, analyze, and protect their digital infrastructure. Focusing on safeguarding critical networks, NETSCOUT’s solutions are widely used across industries, including telecom, finance, and government, to ensure the reliability and security of their operations. Learn more at www.netscout.com or follow @NETSCOUT on LinkedIn, X, or Facebook.
Vida Unveils New AI Voice Capabilities with OpenAI’s Realtime Speech-to-Speech API Integration, Podcast, Vida’s expanded Partner and Reseller Programs empower telecom providers and MSPs to offer these cutting-edge capabilities directly to their customers“This product was built from the ground up with the MSP in mind,” says Lyle Pratt of Vida. In this podcast, we explore Vida’s groundbreaking integration of OpenAI’s Realtime API, which brings emotionally expressive, multilingual capabilities to its AI voice platform. As an emerging leader in AI voice solutions, Vida is among the first to leverage this advanced technology, enabling businesses to deliver customer interactions that feel more natural and engaging. The discussion highlights how features like tone modulation and laughter add a human touch to automated conversations, helping businesses boost productivity and increase revenue.The episode also delves into Vida’s expanded Partner and Reseller Programs, which empower telecom providers and MSPs to offer these cutting-edge capabilities directly to their customers. Vida shares its vision for the future of AI voice technology, showcasing how emotionally intelligent agents can transform customer experiences across industries. This conversation provides valuable insights for businesses harnessing innovative AI voice solutions to stay competitive in a rapidly changing tech landscape.About VidaVida is a leading provider of enterprise-grade AI voice solutions, transforming the way telecom service providers and small to medium-sized businesses operate. Vida's AI voice agents automate key business functions such as customer service, lead qualification, scheduling and sales. Founded by telecom industry veterans, Vida's proprietary voice stack integrates seamlessly with existing telecom networks and business phone systems over SIP. Leveraging advanced AI technology, Vida delivers lifelike, low-latency voice interactions for real-time, engaging conversations. For more info, please visit https://vida.io.
BCN offers choices for the migration path, Podcast, “It just really depends on what the customer needs,”“It just really depends on what the customer needs,” says Richard Boudria Jr., CEO of BCN. “We're very focused on creating bespoke solutions by location for that customer. And that's, that's not only in the legacy side of the business, the legacy voice side of the business. We approach every opportunity in that same manner. Whether that's, in the connectivity offering or even in the emerging product category. Our goal is to make sure that that customer has the best product service and solution at every single location, regardless of where it is domestically or internationally. But again, back to our single bill, single portal, single point of contact with that high level of service and support.”In this podcast, Boudria discusses the massive complexity of migration, especially for the multisite enterprise, where time, mergers and acquisitions and other widely experienced histories have left an organization with a large and complicated migration task. In this podcast, Boudria outlines BCN’s approach of meeting organizations where they are and offering the best possible services along whichever path they and their “trusted advisors”, may pick. Choice is a central value. “We're still a certified CLEC in all 50 states. That's not the core focus of the business, but it's still there and available. so if we have a customer who still has legacy services, we can help them take those services, audit them, show savings, move them over to us, get control of the situation.”BCN offers choices for the migration path“With the help of the trusted advisor, help the customer decide, by location, which technology product and service we're going to use for that voice solution. That could be POTS over LTE. That could be a SIP TRUNK. That could be, a UCaaS, or CCaaS offer. It just, you know, that could be a cable POTS line. That could be a LEC fiber POTS line. It just really depends on what the customer needs. But we're very focused on creating bespoke solutions by location for that customer. And that's, that's not only in the legacy side of the business, the legacy voice side of the business. We approach every opportunity in that same manner. So, whether that's, in the connectivity offering or even in the emerging product category. Our goal is to make sure that that customer has the best product and service and solution at every single location, regardless of whether it is domestically or internationally. But again, back to our single bill, single portal, single point of contact with that high level of service and support.”The podcast outline’s BCN’s approach to serving its customers and partners. BCN, a communications and technology solutions leader, works exclusively through trusted technology advisors to deliver comprehensive technology solutions. Richard sheds light on the company's commitment to building lasting relationships with both customers and selling partners, ensuring long-term success through dedicated support and collaboration. They explore BCN’s focus on the future. outlining what sets BCN apart in the telecom industry, from its customer-centric solutions to its ability to adapt to the evolving needs of its diverse client base. About BCNAs a communications and technology solutions leader since 1994, BCN understands how to solve your toughest network challenges and build a solution that fits your needs. Our experts guide you to the right solution, then help you secure, manage, and monitor it, ensuring you’re always connected to the advanced technologies that can take your business even further. With over 100’s of network and technology partnerships and an unshakable commitment to delivering exceptional customer care, your business gets access to best-in-class services and an experience that is second to none. A privately held company, BCN serves a growing roster of customers nationally and internati...
"What we're seeing, we were so astounded to see that almost sixty percent of enterprises surveyed are using six or more providers, and twelve percent use something like over twenty,” says Barbara Dondiego of AVOXI. In this podcast Dondiego walks us through a recently released report: AVOXI and Metrigy State of International Voice for the Contact Center Survey Highlights Critical Need for Global Cloud Voice.Key findings included: Decision makers currently experience many international voice challenges. Call quality (59%) and number coverage (58%) are cited as the most common challenges to achieving desired customer service outcomes. Companies plan to move more voice to the cloud in the next three years. Those who have made the cloud transition experience: Better call quality (52%) Cost savings (51%) Improved scalability and flexibility (50%) 94% are using/evaluating AI for voice; improving customer perception is the top driver. 59% of multinationals use six or more providers, with an astounding 12% requiring more than 20 for international voice services. 42% say use of multiple vendors causes operational burdens. 41% are already consolidating vendors, 49% are considering it.“Almost everybody wants to either consolidate their providers or think about consolidating them because there's so much to manage. You have different currencies, different processes, physical equipment, the different staff you have to manage, maybe contracts, and maintenance. So, we can take all that into the cloud from an AVOXI perspective and simplify that for you. And we're excited to see that this was still such a big problem that we can help solve."AVOXI, a global leader in cloud voice solutions for contact centers, unveiled results from the 2024 State of International Voice for the Contact Center Report. The survey of 371 IT and voice decision makers across 18 industries worldwide, conducted by research and advisory firm Metrigy, addressed the challenges and opportunities of global voice communications, and the direct impact on customer service and sales operations.As contact centers move workflows to the cloud, voice is a critical aspect of that evolution, driving the need for cloud telephony services to work together with cloud contact center systems.Visit www.avoxi.com
The telecom retail sector is constantly evolving, making it more important than ever to learn new market insights and find fresh ways to innovate. In the last of this four-part series, Doug Green Megan Howse, SVP of Marketing at iQmetrix, run through the five key megatrends that are shaping the telecom industry and will be tackled in the iQmetrix Industry Address at its upcoming event, SummitX 2024.About SummitXSummitX by iQmetrix is the only event of its kind with a focus on telecom retail and Interconnected Commerce. We bring together all stakeholders from the industry, creating an interconnected community space packed with thought-provoking content, idea-sharing with industry professionals, and unmissable networking. We also make sure there are some great experiences and lots of fun along the way — including an epic mountainside party that you’ll never forget!X is for the great experiences we’ll create.X is for interconnectivity and intersectionality.X is for the 10 (long) years since our last Summit.SummitX is being held October 27-29, 2024 at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort and Spa, Arizona. For more information and to register, visit www.iqmetrix.com/summitx.About iQmetrixiQmetrix is the only provider of Interconnected Commerce software solutions for telecom retail. Interconnected Commerce is a complete set of software and technologies that are modular, flexible, and have telecom-specific capabilities, enabling telecom retailers to provide an uplifting experience for their customers. We empower telecom retailers to transact, activate, and fulfill products, as well as operate their business, and unify the online and in-store experiences. Our solutions powered $17BN in sales last year, and are used by 370,000 telecom retail professionals across almost 1,000 clients. iQmetrix is a privately held SaaS company with global employees. For more information, visit www.iqmetrix.com
There’s no question that AI is a weapon for the fraudster, says Chris Drake of iconectiv. AI enables fakes that are more realistic, personal, and convincing. State players and private parties engage in fraudulent practices to influence political outcomes. But politically based cams can also be a way to defraud people out of money. A simple appeal to donate or register to vote might be a bait trap.We also learn how the wider problem with phone call scams can create brand damage and impair an organization’s communication ability.Visit www.iconectiv.com
A way to help customers avoid steep roaming charges Mitchell Fordham at eSIM Go at MWC 2024 LasVegas tells us about mobility opportunities from eSIM Go's ability to deliver mobility experiences to customers. We learn about roaming and how roaming charges can represent significant government revenue in popular tourist venues. eSIM Go enables companies such as the Lufthansa Group to offer passengers a way to avoid steep roaming fees.We learn that there are opportunities for TR readers in several sectors.Read about eSIM Go partners with Lufthansa Group to deliver on-brand global travel eSIM services. https://lnkd.in/gAj6Y_2wLearn about eSIM Go www.esimgo.com
In the third of a four-part series, Doug Green and Megan Howse, SVP of Marketing at iQmetrix, examine why telecom retail professionals should attend SummitX 2024—the only event of its kind focused on telecom retail. Megan shares a selection of great reasons, ranging from unmissable sessions to invaluable opportunities for collaboration—and much more. Read the full blog post, 10 Great Reasons Why You Can’t Miss SummitX 2024, here: https://www.iqmetrix.com/blog/10-great-reasons-why-you-cant-miss-summitx-2024About SummitXSummitX by iQmetrix is the only event of its kind with a focus on telecom retail and Interconnected Commerce. We bring together all stakeholders from the industry, creating an interconnected community space packed with thought-provoking content, idea-sharing with industry professionals, and unmissable networking. We also make sure there are some great experiences and lots of fun along the way — including an epic mountainside party that you’ll never forget!X is for the great experiences we’ll create.X is for interconnectivity and intersectionality.X is for the 10 (long) years since our last Summit.SummitX is being held October 27-29, 2024 at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort and Spa, Arizona. For more information and to register, visit www.iqmetrix.com/summitx.About iQmetrixiQmetrix is the only provider of Interconnected Commerce software solutions for telecom retail. Interconnected Commerce is a complete set of software and technologies that are modular, flexible, and have telecom-specific capabilities, enabling telecom retailers to provide an uplifting experience for their customers. We empower telecom retailers to transact, activate, and fulfill products, as well as operate their business, and unify the online and in-store experiences. Our solutions powered $17BN in sales last year, and are used by 370,000 telecom retail professionals across almost 1,000 clients. iQmetrix is a privately held SaaS company with global employees. For more information, visit www.iqmetrix.com.
In part two of this series, Doug Green and Megan Howse, SVP of Marketing at iQmetrix, take a close look at the agenda and impressive keynote speaker line-up at SummitX 2024—the only event of its kind focused on telecom retail. Doug and Megan talk about the four conference tracks, the unmissable breakout sessions, and how telecom professionals of all kinds can benefit from attending this unique event.
About SummitX
SummitX by iQmetrix is the only event of its kind with a focus on telecom retail and Interconnected Commerce. We bring together all stakeholders from the industry, creating an interconnected community space packed with thought-provoking content, idea-sharing with industry professionals, and unmissable networking. We also make sure there are some great experiences and lots of fun along the way — including an epic mountainside party that you’ll never forget!
X is for the great experiences we’ll create.
X is for interconnectivity and intersectionality.
X is for the 10 (long) years since our last Summit.
SummitX is being held October 27-29, 2024 at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort and Spa, Arizona. For more information and to register, visit www.iqmetrix.com/summitx.
About iQmetrix
iQmetrix is the only provider of Interconnected Commerce software solutions for telecom retail. Interconnected Commerce is a complete set of software and technologies that are modular, flexible, and have telecom-specific capabilities, enabling telecom retailers to provide an uplifting experience for their customers. We empower telecom retailers to transact, activate, and fulfill products, as well as operate their business, and unify the online and in-store experiences. Our solutions powered $17BN in sales last year, and are used by 370,000 telecom retail professionals across almost 1,000 clients. iQmetrix is a privately held SaaS company with global employees. For more information, visit www.iqmetrix.com.
A major challenge facing the enterprise contact center is managing efficiency amidst the chaos. For many, this is a job for the supervisor.
In this podcast, Jamie Stewart, Marketing Manager at Sytel, discusses how automation can manage efficiency more quickly and accurately than supervisors, for both inbound and outbound contact and the interplay between them. Supervisors can be freed to coach and encourage, while agents are assigned automatically where they are needed most.
Resellers, MSPs, partners and enterprises can utilize CCaaS that provides these efficiency savings at scale, combined with the flexibility of cloud connectivity.
Visit www.sytel.com
TaxConnex tackles telecom tax complexity, offers white glove service, Podcast
“We don’t want to just be a return provider,” says Robert Dumas, Managing Partner of TaxConnex. “We want to be part of the tax team. We want to be the telecom tax expert. So our clients can call us up with all sorts of tax questions unrelated to actual filings because we want to be able to help them manage the process holistically from invoicing all the way to the remittance.”
“In telecom specifically, you have significantly more localities, counties, and cities that have city ordinances or codes that give them the ability to directly assess a utility tax or communications tax. These taxes generally apply to communications, gas, or electric utilities. But it’s thousands of potential returns throughout the country. And then, of course, you have to add the E911 fees. And, again, many of the E911 fees are collected at the city and county level because the cities and counties manage their own emergency management systems, and those fees are necessary to fund them. So we are still remitting thousands of returns a month specifically to folks in California Missouri Nebraska and Colorado, just every place that has a local E911 or utility users tax of some kind.”
podcast, Robert outlines how his firm offers a different take on telecom tax issues. Rober outlines how his firm offers a complete white glove service, with customized services and an interesting approach to providing personalized account services.
TaxConnex is a new CCA member who brings decades of tax experience their clients.
Visit https://www.taxconnex.com/
PCs for People Offers Full-Service Electronics Recycling While Delivering Technology to People and Communities, ASCDI Podcast
“We’re a full-service electronics recycler,” says Loren Williams of PCs for People. In this podcast, we learn how PCs for People is not only a full-service recycler but also a recycler making a difference for both sides of the recycling process. For the organization disbanding retired equipment, PCs for People offers a secure and convenient way to dispose of equipment. On the other side of the recycling process are people who receive a needed machine, ready to use. “The most recent study I saw is that 40% of low-income households in the United States today lack access to a computer and or affordable Internet access. And at PCs for People, we’re working to change that.”
“Our mission here is around digital equity and sustainability,” adds Williams. “So here’s our impact last year. We were able to distribute 57,000 refurbished computers all across the United States. Because each computer supports more than one person, you can see we supported 140,000 individuals. This is just in 2023. We kept 6 million pounds of electronics out of landfills, and everything we collect stays out of landfills, even those computers we can’t use. We’ll harvest some parts, but we make sure that the rest of the computer gets responsibly recycled. And then a little bit about the demographics of our recipients, like 4.5 out of 10 or 45 out of 100 previously had not owned a computer. This is a significant achievement that we were talking about before, you know, that it’s easy for a lot of people these days to just make an assumption everyone’s got a computer.”
Many readers and listeners of TR and many members of the ASCDI community might know Loren Williams from his days at Comdisco. Today, Loren applies his rich experience in the secondary market industry to helping people gain needed access to the digital revolution. “we will come out on-site as long as it’s within a reasonable distance of one of our locations. And we’ll pick up that equipment that’s filling the closet, the hallway, the warehouse, the basement, the attic. We’ll come in and pick it up with one of the trucks like this. There’s no charge for the pickup. There’s no charge for the data deletion service. There’s no charge for the report about the data deletion that a lot of companies like in case they get audited.”
Users get a computer that has a warranty and technical support. “That copy of Windows is not the donor’s license. We have a relationship with Microsoft to be able to load Microsoft operating systems. And then we start the distribution process in our retail stores, on our website, where we ship anywhere in the country, and through partnerships with social service organizations and other nonprofits that are reaching low-income households.”
“We’re a full-service electronics recycler,” says Loren Williams of PCs for People. In this podcast, we learn how PCs for People is not only a full-service recycler but also a recycler making a difference for both sides of the recycling process. For the organization disbanding retired equipment, PCs for People offers a secure and convenient way to dispose of equipment. On the other side of the recycling process are people who receive a needed machine, ready to use. “The most recent study I saw is that 40% of low-income households in the United States today lack access to a computer and or affordable Internet access. And at PCs for People, we’re working to change that.”
“Our mission here is around digital equity and sustainability,” adds Williams. “So here’s our impact last year. We were able to distribute 57,000 refurbished computers all across the United States. Because each computer supports more than one person, you can see we supported 140,000 individuals. This is just in 2023. We kept 6 million pounds of electronics out of landfills, and everything we collect stays out of landfills, even those computers we can’t use. We’ll harvest some parts, but we make sure that the rest of the computer gets responsibly recycled. And then a little bit about the demographics of our recipients, like 4.5 out of 10 or 45 out of 100 previously had not owned a computer. This is a significant achievement that we were talking about before, you know, that it’s easy for a lot of people these days to just make an assumption everyone’s got a computer.”
Many readers and listeners of TR and many members of the ASCDI community might know Loren Williams from his days at Comdisco. Today, Loren applies his rich experience in the secondary market industry to helping people gain needed access to the digital revolution. “we will come out on-site as long as it’s within a reasonable distance of one of our locations. And we’ll pick up that equipment that’s filling the closet, the hallway, the warehouse, the basement, the attic. We’ll come in and pick it up with one of the trucks like this. There’s no charge for the pickup. There’s no charge for the data deletion service. There’s no charge for the report about the data deletion that a lot of companies like in case they get audited.”
Users get a computer that has a warranty and technical support. “That copy of Windows is not the donor’s license. We have a relationship with Microsoft to be able to load Microsoft operating systems. And then we start the distribution process in our retail stores, on our website, where we ship anywhere in the country, and through partnerships with social service organizations and other nonprofits that are reaching low-income households.”
Visit https://www.pcsforpeople.org/
UCaaS is not a final destination: Mitel’s Luiz Domingos On Mitel Common Communications Framework, Mitel, Zoom Partnership, It’s just another option that comes as part of this kind of solution
“UCaaS is not a final destination,” says Luiz Domingos, Mitel’s CTO. “It’s just another option that comes as part of this kind of solution. That’s how we see it.” Domingos tells us that, based on customer feedback, Mitel developed the Mitel Common Communications Framework. “The Mitel Common Communications Framework is a blueprint. It’s the evolution of our hybrid communication solutions encompassing products and services. By definition, a hybrid solution, a hybrid deployment, is a combination of certain applications on-premise, hosted, private clouds, and the SaaS, UCaaS type of deployments. All of them supporting and providing services to the customer. So, there’s some research done recently by Frost and Sullivan and also our checks with our customers. The majority of the customers out there are utilizing hybrid deployments. So, this is a figure that will remain the same for the next three years. Over 80% of customers are hybrid. A small amount of customers are either full premise or full cloud.”
In this podcast, Domingos also discusses the just-announced partnership between Mitel and Zoom.
“At Zoom, we found a partner that believes that as well. So the option or the opportunity to work with Zoom and partner really addresses the hybrid deployment and combines Zoom Workplace, and Zoom AI Companion, with Mitel’s flagship communication platforms, our platforms for voice, with all the infrastructure that we created through the years, 70 plus million users out there, with the opportunity now of bringing Zoom capabilities into those customers, ensuring that there is a Zoom-first experience adapted to the Mitel’s hybrid portfolio. For us, the hybrid model in this case for enterprises will bring security, the control, and will take the best of both worlds scenario, correct? We’re taking the mission-critical communications and the long-term experience that Mitel has in the marketplace.”
Earlier this month, Mitel and Zoom announced a strategic partnership designed to empower enterprises worldwide with a unique hybrid cloud solution that combines Zoom Workplace and Zoom AI Companion with Mitel’s flagship communications platform in a modern, deeply integrated communication experience. The partnership will introduce a Zoom-first experience within Mitel’s hybrid portfolio, including access to the full Zoom Workplace platform, which works seamlessly with existing Mitel investments.
“Our contact center is evolving and we’re into our next-generation program that will create the solutions that our customers need for
AI and AI integration into our portfolio,” adds Domingos. “We’re taking advantage of our large technology partnership community that are bringing very good products that augment the solutions around our voice and collaboration and contact center applications. One of them, I can illustrate a few of them. We have a company called PolyAI, and a company called Talkative that are providing very good entry levels or interesting entry points to our contact centers, particularly when you talk about chat, speech, and also capabilities for AI around virtual agents and analysts and analysts on the material that we create. On the opposite direction, taking insights out of our contact center, we have several partnerships.”
Read the latest news and views on Mitel
- Zoom and Mitel announce strategic partnership to deliver differentiated AI-first hybrid communications and collaboration solution for enterprises worldwide
- Mitel’s New Common Communications Framework: A Game-Changer for Hybrid UC Solutions
- Unlocking Hybrid Unified Communications: Mitel’s Cloud Strategies, Security Measures, and Future Innovations, Evan Kirstel Blog
https://youtu.be/Xp2N6KMOB-E
Even in today’s modern world, it’s incredibly challenging to extend affordable, reliable and high-performing broadband services to the 42 million rural Americans who lack access. In cities and suburbs, network infrastructure can serve thousands, whereas rural areas only cover a few dozen homes and businesses, pressuring revenue generation and affecting overall return on investment. Additionally, because of the longer distances and tough terrain, installing fiber optic cables in rural areas increases the cost per mile.
Federal funding is required to provide the broadband access rural America needs. That’s why the Federal Government established the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which sets aside $42 billion for the initiative. The funds are allocated to the states and then down to service providers, which have to report their work to the states, which, in turn, have to report back to the Federal Government.
This highlights the need for all stakeholders to conduct their reporting in a unified manner to avoid confusion and delays. Common Language, administered by iconectiv, is a standard nomenclature already in place that streamlines the verification of locations, equipment, connections and service functions to ensure the correct equipment meets demand.
About iconectiv
iconectiv provides services to secure digital identity, numerous data exchanges, registries, and other information as a service offerings. These address numbering intelligence, Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB), fraud prevention, as well as network and operations management for the global communications industry. It provides numbering services in more than a dozen countries, including serving as the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) for the United States. As a trusted partner of the communications ecosystem, iconectiv is dedicated to keeping people connected, businesses running and commerce flowing. This includes making sure incoming and outgoing phone calls and messages are verified and identified, and that communications service providers can trust the information in their systems and networks.
www.iconectiv.com
Companies are dealing with open model vulnerabilities
Bill TennantIndustries are facing challenges in the practical and effective adoption of AI, with 33% of enterprises citing limited AI skills and expertise as a significant challenge. Companies are dealing with open model vulnerabilities. Despite 72% of organizations adopting AI in 2024, integration issues remain a major hurdle, exacerbated by the shortage of skilled personnel. Additionally, the risks associated with generative AI—particularly inaccuracies—necessitate robust strategies for mitigation. Data privacy concerns also arise, as AI’s need for vast data raises privacy and security issues. Furthermore, doubts about cost and ROI are prevalent, given that AI implementation is expensive, with uncertain returns. For example, 25% of IT leaders regret quick AI investments, as AI readiness impacts ROI assessments.
Enterprises are discovering the need to shift from outdated models to agile, tech-driven approaches. This Cognitive Digital Revolution demands innovation with systems that drive growth and support the economy.
In this podcast, Bill Tennant, BlueCloud’s Chief Revenue Officer outlines these challenges and discusses how BlueCloud helps guide their clients. We discuss:
- What strategies can enterprises adopt to overcome the integration hurdles associated with AI deployment?
- In what ways can businesses balance the need for vast data in AI systems with growing data privacy concerns?
- What measures can organizations take to ensure a clear ROI when investing in AI technologies
- Can enterprises enhance their AI talent pool to overcome current skill gaps and integration challenges?
- What role do ethical considerations play in AI implementation, and how can businesses develop a robust strategy to tackle inaccuracies and risks associated with generative AI?
About BlueCloud:
BlueCloud is not just another entity in the cloud computing space; it stands as a trailblazer in the digital transformation revolution. Positioned as architects of the future, BlueCloud leads the way for enterprises seeking to thrive in the digital age with its bold vision and unwavering commitment to innovation. The company’s comprehensive portfolio, encompassing avant-garde AI services, data engineering solutions, and transformative digital strategies, has propelled businesses into a new era, resulting in a staggering 185% year-over-year revenue growth and securing a valuation surpassing $100 million, thanks to its partnership with Hudson Hill Capital. By serving titans of various industries and forging collaborations with technology behemoths like Snowflake and ThoughtSpot, BlueCloud has demonstrated its prowess in navigating the intricacies of the digital domain. More than merely transforming businesses, BlueCloud is on a mission to reshape the digital landscape itself, one innovative cloud solution at a time.
About Bill Tennant:
Bill Tennant stands at the forefront of BlueCloud as the Chief Revenue Officer, where his nearly 20 years of experience across various industries fuel the company’s growth and innovation. With a decorated background featuring honors like TBBJ 40 under 40 and the CRN Next-Gen Solution Provider Leader, Tennant’s leadership has been pivotal in securing BlueCloud’s position as a partner of choice for tech giants. His vision has led to milestones such as the Snowflake Elite Services Partner Designation and numerous awards for channel partnerships. Tennant is an advocate for leveraging Generative AI, Machine Learning, and Data Governance to deliver business value and is open to discussions about joint ventures that push the boundaries of technology and strategy.
In the first of a four-part series, join Doug Green and Megan Howse, SVP of Marketing at iQmetrix, as they discuss this October’s upcoming SummitX 2024—the only event of its kind focused on telecom retail. Megan explains how the much-loved Summit event brand was resurrected after demand from the telecom industry and how it has been revitalized as SummitX, with a fresh agenda and an incredible venue.
About SummitX
SummitX by iQmetrix is the only event of its kind with a focus on telecom retail and Interconnected Commerce. We bring together all stakeholders from the industry, creating an interconnected community space packed with thought-provoking content, idea-sharing with industry professionals, and unmissable networking. We also make sure there are some great experiences and lots of fun along the way — including an epic mountainside party that you’ll never forget!
X is for the great experiences we’ll create.
X is for interconnectivity and intersectionality.
X is for the 10 (long) years since our last Summit.
SummitX is being held October 27-29, 2024 at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort and Spa, Arizona. For more information and to register, visit www.iqmetrix.com/summitx.
About iQmetrix
iQmetrix is the only provider of Interconnected Commerce software solutions for telecom retail. Interconnected Commerce is a complete set of software and technologies that are modular, flexible, and have telecom-specific capabilities, enabling telecom retailers to provide an uplifting experience for their customers. We empower telecom retailers to transact, activate, and fulfill products, as well as operate their business, and unify the online and in-store experiences. Our solutions powered $17BN in sales last year, and are used by 370,000 telecom retail professionals across almost 1,000 clients. iQmetrix is a privately held SaaS company with global employees. For more information, visit www.iqmetrix.com.
The SKYBOXE 5G Fixed Wireless Access Router is basically a 3rd party device that will be available to business and home users where a long-term contract with one of the big three does not make sense. It will allow the consumer to pick and choose the components that they would like for their service.
Mitch WeinraubDon Witt with The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, speaks with Mitch Weinraub, Chief Product Officer at SKYBOXE about the channel they are developing. Initially, business and home consumers can purchase the 5G Wireless Access Router and UScellular service through SKYBOXE. Consumers may also purchase the technology through UScellular’s resellers and ecosystem. As SKYBOXE brings on additional carriers, their channels will also be offering the SKYBOXE solution.
Carriers looking to enhance their product portfolio should check out the SKYBOXE 5G Fixed Access Wireless Router.
Listen in as Mitch provides some good insight into their technology and to the SKYBOXE channel strategy with a peak at what is to come in the future.
About: Creating new and better avenues for 5G adoption
SKYBOXE® is paving the way for 5G.
They’re a leader in providing an application-based platform that accelerates 4G and 5G wireless broadband adoption in ways you can’t imagine.
Their phones were designed with mobility in mind, but 5G is about more than just mobility. With companies investing billions of dollars in 5G infrastructure, SKYBOXE is providing a way for businesses and consumers to access broadband applications that’s better than what they’d normally get from traditional ISPs and pay-TV operators.
For more information, go to: https://www.skyboxe.com
Cavell Summit North America 2024 Set To Help Explore Industry Challenges As Cloud Communications Transforms, Podcast
What can you do as a business to differentiate and be successful in the future?
“We’re seeing the markets in a bit of a slate of flux at the moment, a lot of people are trying to understand: what is their role,” says Dom Black, principal analyst at Cavell. “What is the role of the channel? How do we differentiate from each other? Every single product is looking pretty similar out there. So, what can you do as a business to differentiate and be successful in the future?” The survey involved over a thousand decision-makers, including people from across the industry. “We provide in-depth research looking at how the markets are changing and helping service providers, vendors, MSPs, and channel organizations understand what is the role of their technology stack, how that is going to change in the future, and what they can do to be successful selling that.”
Next week, the Cavell Summit North America 2024 will occur in New York City, bringing together the leaders, innovators, and thought leaders in the cloud communications industry. Cavell’s highly regarded State of the Market report will be presented right at the start of the event, along with remarks from Cavell Director Matt Townend. That report will set the stage for a packed schedule of presentations, panels, and more.
“We’ve got the likes of Zoom, Microsoft, Cisco, Intermedia, 2600Hz/Ooma and Dstny, major telcos like Comcast, Verizon, and TELUS coming and speaking. We’ve got the CTO of Five9 coming to speak along with the CMO of Mitel coming to speak. we’ve got Vonage coming along to speak. If you’re not there we don’t know why you’re not.”
Cavell Summit North America
Focused on the US market, Cavell Summit North America presents the latest knowledge and opportunities within the UCaaS and CCaaS landscape to equip service providers, vendors, and investors with actionable insights. The1-day event consists of keynotes, panels, networking opportunities, and roundtable discussions from industry-leading providers and is led by Cavell’s research team who will be sharing their latest insights on the market. This event is for telcos, cloud communications service providers, MSPs, channel providers, and vendors who are looking to gain a greater understanding of the market and opportunities to maximize future growth. While in New York, don’t miss out on the CCA Financial Summit experience. Enjoy a networking dinner at Bryant Park Grill at 6 pm on October 1st after the Cavell Summit, followed by the CCA Financial Summit with breakfast and lunch the day after. Requires separate registration.**
Differentiation and specialization creates a path to growth in a competitive market
Jeff MillerIn this podcast episode, Jeff Miller, CEO of Synchronoss Technologies, spotlights the company’s role as a leader in the evolving landscape of secure and intelligent personal cloud solutions. As data privacy and security become increasingly critical, Synchronoss continues to innovate, setting itself apart from competitors with AI-driven functionalities and a strong emphasis on privacy-first approaches.
Miller discusses how the Synchronoss Personal Cloud has become the choice for global service providers like Verizon, AT&T, BT, and SoftBank, thanks to its ability to offer unlimited storage without compromising performance or security. He also dives into the integration of AI and machine learning, which optimizes photos and organizes digital content, elevating the user experience. Miller also shares a glimpse into the exciting developments on the near-term roadmap, highlighting how Synchronoss is poised to redefine the future of personal cloud services.
About Synchronoss
Synchronoss Technologies, a global leader in personal Cloud solutions, empowers service providers to establish secure and meaningful connections with their subscribers. Our SaaS Cloud platform simplifies onboarding processes and fosters subscriber engagement, resulting in enhanced revenue streams, reduced expenses, and faster time-to-market. Millions of subscribers trust Synchronoss to safeguard their most cherished memories and important digital content.
Research shows that revenue in the IT outsourcing market is projected to reach $512.50 billion USD in 2024. A big driver of this growth is the telecommunications industry, as operators are increasingly looking for niche expertise and proven digital transformation experience. Nowadays, the goal is to turn a telco into techco – a company able to rapidly implement new technologies, speed up time to market and be more adaptive to changing market conditions.
Joining the Cloud Communications Alliance presents a good opportunity to highlight how a reliable software partner can drive this kind of transformation, create new revenue streams and drive growth. While return on investment (ROI) and budget-friendly innovation are clear advantages, teaming up with external engineers and consultants goes far beyond cost-efficiency. Here are some of the most notable benefits a global technology partner can deliver:
Increased scalability: Companies that work with a software partner can access specialized skills and resources – on demand. This means scaling development efforts to meet project requirements without the constraints of recruiting and training new employees.
Enhanced focus: By outsourcing software product development, organizations can redirect their focus to core operations and strategic initiatives.
Bigger talent pool: Working with a global software partner widens talent pools and opens up access to a global network of skilled professionals.
Boosted efficiency: External software development experts who operate across different time zones offer the advantage of continuous work cycles.
Reduced risks: Outsourced software development can mitigate risks, reduce errors and speed up delivery. External engineers bring diverse industry experiences and domain expertise that enrich in-house specialists through knowledge-sharing and best practices.
If you want to learn more about Software Mind, watch Doug Green’s conversation with Software Mind’s Director of Development, Greg Goodwin.
About Software Mind
Software Mind is a global digital transformation partner with operations throughout Europe, the US and LATAM. Its engineering teams specialize in various sectors, especially the telecom industry, where Software Mind experts support leading operators, including Orange, Deutsche Telekom and O2. From innovative BSS/OSS development and cloud-native network functions development to DevOps, Cisco BroadWorks Professional services and Unified Communications solutions, their telco teams act as a one-stop shop for everything related to modern telecom software development.
Softwaremind.com
Joel DalyJoel Daly, Senior VP of Government Affairs and Product Strategy at Zayo, discusses the company’s expansion into Mexico, including its partnership with leading Mexican infrastructure provider Fermaca. Zayo, a leading communications infrastructure provider, is responding to increased demand from customers for connectivity in Mexico, now the U.S.’s largest trading partner. Zayo’s strategic expansion and partnership with Fermaca will allow the company to provide end-to-end fiber connectivity between the U.S. and Mexico, supporting industries that rely on massive data transmission, such as manufacturing.
Daly also emphasizes the growing significance of data connectivity in the region, driven by nearshoring and the surge of digital transformation in manufacturing. This partnership addresses both cross-border and rural connectivity challenges. As he explains, “If you don’t have cross-border and fiber connectivity coming from that border, you can’t move the data anywhere.” The collaboration will benefit enterprises, Mexican carriers, and channel partners, ensuring secure and reliable cross-border connectivity between the U.S. and Mexico.
There is a strategic importance to Mexico’s role in the region, especially as industries become more data-reliant with the growth of AI and automation. The new fiber infrastructure will make Mexico a critical hub for data transfer and connectivity in North America. Additionally, Zayo’s expansion and partnership with Fermaca opens up opportunities for channel partners and managed service providers (MSPs) to leverage this infrastructure to offer enhanced services. “It’s a win-win for both enterprise and channel partners, with a new level of connectivity and opportunity across the region,” Daly concludes, marking a pivotal step in strengthening digital and economic ties between the U.S. and Mexico.
Visit www.zayo.com
CCA Financial Summit Agenda, Jamie Hill, Zoom, Global Head of UCaaS
Jamie Hill“It’s really about monetizing voice and video in a world where a lot of the conversation and a lot of the perception is that voice is kind of a legacy technology and it is a technology that is going away in some respects when the reality, if you look at some statistics and you look at how we actually communicate, is it is still absolutely critical to all of our communications,” says Jami Hill, Global Head of UCaaS for Zoom. In this podcast we get a first glance at Jamie’s upcoming presentation at the CCA Financial Summit Event: Beyond the Buzz: Monetizing AI and Voice/Video Collaboration for Maximum Impact
This session will kick off with an overview of building cloud offerings through multi-vendor technologies, setting the stage for a deeper dive into innovative monetization strategies and new product revenue streams. Jamie will then outline the tangible customer benefits and ROI, providing a clear ‘sell-to’ value story. Expect to see detailed visuals that illustrate current revenue impacts from AI compared to other solutions like CX, as well as predictions on when AI may match or exceed these revenue drivers. Gain insights into how these technologies reshape financial outcomes and align with investor interests for sustainable growth.
“I want to talk about monetizing voice, part of that story is how do you drive, how do you deliver return on investment to your customers. How do you find those areas of savings? How do you find those areas of financial benefit that ultimately justifies the decision to deploy or implement a brand-new system? So that’s one piece. And the other piece is AI, in a world where a lot of the context is lost in audio communications. I mean, for the most part, statistics also show that in any given presentation, five minutes after that presentation, you only remember 10%.”
Visit www.zoom.com
Learn about the conference
https://www.cloudcommunications.com/events/financial-summit-2024
A new study from Sage, the leader in accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), reveals the evolving role of technology channel and reseller partners in the U.S. and Canada. The study indicates a shift from point solutions providers and integrators to strategic advisors for SMBs, unlocking significant growth opportunities and paving the way for greater digital agility. The report, ‘Small and medium-sized business demand for digital advisory services fuels IT channel growth’, surveyed 2,800 technology channel decision-makers globally, including in the U.S. and Canada, to better understand the key drivers impacting the IT channel and reseller market today.
Read the Press Release
Listen to the Podcast with Amaya Souarez, EVP, Cloud Services & Operations at Sage:
Oracle continues to expand the reach of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with the new AT&T IoT agreement, Andrew De La Torre, GVP of Technology & Oracle Communications, describes to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, how Oracles fast OCI architecture will work well with the extensive AT&T IoT implementations.@Don Witt, Reporting LIVE for The Channel Daily NewsAndrew De La Torre, GVP of Technology, Oracle CommunicationsThe Oracle and AT&T announcement is a major IoT partnering in the communication community. Andrew De La Torre, GVP of Technology, Oracle Communications, describes to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, how Oracles fast OCI architecture will work well with the extensive AT&T IoT implementations. The Oracle Enterprise Communication Platform (ECP) is effectively a horizontal platform that enables connected devices and real-time communications to be embedded into the Industrial solutions that Oracle produces.This covers several very diverse industries.These diverse industries can use embedded communication technology in their application development allowing them to participate in real-time communications at Oracles incredibly fast network speeds.Listen in to Andrew as he provides a very clear understanding of OCI and the security provided.About: Oracle Cloud is the first public cloud built from the ground up to be a better cloud for every application. By rethinking core engineering and systems design for cloud computing, they created innovations that solve problems that customers have with existing public clouds. They accelerate migrations of existing enterprise workloads, deliver better reliability and performance for all applications, and offer the complete services customers need to build innovative cloud applications. There are six key reasons customers are choosing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for all their cloud workloads. Far easier to migrate critical enterprise workloads Everything you need to build modern cloud native applications Autonomous services automatically secure, tune, and scale your apps Oracle Cloud provides the most support for hybrid cloud strategies Their approach to security—built in, on by default, at no extra charge OCI offers superior price-performanceListen in to Andrew as he provides a very clear understanding of OCI and the security provided.For more information, go to: Oracle
Theresa Szczurek has some advice on how to successfully sell your company, she’s done it three times.“First define the end you want,” says Theresa Szczurek, PhD. Theresa has decades long experience in technology. She has served as the CIO of the State of Colorado, a calling which included serving on the state cabinet while seeing to the need’s technology of thousands of state workers and vital agencies. She has also developed and sold companies, and this time it is sale number three.In this podcast, Theresa lays out her advice. It begins with knowing what you want. Persist. Find a buyer with technology alignment. See the money. Be sure it’s real. Listen and watch because in just a few spare minutes we see all of her hard-earned suggestions for sale.Theresa is available to help with your process and for speaking engagements for groups.www.TMSWorld.com
Vonage Names Kristy Thomas Senior Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances“The channel is a critical part of that growth strategy,” says Kristy Thomas, Senior Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances for Vonage. “Today, the channel is critical to Vonage. A majority of our revenue that comes into our organization is through indirect routes to market. Just two months ago Kristy Thomas returned to Vonage, now as the new leadership role. “We'll continue to invest in the channel as a route to market.” That commitment aligns with Ericsson, which is also committed to the channel. Ericsson completed the acquisition of Vonage in 2022.We learn that Kristy sees a value approach as the way forward in the Vonage’s support of the partners and in turn what the partners are offering their customers. “By bringing that value and being an extension to the IT buyer or additional stakeholders within an organization, the relevance of an MSP or technology advisory firm is stronger than it ever has been because there's just so much noise out there. I say that it is also our job at Vonage to educate our partners on market trends, on what's happening from a buyer behavior, what are best practices when buying communications or CX technology so that they can be more relevant to their customers and helping them make an informed decision when there's so much going on.”“Now more than ever, businesses are looking to technology advisory firms or MSP firms to help them make informed decisions on technology buying because innovation is happening so fast,” Kristy adds. With that in mind, Kirsty gives us a glimpse of more opportunities for the partners as we learn about leveraging AI.Visit www.vonage.com
Empowering the MSP Community: MSP Seminar for Growth, MSPAA TEBO Event“I always like to say that in order for an MSP to really be successful with regards to cybersecurity or specifically with cybersecurity is it has to be internalized before it can really be evangelized,” says Chris Johnson Sr. Director of Cybersecurity Compliance Programs at CompTIA. Chris is the opening keynote speaker at MSPAA’s TEBO conference in Denver, October 9 and 10. “Pick something, start with something. You don't have to do it all at once.” Chris urges a step-by-step process of creating an internal cybersecurity culture, and then utilizing those gains with the clients. “The only way you can take on a whale client is one bite at a time.” Accordingly, the path to building a cybersecurity culture is done in achievable steps, and not all at once.In this podcast, Chris gives us a glimpse of what he will share with the MSPs. “We're here for those members, for those MSPs that are just coming into the space, or maybe they've been there a long time, but they're suddenly feeling the need to tackle cybersecurity, whether it's through insurance requirements or clients asking for proof or evidence to support what they're doing.”Chris Johnson has a diverse work experience in the field of cybersecurity and technology. Chris currently holds the position of Sr. Director of Cybersecurity Compliance Programs at CompTIA since June 2022. Prior to this, they worked as the Technology Director at Mount Pleasant Community School District from July 2018 to June 2022.Chris also served as a Compliance and Security Advisor at onShore Security from July 2018 to May 2022, and earlier as a Cybersecurity Compliance Strategist from July 2017 to June 2018. In addition, they worked as a Cyber Security Consultant at Pinpoint Solutions LLC from November 2017 to May 2022. Chris also has experience as an Adjunct Professor at Greenville University, where they taught from August 2015 to May 2019. Chris has served as an Advisory Board Member at MyDigitalShield, Inc from December 2016 to August 2018.Chris has held various roles at WheelHouse IT, including Compliance and Security Advisor, Director of Compliance and Security Strategy, and Director of Strategy and Business Development from July 2016 to June 2018. Chris has also worked as a Medical IT Consultant at Progent from February 2012 to April 2018. Chris is the Co-Founder and CEO of Untangled Solutions, a technology workflow provider for SMB medical practices, from March 2003 to July 2016. Lastly, Chris served on the Partner Advisory Committee at LogMeIn from March 2013 to December 2014.Chris Johnson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Managing Information Systems from Greenville University, where they studied from 1995 to 1999.
MSPs Can Leverage Evaluations from IFT’s Operational Assessments to Deliver Value-Added ServicesBURNABY, BC - September 5, 2024 - According to ongoing Operational Assessment projects from leading business process outsourcing company Integrated Financial Technologies (IFT), there are six back-office areas where many businesses lack efficiency— and these areas represent significant opportunities for MSPs. IFT has identified business processes that are typically in need of improvement including the use of antiquated technology, inadequate data storage, siloed departments, the assignment of specific employees as a single point of information, the inability to cross-sell products, and lack of corporate documentation.During its assessments, IFT reviews each organization’s processes, workflows, procedures, and infrastructure to help evaluate operations. Based on assessment results, IFT offers recommendations on how end-companies can optimize their workflows and procedures. Managed service providers can target these areas to provide services that best meet these needs and address the deficiencies of the business community.Tod Chisholm“Many of the organizations we assist are successful companies with effective practices, but we find there is always room to drive efficiency and lower costs. This opens the door for MSPs to work with us and fill those technology and service gaps,” said Tod Chisholm, president at IFT. “We typically go on to fulfill opportunities in close to 75 percent of the organizations we assess. In the end, the process delivers value to businesses, while enhancing the MSP’s customer relationships and establishing new revenue streams.”The top areas for improvement revealed by IFT’s assessments include:- Use of legacy technology: Many organizations rely on networking systems, applications, and processes that are outdated. This creates complex environments that are difficult to manage and upgrade. As an example, IFT found that many companies still depend on manual data input compared to automated systems for tasks like data processing, employee scheduling, CRM, and other crucial areas of documentation.- Data storage: A surprising number of organizations utilize on-premises data storage systems, such as on-site server closets that house much of their data. In contrast, cloud-based systems offer increased security and redundancy, often delivering automated back-up and fail-over systems to protect against downtime and data loss in the case of an outage or disaster.- Assigning staff as a single point of information: Many companies assign a single person to know everything about a product or job function, such as payroll, CRM, or software development. If that person decides to leave the company—or suffers a serious illness—disaster looms. Ideally, company knowledge should be shared with several employees to create redundancy.- Inability to cross-sell: Many businesses are unwilling to cross-sell added services, leaving money on the table. Companies can use historical data to turn any inbound customer service inquiry into a sales opportunity. Remember, existing customers already have a propensity to buy, so savvy businesses should use nearly every interaction as a sales query.- Siloed communications: At both small and large companies, there is a tendency for departments to use disparate technologies and proprietary processes. The inability to freely communicate and share information via common platforms and procedures between departments impacts productivity.- A lack of company-wide documentation: Even businesses that maintain organized, company-wide processes typically do not document procedures and best practices in any concrete way. Communication of workflows, customer engagement practices, personnel policies, and job postings should be provided in a format that is accessible to the entire organization. This helps to create consistency and equity throughout the company,
AT&T APEX is a title sponsor of the upcoming TEBO/MSPAA conference in Denver, Rick Chapes will be delivering one of the opening keynotes
“The APEX model is a collaborative model,” says Rick Chapes Business Center Vice President for AT&T Partner Exchange. “APEX, which stands for AT&T Partner Exchange, is a resale program within AT&T’s indirect distribution channel called Partner Solutions. And we work with the MSPs to help them complement their services so that they could develop more of a robust offering in the market.”
Rick will be one of the featured keynote speakers at the upcoming TEBO Conference, Denver CO October 9-10. The event has limited seating and represents a special value-added benefit of membership in the MSPAA.
Rick sees the MSP community as reflected in three pillars: digitization, cloud networking or cloud platforms, mobility. In this podcast, Rick tells us how he sees MSPs advancing on three fronts. “We can educate the MSPs to better understand connectivity and integrate the connectivity into their managed service offering. We’ll also be touching on security as well at TEBO. AT&T Partner Exchange’s strategy is really the best connectivity provider in America, the best proposition for our MSPs. We’re going to continue to invest in our 5G network and in our fiber networks so that we can enhance our next level network capabilities… which will enable the MSPs to integrate those services into their product offerings so they can develop a compelling offer in the market.”
https://www.tebo-denver.com/#/?lang=en
You can integrate between the products very easy, no licensing. Same advantage is for the MSPs and for the channels. They can offer more services. Channel can offer to his customers more product that he doesn’t need to have ten or fifteen different products to come to his end user, for his customer.
Gal Naor“We are a pure software,” says Gal Naor, CEO of StorONE. “You can mix between drives. You can start with SSD with one vendor and later to mix another drives. We are software only that we don’t have any other dependency. and you give you all the flexibility to mix between hardware. It could be any server, it could be any vendor, it could be physical or even virtual, as we mentioned that we can operate in the cloud. It could be any location, it’s hybrid, it could be on-prem, it could be hybrid cloud, it could be multi-cloud.”
In this podcast, Gall takes us through an introduction to StorONE and their unique approach to storage.
Recently, StorONE collaborated with Accessium Group, a premier healthcare consulting firm specializing in IT services, to deliver high capacity, high performance, HIPAA-compliant storage solutions to the healthcare market. This partnership has successfully enhanced data management capabilities in critical medical fields such as radiology, cardiology, pathology, neurology, and ophthalmology. StorONE’s high-performance storage solutions, powered by cutting-edge technologies like NVMe and advanced tiering algorithms, ensure lightning-fast access to medical images, reducing retrieval times, enhancing data access speeds, and minimizing latency issues. These improvements are critical for timely diagnostics and treatment.
Gal outlines how these technologies can be used in HIPPA related environments, and also in many other industries.
“You can integrate between the products very easy, no licensing. Same advantage is for the MSPs and for the channels. They can offer more services. Channel can offer to his customers more product that he doesn’t need to have ten or fifteen different products to come to his end user, for his customer. It can come just with one product that can provide all the storage services and all the storage use cases.”
Additionally, StorONE has reinforced its support for HIPAA with the latest version of its S1 software. This version offers an enhanced set of security features that act as the last line of defense in the event of a cyberattack in a healthcare setting. Key features include:
- Auto-Tiering, dynamically transferring sensitive data for optimal utilization
- Lockable and Immutable Snapshots that ensure the integrity and consistency of data, helping healthcare organizations meet regulatory requirements for data retention and protection
- Ransomware and Rapid Recovery, providing well-defined procedures and tools to detect, respond to, and recover from ransomware attacks
- Multi-Admin Approval: Ensures multiple admins and consensus decision-making to prevent unauthorized access, with data security managed at the storage layer
- Anomaly Detection and Audit Logs: Identifies security threats, system malfunctions, and other irregularities, essential for robust cybersecurity
About StorONE
Headquartered in New York, StorONE offers the only 100% enterprise software that abstracts hardware and software without any hardware dependency. Our unique technology is designed for high-capacity with high-performance storage solutions. With an eight-year investment in completely rewriting the storage stack from the ground up, StorONE maximizes drive utilization, dramatically reducing the number of disks required and providing state-of-the-art data protection against security threats.
StorONE provides ONE software solution for all storage use cases, supporting any storage protocol, disk type, or location, whether on-premises or in the cloud. By integrating data integrity, retention, protection, replication, and security features into a single product, StorONE simplifies operations without requiring additional applications or payments.
“We are basically in the top performing MSPs,” says Ahmed Mahmood, President Ocean Solutions. “We’ve been growing somewhere between 70 and 150% over the past four or five years. We’re staff of about 18 employees now, and we support about 4,500 users across the entire country here. We have clients all over the US. We have some clients with international presence and our focus on cybersecurity and our focus on taking on the responsibility completely of our clients not just kind of break fix or certain tasks in most cases.” Ahmed will join Aida Keehner, CEO of Atruent and Marlo Alexander Owner, Bosque IT on the upcoming MSP Panel Discussion at TEBO. In this podcast we get a look at that panel, and some insights on how Ocean Solutions is achieving success as an MSP.
“Now you all of a sudden need to understand a lot more than a single industry you are in,” says Ahmed. We learn that MSP success today means being on top of the niche markets, verticals or other defined industries, that your MSP serves. Ahmed discusses how he has guided his company to growth. “I would encourage everybody, and I look forward to meet everyone that is going to have the time to meet us at TEBO. It’s going to be nice interactive discussion panels. We’re trying to give back to the community… Our job is trying to also get our community to work together to improve and help each other.
About the Panel
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) often face complex and challenging discussions with their clients and internally within their organizations. Here are some of the most difficult topics we might tackle during this panel discussion.
- Client Expectations and Satisfaction: Managing client expectations, especially when they are unrealistic, and ensuring high levels of satisfaction can be challenging. This often involves difficult conversations about what is feasible and the potential trade-offs involved.
- Security Threats and Compliance: Addressing cybersecurity threats, compliance with regulations (like GDPR, HIPAA), and managing risk can be particularly challenging. MSPs need to stay ahead of emerging threats and ensure their clients are protected while navigating complex legal requirements.
- Staffing and Resource Allocation: Discussions about staffing levels, resource allocation, and managing internal workloads can be challenging, especially if there’s a mismatch between client demands and available resources.
- Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) for Managed Service Providers:
- Financial Health: Evaluating the financial stability and performance of potential M&A targets.
- Operational Compatibility: Assessing how well the operations, systems, and cultures of the companies align.
About Ahmed Mahmood
Information technology leader experienced in architecture deployments, system design deployments, and complex project management. Expertise in current Microsoft systems, wired and wireless network designs and implementation engineering with innovative approaches to security while utilizing best practices as an essential part of every venture. My diverse assignments as a VCTO and senior systems engineer have provided me an unparalleled practical advantage whether troubleshooting a minor issue or reshaping a high-capacity server environment.
“We can now provide lead qualification as a service using AI and help reduce operating costs that traditionally would have been involved in that entire sales funnel,” says Paul Kleen, founder and CEO of Pitchit. Pitchit’s LQaaS takes on the heavy lifting of those very first few steps in the sales process, which can be very hard on people. The AI assisted process takes the brunt of that challenge, leaving a company’s sales force to take on qualified leads and a lead flow that is matched up, better, the way each individual might want to connect. “Voice is not always the best way to get ahold of these people.”
Pitchit’s LQaaS platform, available today, automates the first 24 hours of manual labor required to qualify inbound leads. To date, Pitchit has helped telecom and insurance sales teams qualify 531,000+ leads, save 4,400+ labor hours, book 4,000+ meetings, and close $280 million in customer revenue. Customers using Pitchit experienced a 250% increase in their lead qualification rate, on average.
Pitchit’s industry-first AI LQaaS solution can sync leads from 7,000+ channels — social media, CRM, email, SMS, and more — to quickly quote pricing, book meetings, handle objections, and capture personally identifiable information (PII) before handing qualified leads off to a human sales rep. By focusing on purchase-ready leads, brands with a large volume of B2C sales across multiple consumer touch points can dramatically increase sales qualified lead (SQL) conversion rates, lower the time and cost associated with every sale, and maximize revenue per sales representative. In addition, by reducing sales friction, brands can offer their customers a faster and more personalized sales experience while reducing costs.
In this podcast, Paul gives us a guided tour of LQaaS. While there are clearly some intriguing consumer-facing applications, we also catch a glimpse at some B2B opportunities. As the portfolios of MSPs and MSSPs expand, could this be a platform that finds leads, lining up undiscovered sales processes by matching product, service, need and more?
Visit www.pitchit.ai
“We work in a very customized way on these opportunities to, our trainers will meet with our service provider, understand the end customer, and then there will be a meeting with the end customer stakeholders and our service provider customer to really come up with a customized training agenda that meets the needs of their business,” says Katie Merrill Founder and CEO of B-Lynk. In this podcast, we learn how training is very critical to the entire SaaS industry. The success of many technologies depends on the non-technology workers being able to comfortably use what’s in front of them. B-Lynk offers several approaches to the learning and training challenge: videos, guides, digital books, and content that fits with local language needs.
Customization
“A real bread and butter of our offer has been, end customer end user training,” Katie adds. Different customers need different things. “We work in a very customized way on those opportunities. Our trainers will meet with our service provider, understand the end customer, and then there will be a meeting with the end customer stakeholders and our service provider customer to really come up with a customized training agenda that meets the needs of their business. They know exactly what their agents are going to learn, exactly what their supervisors are going to learn. And then we deliver that training as a service. And if needed and necessary, we can create video content to follow along for future training beyond that initial onboarding.”
Migration as an Opportunity
“I look at migration as really for service providers as an incredible opportunity to reconnect with their customers during this migration process,” says Katie. We learn how partnering with B-Lynk can open new opportunities. Katie also reminds us that “a bad migration is a bad migration.” Not thinking through the training portion can lead to a failed migration and to churn. A service provider can end up on either end of a spectrum of great to terrible experiences.
Visit https://b-lynk.com/
Survey finds 1 in 10 organizations haven’t begun migration process, while POTS lines remain present in companies where migration is underway
Migration option can be an upgrade
“We found that 90% of enterprise customers are already moving towards some sort of POTS replacement,” says Clinton Fitch of Ooma. “They either have a plan in place or they’re doing pilots or something along those lines. What that means, though, is that 10% of those being surveyed had no plan. And it really is now a rush to get it done.” Clinton shares with us the finding of a recent survey they conducted with Foundry. Foundry is the parent company of CIO Magazine.
Ooma has been on the frontlines of the migration process for two decades. Today, Ooma offers AirDial, a device that meets the needs of customers with POTS lines in places such as elevators. The traditional connectivity of POTS remains a requirement in these locations, but the intentional sunset of POTS lines means that many organizations are faced with uncharted territory. They must meet regulatory requirements to offer POTS functionality, in a a post-POTS environment. “We’re seeing customers that are seeing anywhere from three to 800% bill increases month over month,” adds Clinton. The obligations that governed POTS, are gone or are going.
In some cases, organizations have only discovered their immediate need to get on top of migration because their critical POTS lines have simply been shut down. This can now occur without warning or notification. In many localities, a disruption would place the building or facility as being non-compliant. A company retrofitting a building might discover that even occupancy might be held up there’s nothing to replace the previous points that had POTS services.
Life-safety systems are covered by regulations – such as NFPA 72 for fire alarms and ASME A17.1 for elevator phones – that have specific requirements for POTS replacement, such as making sure the device uses a private network rather than sending data over the public internet. Not all POTS replacement devices are compliant.
We learn that the survey found that people are hoping to not only remain in compliance, and avoid price surges, they also hope to find solutions that integrate with the rest of their technology stack.
In this podcast we learn that Ooma AirDial, meets compliance requirements, offers full integration, with an upgrade. “With AirDial, we’ve built in a lot of technology into this, and we’ve built in a lot of notifications as well. Customers will know if something’s going on with that device, or they know if a device has gone offline, or if it’s gone on battery power, if you’ve lost power, for example, wherever the device sits. But you can also get notifications on if a call happens.”
Ooma offers help, advice and resources finding out the status of these needs across the organization. Ooma suggests and can help with an audit of the phone lines, as a first step in mapping out the migration process.
Visit www.ooma.com/airdial
Addressing Multi-UC Challenges in Voice Environments for UC Partners
Number management across multiple UC platforms is a headache – complex, inefficient and manual configuration. It’s time for a fully unified solution. That is one of the key points that Mark Bunnell, COO of Nuwave makes in this CCA (Cloud Communications Alliance) and TR Publications, podcast. Mark discusses the current challenges UC partner organizations face in Multi-UC Voice environments and how to reduce complexity and power-up time to go live. “Efficiency saves money,” says Mark. “We’re a service delivery platform.”
Nuwave is offering a path to simplify labor intensive process, freeing up skilled staff time. Mark outlines how Nuwave shrinks time and bandwidth needed to perform complex tasks such as migrating an organization from legacy and on prem networks. “We understand the carrier space,” Mark adds, noting that, “…you don’t need an engineering degree” to use Nuwave. That means that Nuwave’s clients are able to free up their most skilled technical labor time, for higher functions. Nuwave’s iPILOT integrates different management portals and sync analytics.
We gain insight into Nuwave’s innovative strategies to streamline number management, migration tools, and unified management platforms. Mark walks us through how Nuwave is enabling UC partners to consolidate infrastructure, thus reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and enhancing revenue generation. The podcast looks at the the opportunities for partners to improve service management efficiency and scale up in the market. The podcast looks at the significance of these developments in 2024 for UC partners working with Microsoft Teams/Zoom/Webex amongst other UC platforms,revealing the ‘hockey stick’ moments for UC consolidation and revenue growth.
Visit www.nuwave.com
“There is a large and huge opportunity for MSPs and MSSPs to provide those services to help the SMB market to be better prepared for compliance, for vendor assessment, to protect themselves against cyber-attacks,” says CEO and Co-Founder of Cynomi, David Primor. In this podcast, David Primor discusses how vCISO platforms are transforming the MSSP and MSP sectors, who and what Cynomi is, David’s ideas behind establishing the company, and the recent news of Cynomi’s expansion to Europe. In the spring, Cynomi brought its strategic cybersecutiy offerings to Europe.
David Primor“We see a demand from enterprise companies that require the vendors to be protected and to show that they are protected. We see lots of insurance companies that require the companies to show and to demonstrate that they are protected.” Demand is not limited to the entperise, and the threat is now ubiquitous. Medium and small organizations are vulnerable. David outlines how Cynomi offers the tools MSPs and MSSPs need, to meet the challenge, in a scalable, affordable manner.
The Cynomi vCISO platform allows MSPs and MSSPs to ensure their clients comply with regulations and cybersecurity frameworks. Cynomi provides guidance on a client’s stance in complying with standards and regulation, and what they need to do to attain full compliance. Cynomi’s support of GDPR, DORA, NIS2 and other regulations and frameworks is dynamic, always up to date and expanding, as needed.
Cynomi is the only vCISO platform provider that sells exclusively through the channel. Cynomi partners typically see improved client retention, increased recurring revenue, and upsell opportunities, and the ability to standardize processes and automate procedures across clients for operational efficiency.
About Cynomi
Cynomi’s vCISO platform empowers MSSPs, MSPs, and consultancies to offer structured cybersecurity services to SMEs at scale and provide them with proactive cyber resilience. Combining proprietary AI algorithms with CISO-level knowledge, Cynomi helps partners overcome the cybersecurity skills gap and scale their security and compliance businesses, allowing them to offer new services. See more at cynomi.com.
Shuru East Europe ITAD is part of the ASCDI’s growing presence in the EU and UK markets
“We are here to help you out and to find solutions for you in in Europe,” says Shilo Levi, CEO of Shuru East Europe ITAD. Shuru has joined the ASCDI and is an ITAD company. In this podcast, Shilo outlines why ITAD is important, needed, and has added regulatory challenges in the EU market. Shuru can help companies with the EU ITAD needs and understands the complexity of doing business in the EU.
“If you have a cargo in Holland, you cannot transport it to be treated in Austria. They demand, the European compliance demanded it to be done locally to minimize all the transportation of the waste. And if you transport the waste, for example, from one facility to another or to a smelter, you need to have like a notification, you know, to have like a license from the Ministry of Environment of the countries that even if you’re going to cross. For example, if you have in Italy, you must cross to Denmark. All the countries that you’re crossing, they have to be aware that transport of cargo X is passing. It’s a process that is complicated, but we are helping clients to have this or to have solutions.”
Staying on the right side of the logistical rule book is one part. Making sure your data is secure, is another.
“The most important thing of a company is to make sure that the data is destroyed, that the data is perfectly eliminated, and you have all the documentation for that. And this is what we are offering to the organizations. we’re helping them to manage properly the stuff to have document first to know what they have and first and after that to have a paperwork for everything for everything that it was properly destroyed and how it was destroyed.”
We learn about Shuru’s services in managing data security, logistics and value recovery.
Visit www.itad-solutions.eu/en/
User Group Meeting 2024, A NetSapiens Platform Event, Nashville, Tennessee, OCT 21 – 24, 2024
Crexendo, powered by NetSapiens, has passed the five million user mark. The milestone was achieved in advance of the NetSapiens Platform User Group Meeting, to be held in Nashville, October 21 to 24. In this podcast, Jon Brinton discusses their growing community of over 230 service provider partners, and other elements of growth. Brinton tell us about the Frost and Sullivan 2024 Best Practices Award, now among the twenty-four industry awards, earned by the Crexendo.
As CPaaS, UCaaS, and CCaaS continue to converge, Crexendo has worked to deliver what customers want, with scalable solutions and smooth migration paths. “We’re seeing a lot of former Microsoft, Metaswitch partners or Cisco BroadSoft partners, that are coming to us because we fashion ourselves as the champion of the independent service provider community.”
The upcoming User Group Meeting, already established as a key fall industry happening, will have added gravity this year, as the partners gather, representing between them an added million end users. Roundtables have been added to the agenda. This allows for a more bespoke, deeper learning experience. Gaining deeper understanding of the technologies being offered, finding ways to sharpen the sales process, and peer to peer opportunities to learn inside the NetSapiens community, are among the benefits for attendees.
https://ugm.netsapiens.com/
Contact Center and GenAI
Many of 8×8’s customers, and organizations in general, are trying to understand how to effectively implement AI, while still ensuring everything is safe and ethical. For many who have experimented with publicly available generative AI platforms, such as OpenAI, the results can be mixed or questionable. This is why it’s so important for organizations building generative AI engines to ensure the instructions, or prompts, for the creation of content or a graphic are clear and carefully managed to avoid embarrassing or incorrect automated AI responses.
In the contact center, the combination of generative AI and conversational AI often leads to better results as conversational AI is far more advanced in its readiness for contact center applications in terms of bounded responses and identifying the intent of the caller or user. However, we always recommend that organizations carefully examine the construction of the prompts used with generative AI in conjunction with conversational AI, allowing the organization to leverage AI while using a limited set of carefully worded instructions and user-provided data and documents that create boundaries around what the generative AI will introduce into the customer conversation. This will lead to better support, information, and an overall better experience for both customers and contact center agents.
8×8’s Products
8×8 Intelligent Customer Assistant Is a powerful, user-friendly conversational AI solution that enables businesses to create instant, effortless, and engaging self-service digital and voice experiences. 8×8 Intelligent Customer Assistant now supports human-like voice as well as digital interactions across multiple channels, regions, and languages to deliver automation and personalized experiences at scale.
The 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem is a program that allows customer-first organizations to enhance customer experience by deeply embedding cutting-edge technologies, including leading artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, into the 8×8 platform with persistent data to enhance business intelligence, insights, and analytics. The 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem transforms customer experience and engagement by democratizing seamless, next-generation, native integrations for organizations of all sizes without requiring complex, custom development or exorbitant overhead costs that have traditionally only been feasible for the largest enterprises.
8×8 Engage is an AI-powered, tailored solution that enables cross-organization customer engagement for enhanced customer experiences, fostering loyalty and driving business success. Intentionally engineered to address the distinct needs of customer-facing employees outside of the contact center, who may need to be mobile when handling customer interactions, 8×8 Engage bridges an organization’s CX journey gaps and empowers this underserved user base with the right-fit tools and capabilities for delivering consistent, successful outcomes.
About 8×8
8×8 is a leading provider of integrated contact center, voice communications, video, chat, and SMS solutions built on one global cloud platform. 8×8 uniquely eliminates the silos across the entire organization to power the communications and customer engagement requirements of all employees globally as they work together to deliver differentiated customer experiences.
In-home entertainment is coming full circle. The recent spate of mergers, bundles and strategic partnerships between streamers represents a return to form for in-home entertainment, balancing the anywhere-anytime access offered by streaming with the easy-to-navigate customer experience (CX) of traditional cable. Take it from someone who has been there every step of the way: Sean Casey, senior vice president of product management at CSG.
A veteran of the telecom-meets-entertainment industry, Casey started his career at Sprint TV, an early player in streaming video. His 20 years in the field inform a unique perspective on where in-home entertainment has been and where it is going. In this episode, Sean discusses the important role that collaboration between communication service providers (CSPs) and streamers will play at a time when CX is the primary differentiator in the competition to attract and retain customers.
Tune in to hear Casey’s thoughts on the transition back to integrated content options, the surprising edge that cable still has over streamers and why finding the right balance between old and new will be the key to meeting customers’ rising expectations.
For over 40 years, CSG’s technologies and people have helped some of the world’s most recognizable brands solve their toughest business challenges and evolve to meet the demands of today’s digital economy. To learn more, visit csgi.com.
By Tom Loozen (Senior Partner, Telecommunications), Adrian Baschnonga (EY Global TMT Lead Analyst), and Sören Grabowski (EY-Parthenon Global TMT Leader)
To thrive in the future, telcos must seek differentiators beyond network quality and adapt to changing ecosystems and market structures.
In brief
- The growth outlook for telcos is solid but unspectacular, based on core connectivity and continuing cost management allied to reliance on network quality.
- Industry leaders foresee pervasive changes to the sector in five years’ time, which today’s defensive strategies are not equipped to address.
- Rethinking business models and differentiators, and building new employee propositions and ecosystem positions, are vital for success on the road to 2030.
Telcos have reached an inflection point in their evolution. They are ever more focused on core connectivity and continue to drive new waves of organizational efficiency with the help of emerging technologies. However, industry ecosystems, stakeholder expectations and workforce needs are developing in new directions at pace. In this light, defensive strategies based on network quality and cost optimization may fall short of the more substantial transformation telcos need to achieve.
EY interviewed more than 60 C-suite executives from over 50 telecoms operators to understand their views about organizational priorities alongside the current and future state of the sector. In this article, we explore insights emerging from our research, underlining the dichotomy that exists between defensive near-term strategies and more radical future sector dynamics, and recommending key actions that telcos can take to ensure they remain fit for the future.
About the research
Between September 2023 and February 2024, EY-Parthenon conducted face-to-face surveys of 63 senior business leaders in the telecommunications sector to understand their business imperatives. The questionnaire explored a number of themes, such as the industry operating environment, strategy North Stars, near-term business priorities and the telco world five years from now. Respondents represented 29 countries — including 75% from Europe, 8% from Americas, 9% from Asia-Pacific, and 8% from Middle East and Africa — and featured a range of leadership roles, led by CEOs (32%) and chief strategy or transformation officers (21%). To participate in the survey, respondents were required to be leaders of a telco business function or unit.
Traditional growth drivers underpin a solid performance outlook
Survey respondents have a largely positive view of sector growth: more than half foresee sector revenues and EBITDA growing by 3% or more over the next three years. They are also confident of their own performance relative to their peers, with three quarters expecting to outperform the market over the same period. Inflationary pricing escalators built into consumer subscriptions have been supportive in some markets, indicative of wider resilience where customer spending has held up well in spite of the cost-of-living crisis, as highlighted in the EY Decoding the digital home study.
Looking ahead, two key drivers of profitable growth as cited by the management are: growth in the core connectivity business (67%) and margin development through additional cost reductions and efficiencies (60%). These twin forces score well ahead of adjacent market services or more innovative business models, with only one in three respondents highlighting growth beyond the core business or growth in platform, ecosystem or as-a-service business. That said, there are regional nuances at play: Asia-Pacific telcos are much more receptive to growth via platforms or ecosystems, cited four out of six telco leaders in the region.
Telco market growth outlook
This chart shows survey respondents’ expectations of telecoms market development in their own footprint in the next three years. The chart shows expectations for both revenue and EBITDA, and ranges from more than 5% growth through to more than 5% decline. The majority of respondents identified between 3-5% growth, 44% for revenue and 41% for EBITDA.
Network quality leadership: a defensive “North Star”
Industry growth expectations are also accompanied by a strategic North Star that tends to favor network quality. When asked which strategic persona most accurately reflects their organization’s long-term positioning, network quality leader (48%) emerges as the most popular choice, followed by full digital services provider (37%). Both have premium connectivity as a foundation: the key difference between the two personas pivots on the breadth of the service portfolio. Other potential North Stars — the data utility that focuses on value-driven, basic connectivity and the digital InfraCo that wholesales connectivity — rank much further back.
The preferred positioning as network quality leader does come with caveats attached. Many senior executives highlighted that network performance gaps between competitors are eroding as infrastructure coverage and speed levels become more uniform within markets. As one CEO underlined: “Today, everybody has the same network. We all say we have the best network, but the customer experience between a good and bad network is imperceptible to the end user.”
Others pointed to previous failures to monetize new digital services as reasons for prioritizing network quality, underlining its role in a fundamentally defensive strategic mindset. Tellingly, network modernization itself ranks only fifth out of nine near-term strategic priorities overall, suggesting that network upgrades are not actually top of mind as a route to competitive advantage.
Telco strategy “North Stars”
This chart shows the percentage of respondents identifying the strategic positions that most closely align with their organization’s long-term positioning. Forty-eight percent of respondents stated network quality leader, 37% stated full digital service provider, 8% stated data utility and 6% stated digital InfraCo.
Widening competitive and compliance landscapes signal long-term risks to growth
While industry leaders favor defensive strategies predicated around high-quality network infrastructure, the sector operating environment is changing rapidly. Although financial performance is proving resilient in the face of macroeconomic headwinds, there are other factors to consider. The top challenges to delivering profitable growth cited by management are disruptive competition (56%) and regulatory or policy uncertainty (52%) — and perceptions of volatility and complexity accompany these pain points.
Looking ahead, disruptive moves from outside the sector will pose a growing threat, subverting telcos’ confidence that they will outperform their immediate peer group. Today, classical big telcos and mobile network operators (MNOs) loom large as perceived competitors, but survey respondents pointed to hyperscalers as becoming the dominant threat five years out, with satellite companies overtaking virtual mobile players. Leveraging network quality may help established telcos counter disruption from satellite providers but is less likely to act as a counterweight to hyperscalers’ capacity to innovate and disrupt. As one CEO put it: “Hyperscalers are eating into our B2B business; it would be easy for them to take control by acting as intermediaries, providing connectivity to customers.”
Meanwhile, regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), digital markets and network suppliers are all cited by more than one-third of executives as having significant impact on the telco sector in the next three years. As a result, effective management of the compliance burden will require better understanding of industry ecosystems outside the traditional telecoms value chain.
Evolution of disruptive competition threats
This chart shows which entities respondents considered to be the greatest disruptive competitive threats to their business now and in five years’ time. It lists the following: classical big telcos, hyperscalers, MNOs, governments, streaming platforms, altnets, systems integrators, satellite companies, tower companies and network vendors. Sixty-four percent of respondents state classical big telcos as their greatest threat now and 75% of respondents state hyper-scalers as their greatest threat in five years’ time.
There is room to raise the bar with near-term priorities
As telcos consider their priorities over the next three years, customer experience improvements lead the way, with many respondents keen to highlight the importance of ongoing product simplification as a key enabler. Improving organizational skills and talent rank second, with many telcos keen to overhaul their organizational DNA to bring in younger people with fresher thinking. Digitization, cost control and network modernization round out the top five.
These priorities align well with announced strategies, but do ambition levels travel far enough? When respondents are queried about key levers within each domain, some aspects are surprisingly muted. Simplifying products is rated twice as important as accelerating issue resolution in customer experience interactions. Attracting new talent dominates the people agenda, but the redefined employee purpose that can enable this is cited by just 10%, and the dangers of creating new silos persist. As one CFO highlighted: “It is challenging to get the right kind of talent. They think differently and they have different attitudes to work, compared with older generations.”
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) ranks behind software-based networks as a critical emerging technology — although executives expect it to grow in importance over the next five years while digital infrastructure sharing and cloud migration lack traction as drivers of improved operational efficiency. Upgrading and decommissioning infrastructure lead network strategy, with network energy efficiency and adoption of network application programming interfaces (API) much less prominent.
Top five strategic priorities for telcos in the next three years
This chart shows the most important strategic priorities for telcos over the next three years. Eighty-three percent of respondents state improving customer experience, 73% state improving organizational skills, talent and culture, 73% state digitizing systems and processes with emerging technologies, 67% state maximizing cost control and business efficiencies and 59% state driving network modernization.
Dissonant perspectives emerge as telcos consider the future state of the industry
The telco of today is confident in near-term growth prospects, trusting in network quality as a differentiator while aiming to overhaul skills, systems and processes as part of established transformation agendas. However, this near-term mindset stands at odds with the more radical view of the telco landscape in five years’ time articulated by industry leaders, who expect significant evolution in stakeholder expectations, sources of disruption and differentiation, market structures and ecosystem positions. This view jars with current strategies that prioritize core products alongside ongoing cost optimization.
Hyperscalers are perceived as the dominant disruptive threat to telcos’ business in five years’ time, but only 37% view business model overhaul as a strategic priority today. Only half of telcos surveyed believe that network quality will still be the most important differentiator in five years, calling into question their faith in core connectivity as a profitable growth driver. Fifty-nine percent believe most of today’s workforce will be upskilled or replaced, but very few see employee proposition and purpose as a focal point in their people agenda today.
Most believe that telcos will play a top role in cross-industry ecosystems, but ecosystem positioning does not rank as a top five strategic priority. Some do recognize this Achilles heel, with one CTO highlighting that “poor ecosystem collaboration is a challenge — way more than before, it’s important to have people who can accept trade-offs within partnerships.” Finally, 43% of industry leaders believe that telcos will split into NetCos and ServCos, but digital infrastructure through M&A ranks last as a near-term priority.
The dichotomy between the current and future state of the sector
- 75% see hyperscalers as a disruptive threat in five years, but only 37% view business model overhaul as a strategic priority.
- Only 53% think network quality will still be the most important differentiator in five years, below the 67% that cite core connectivity as their key profitable growth driver in the future.
- 58% believe most of today’s workforce will be upskilled or replaced in five years, but only 110% are redefining employee proposition and purpose as a people priority.
- 69% see telcos playing a top role in cross-industry ecosystems in five years, but only 32% are developing ecosystem relationships as a strategic priority today.
- 44% believe telcos will split into NetCos and ServCos, but only 16% are pursuing digital infrastructure M&A as a strategic priority today.
Conclusions and next steps
As telcos move forward with their transformation agendas, they should reconsider the foundational elements of their programs. Incremental improvements relating to network quality, customer experience, internal skills and digitization will still have a vital role to play. However, a more holistic and ambitious mindset that considers new points of differentiation, a clearer sense of organizational purpose and an evolving value chain position that considers adjacencies in infrastructure and software will be essential if they are to maximize long-term opportunities to create and enhance value. Key steps include:
- Reimagine the business model
Product simplification is an important route to greater efficiency but should not be a strategic end point. There is scope to overhaul business models, which can help widen addressable markets and counter disruptive threats emerging from outside the sector without over-extending the solutions portfolio. Exploring more wholesale-oriented concepts, such as network-as-a-service, supported by emerging technologies such as GenAI, will have an important role to play going forward.
- Look for new differentiators
Many operators still only trust network quality as a differentiator, even though they recognize that in-market network quality gaps between competitors are diminishing, challenging the average revenue per user (ARPU) uplift available through infrastructure upgrades. It is critical to seek new points of differentiation – from AI and ESG credentials through to network APIs – in order to position for long-term growth and break the reliance on new network upgrade cycles.
- Evolve the employee proposition
The demand for younger talent with digital and software-based skills is one of the strongest sentiments emerging in the survey. Yet, new skills and retraining will provide only short-term benefits unless they are accompanied by more pervasive transformation of organizational purpose and employee proposition, which will build a more sustainable talent pipeline. Internal collaboration should be an ongoing focus, particularly as new thinking enters the organization.
- Improve your ecosystem relevance
Partnering and ecosystem strategies require greater prioritization. Hyper-scalers are a growing example of a “frenemy” that offers new growth opportunities alongside disruptive risks. Exploring new value chain positions – supported by innovative ownership positions in legacy and adjacent markets – will help redefine the growth horizon for telcos. Better engagement with the developer community and industry verticals can help unlock and serve new demand scenarios.
- Prepare for new market structures
More telcos agree than disagree that the structure of the industry will change dramatically in five years, with a split of NetCo and ServCo capabilities. Exploring new operating models and organizational structures can help combine skills in new ways and also prepare for more radical “sell and separate” initiatives that are driven by business logic and not short-term financial gains. At the same time, it is critical to consider new consolidation scenarios as regulatory views change and new “scale up” opportunities appear.
Summary
Telco leaders need to ensure their current strategies are aligned with the industry landscape they expect to see in five years’ time. Will these strategies prepare them to operate and compete within that industry landscape?
The EY telco of tomorrow CXO study reveals a few mismatches between telcos’ focus today and their predictions for what the industry will look like tomorrow.
What Industry Leading ISPs are Saying about Upping their Security Game, Podcast with Radware’s Travis Volk, Podcast, Automation is driving down the cost of these attacks
“Automation is driving down the cost of these attacks,” says Travis Volk of Radware. “That means that the bad actors can cover smaller to medium businesses. We’re having to, as a community, try to alleviate the burden into a much larger addressable market.” After traveling across four continents and visiting with over 75 unique ISPs, Radware’s Travis Volk, senior vice president of global service providers, walked away with some interesting perspectives from industry leaders who are operating at the forefront of cybersecurity.
“Hackers are also leveraging AI for widespread vulnerability assessment. Imagine they can sweep huge address ranges very quickly and use AI to accelerate code revision like bot variants and script modifications. And eventually, you get into this LMM prompt-assisted campaigns where we have some research being done in the universities that show 85% improvement in penetration testing with, basic prompting and retries through LLM support.”
In this podcast, we discuss the top cyber threats they are facing
- Their challenges dealing with AI-empowered hackers who are exposing vulnerabilities a magnitude faster and moving down market to zero in on small businesses
- How they are coping with SOCs that are running exhausted
- Why layer 7 visibility, attack detection, and remediation are becoming more important
- Where they see blind spots in defense of distributed deployments
- What scaling modern protections have to do with the one aspiration they all share
“I think we need to be mentally to evolve as well. Layered protections allow better contextual security and with a means for scaling. Modern consumer and enterprise applications require Layer 7 defense. Adding capabilities into existing platforms offers a sense of reliability and control. I would caution people to evaluate platforms capable of addressing numerous market segments and risk tolerances. I think one of the real challenges that the cyber community faces are providing quality security to more businesses.”
Visit www.radware.com
How Towers and Data Centers can Capitalize on 5G Expansion, iconectiv Podcast, “Many tower and data center operators don’t have a complete understanding of their asset portfolios,” says Juan Carlos Ortiz, Principal for Corporate Business Development
As the demand for seamless 5G wireless coverage grows, tower and data center operators are in prime position to capitalize on its expansion, but many of them aren’t fully realizing these opportunities. In this podcast, Juan Carlos Ortiz, Principal for Corporate Business Development at iconectiv, explains how tower and data center operators can take full advantage of the opportunities arising from 5G expansion.
“Many tower and data center operators don’t have a complete understanding of their asset portfolios,” Ortiz said. “There is a standard nomenclature that service providers and their business partners have been using for decades to describe critical network resources in a consistent, descriptive and meaningful way, and that mechanism is called Common Language.”
About iconectiv
iconectiv provides services to secure digital identity, numerous data exchanges, registries, and other information as a service offerings. These address numbering intelligence, Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB), fraud prevention, as well as network and operations management for the global communications industry. It provides numbering services in more than a dozen countries, including serving as the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) for the United States. As a trusted partner of the communications ecosystem, iconectiv is dedicated to keeping people connected, businesses running and commerce flowing. This includes making sure incoming and outgoing phone calls and messages are verified and identified, and that communications service providers can trust the information in their systems and networks.
www.iconectiv.com
Ongoing challenges and gains in the big battle on illegitimate robocalling, TNS Podcast, The point is to enable a calling party who has a legitimate reason to contact a consumer to actually contact that consumer and get that consumer to be promoted or enhanced or encouraged to pick up the phone call and make the connection.”
“What’s the point of all this,” asks John Haraburda, Director of Product Management, of Transaction Network Services (TNS). The point is to enable a calling party who has a legitimate reason to contact a consumer to actually contact that consumer and get that consumer to be promoted or enhanced or encouraged to pick up the phone call and make the connection.”
The long struggle to curb illegitimate robocalling has seen progress and victories, but the battle has left scars on the effectiveness of outbound calling, as a communications tool. Too many people are seeing legitimate inbound calls, as spam.
In this podcast, we learn about a recent report TNS conducted on robocalling. We learn about trends and approaches to challenges. John also outlines the YNS approach.
- TNS Half Year 2024 Robocall Report: Smaller Carriers Increase Signed Call Traffic, But Interconnectivity Challenges Limit STIR/SHAKEN Gains
Transaction Network Services (TNS) analyzes more than 1.5 billion daily call events across hundreds of carrier networks to identify current robocall trends and scams while supporting over 125 service providers in North America (including four out of the top seven U.S. carriers). TNS’ latest Robocall Investigation Report found that while Tier-1 carriers have successfully implemented STIR/SHAKEN, smaller carriers still face connectivity challenges, leaving them vulnerable to AI-driven deepfake attacks and other scams. The Report found that although smaller carriers increased the total volume of signed call traffic in the first half of the year, there is a crucial transition period needed where carriers, regulators and telecom stakeholders must support smaller carriers’ network capabilities. The Report also shares some of the top robocall scams in 2024, including tax, elder and cryptocurrency scams, with political disinformation spreading through AI-generated robocalls remaining a significant concern ahead of the 2024 election.
About TNS
TNS, a market leader in call identification and robocall mitigation, provides an end-to-end ecosystem for protecting and restoring trust in voice calling. TNS addresses the full needs of wireless and wireline operators globally with TNS Call Guardian®, the industry-leading call analytics solution that protects subscribers from high risk and nuisance robocalls. In addition, its Enterprise product suite, including TNS Enterprise Authentication and Spoof Protection and TNS Enterprise Branded Calling, is taking the next step in enriching consumer engagement, making the voice channel an integral part of an omnichannel customer experience program. TNS analyzes over 1.5 billion call events across more than 500 operators every single day, enabling enterprises to protect their brand and consumers, and carriers to identify more unwanted robocalls.
Visit https://tnsi.com/
Momentum Recharge Changes the Game for MSPs and VARs, Podcast, CCA Member company strives to shake up market
“I think the MSPs have always struggled with, a lot of have struggled with, going into the telecom business or not going into the telecom business, Rick Garcia, EVP of Modern Work and Marketing at Momentum. “And when they want to dip their toe in, they quickly realize that it becomes very expensive to keep up from a regulatory perspective, to be able to include telco billing in their portfolio of services to deliver that one bill to the customer.”
In June, Momentum announced the launch of Momentum ReCharge. The innovative program enables Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Value-Added Resellers (VARs) to seamlessly add Teams Phone, Operator Connect, and Global Internet Connectivity to their portfolios. “It’s going to be a game changer for those MSPs. They will include telco services, predominantly Microsoft Teams Operator Connect, and broadband services from Momentum.” The program allows the MSPs to jump into the market, and resell the most popular services without having to climb billing, tax and regulatory hurdles.
“It’s going to be a game changer for those MSPs. They will include telco services, predominantly Microsoft Teams Operator Connect, and broadband services from Momentum.”
Momentum Recharge Changes the Game for MSPs and VARs
It gives them this door, this avenue to bring a new service and a new solution to their customers without a ton of heavy lifting, says Brandon Bradley VP of Modern Work & UC Innovation of Momentum. We learn that the program effectively hands an MSP an almost ready-made telecom practice.
In this podcast, we watch an illustrated presentation on the program. We learn how Momentum takes on the “heavy lift” of offering telecom. We also learn about Momentum’s extensive wholesale and retail businesses.
- Visit www.gomomentum.com
- Momentum Recharge Changes the Game
In part two of our series on generative AI, we continue our conversation with GoTo’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, Olga Lagunova, about the company’s vision for this transformative technology. We discuss GoTo’s application of GenAI for productivity and improved employee experience, including how different generations have reacted to the adoption of these tools.
As a large global workforce, GoTo employs individuals of all ages. In the GoTo product and technology team, about 80% of the organization is younger than 30. Olga says that despite the reputation that younger people, especially Generation Z, have for being difficult from a hiring standpoint, she has found that these employees are uniquely positioned to take advantage of emerging technologies.
“Generation Z grew up with digital tools and platforms… Now they’re coming to the workforce and joining companies like GoTo. They are bringing knowledge with them. They have learned what AI can and cannot do. They understand the pitfalls. They use it repeatedly and are excited about it,” said Olga Lagunova.
Regardless of age, enthusiasm and ability to learn are core traits that GoTo focuses on for its employees. By emphasizing the importance of community and a growth mindset, the company seeks to merge existing institutional knowledge with the latest technologies – ultimately, placing the human experience at the forefront of GoTo’s products and services.
Visit www.goto.com
Telcos to Technos, from MSPs to MSSPs, Viirtue Coro Partnership Creates a Pathway, Podcast, We really loved Coro for the ability.
“We believe the best value for our partners moving forward is going to be their ability to be that Swiss Army knife and to deliver all of these complex IT solutions to their customers” says Dan Rosenrauch of Viirtue. In this third and final part of a three-part series on Viirtue, we focus on how Viirtue is providing the tool set for their partners to remain that necessary technology vendor for their customers. We have a partnership coming with Coro, the cybersecurity vendor. It’s a very simple platform for an MSSP, especially who hasn’t done this before, to get into the system, understand what the different solutions do, what problems they’re solving, and to deliver those solutions right through our ecosystem.”
“It’s really going to enable our telcos and our MSP partners to become essentially full MSSPs with this one solution.”
Cybersecurity is the hottest topic, and the Coro partnership enables Viirtue partners to win in that space. “No one sells something that’s difficult to sell,” adds Dan, who explains the migration path of their partner community and how the Coro partnership delivers just the right set of tools, in a manner that’s just right. The Coro Partnership includes tight integration with Viirtue’s Viibe for quoting and billing.
- Mobile-First Rebuilt Quoting Experience, Viirtue Podcast
- Viirtue bets big on AI data center, SIP Trunking investments, Viirtue Podcast
About Viirtue, Inc.
Viirtue is an award-winning wholesale voice & UCaaS provider. Viirtue’s ViiBE platform transforms MSPs, VARs, ITSPs, Telcos and agents into digitized business communications providers. Visit www.viirtue.com
Does telecom have a future? The tale of two shows, Optiva Podcast, We can’t live without the digital oxygen of connectivity.
“I believe that connectivity is the digital oxygen of the digital age that we live in,” says Joy King, who’s the Vice President of Go-To-Market Strategies at Optiva. “There is no chance that telecommunications, the telecom industry is going away. We can’t live without the digital oxygen of connectivity. That’s the fact. But who will be the successful players in the telecom industry is what is really on the table.”
In this podcast, Joy discusses two events that occurred in June: DTW Ignite in Copenhagen and MVNOs World Congress in Brussels just a week later. “What was so remarkable was the tone, the doom and gloom of DTW Ignite, where CTOs, CEOs, and I’m talking Telstra, AT&T, companies that we all know, said that they are in a code red situation, that their revenue is declining, their profitability is a challenge, they are losing subscribers, what are they going to do? Yet a week later in Brussels, new market entrance, mobile virtual network operators, MVNEs, embedded mobile device manufacturers, they are saying, oh my God, this is amazing. We could do so much. Imagine smart homes and technology, transforming medical and healthcare and wearables. And it was quite a remarkable difference.”
“And this is where Optiva plays a very important role.”
Joy discusses how Optiva helps their clients lath on to the up-bound trends while providing simplicity. “They just want a software platform that makes it easy for them to deliver that customized, personalized experience. Optiva and BSS platforms in general, are a goldmine of data. The more data that a company can use, the better our experience will be because it’s not B2C or B2B, it’s B2Me.” We learn that Optiva can help new entrants and legacy companies, alike, to grab new opportunities.
About Optiva
Optiva Inc. is a leading provider of mission-critical, cloud-native revenue management software for the telecommunications industry. Its products are delivered globally on the private and public cloud. The Company’s solutions help service providers maximize digital, 5G, IoT and emerging market opportunities to achieve business success. Established in 1999, Optiva Inc. is on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:OPT). For more information, visit www.optiva.com.
In part one of our two-part series, we speak with Olga Lagunova, Chief Product and Technology Officer at GoTo, about one of the most pressing topics in technology today – generative AI. We dive deep into the utility behind GenAI, including how GoTo approaches this technology to improve employee and customer experience across industries and workforces.
GoTo is a global SaaS company providing solutions for business communications, contact centers, IT management, and IT support. The company serves 8,000 customers, ranging from small and medium organizations to large enterprises and MSPs. Over 1 billion people join meetings, classes, and webinars through GoTo’s communications products.
Olga says there is a significant opportunity to use generative AI to solve GoTo’s customers’ important problems, improving productivity and efficiency for businesses of all sizes. GoTo’s goal is to place the human at the center of its AI-powered products, in turn enabling enhanced customer experiences while making employees’ lives easier.
“The emotional connection with our products that GoTo customers have resonates with me the most,” said Olga Lagunova. “One of our small business customers told me, ‘It’s almost like I finally have a light on in my house. I can see what’s happening. It’s so profoundly changed the way we do work.’ This is what we want from our customers who use the products.”
The company’s usage of GenAI doesn’t stop with its customers. Internally, GoTo employees utilize GenAI tools to help with coding, development, and other tasks. This has helped to cut down on redundant, time-consuming work, while also empowering individuals with access to critical real-time information.
Visit www.goto.com
Easy On Hold collaborates with Microsoft to introduce first live streaming hold music integration for Microsoft Teams phone, Podcast
The big headline is Easy On Hold collaborates with Microsoft to introduce first live streaming hold music integration for Microsoft Teams phone, for music, for custom music, and message on hold solutions. In this podcast we learn how the seamless integration means simple “1,2,3 implementation”. But we learn more. Easy On Hold helps companies build and enhance their brand.
- Easy On Hold Collaborates with Microsoft to Introduce First Live Streaming Hold Music Integration for Microsoft Teams Phone Custom Music and Message On Hold solutions
Tim Brown of Easy On Hold tells us that the Teams default music “isn’t bad”. But its ubiquitous. We learn how Easy On Hold worked with Microsoft to build a unique experience. “This is really a big game changer.” Bespoke experiences are important. “We have an insurance company that has a line that you call for a certain kind of benefit. And if that’s a death benefit, you must be appropriate to that audience. If you’re talking about a membership, especially like with a credit union, that’s a different experience.”
“We wanted to develop something that was more like your own radio station. It’s cohesive.” Waiting for an agent can be many things. Easy On Hold seeks to transform that time into something curated and informative.
Visit www.easyonhold.com
Mediaocean, the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising, joins the Technology Reseller News podcast to discuss the 2024 Telecommunications Advertising Outlook Report.
In this episode, Amanda Glen Smith, the Chief Client Officer at Flashtalking by Mediaocean, delves into the key insights from the 2024 Telecommunications Advertising Outlook Report, highlighting the significant marketing trends poised to impact the telecom industry in the coming year.
Amanda and Doug discuss the wave of optimism among telecom marketers, with many planning to maintain or increase their spending across various channels, particularly in social media, digital display/video, and search. The conversation also covers the rise of generative AI as a critical consumer trend, its implications for personalized customer experiences, and the challenges it presents in terms of privacy and security.
Additionally, Amanda addresses the ongoing importance of performance-driven paid media, measurement and attribution capabilities, and the creative-media gap that represents a significant growth opportunity for brands in 2024. Tune in for a comprehensive overview of what telecom marketers can expect in the year ahead and how they can strategically navigate these emerging trends.
Visit https://www.mediaocean.com/reports
Revolutionizing MSP Operations with Mobile-First Quoting, AI Integration, and Bleeding-Edge VoIP Infrastructure at Viirtue, Part of 2 of 3**
“Your typical, you know, a small business on Main Street America doesn’t really understand how AI works or how it gets put together and integrated into their daily tools,” says Dan Rosenrauch of Viirtue. “We think that just positioning our partners to be the trusted expert on AI, could be a pretty special thing growing.” In this second part of a three-part series on Viirtue, we take on infrastructure and Viirtue’s work with their clients in this space.
In this podcast we learn how Viirtue is positioning their partners for success by opening a new data center, with a very considerable investment. AI requires state of the art infrastructure. “We have a commitment to ensure that our partners can deliver AI tools, we feel like MSPs and telcos are in a unique position to be the consultants for AI.”
“SIP trunking is still a huge business, and we’ve just invested over six figures into our SIP trunking network, which is cool. We did the opposite of what you think. With our investment, we can lower our overall costs and we’re looking to push those savings onto our partners. With this big investment into our SIP trunking network and some of the configurations we’ve done by optimizing our costs, we’re able to optimize our partners’ costs and therefore they can deliver a more affordable solution to their partners, or they can just take advantage of the better margins. Whatever works best for their business.”
About Viirtue, Inc.
Viirtue is an award-winning wholesale voice & UCaaS provider. Viirtue’s ViiBE platform transforms MSPs, VARs, ITSPs, Telcos and agents into digitized business communications providers. Visit www.viirtue.com
Srikrishnan Ganesan“In the professional services business, time is literally money,” says Srikrishnan Ganesan is the Co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane. “That’s what you’re selling. A typical use case is you need an approval from a client before you do the work you’re meant to do and you’re waiting on the client. Now, you reminded them today. Do you remind them again tomorrow? Does it get too pushy? These are decisions that individuals make and that’s subject to their interpretation of how intense they should be in that engagement. When you take that control away from a person and make it more system driven, where you can set the expectations early on saying, hey, here’s how we operate, here’s how intense our engagement will be. And that’s going to help all of us hold each other accountable and finish the project on time, on budget. I think everyone is better off and that’s what an automated system is going help you accomplish.”
In this podcast we look at the challenges organizations face in adopting AI for project management and underscores the essential role of AI-driven Professional Services Automation (PSA) software in revolutionizing project delivery and client collaboration. It emphasizes the significant losses due to inadequate project management and the lack of real-time data access for project managers.
Rocketlane, a leader in customer onboarding and PSA, addresses these challenges by integrating advanced AI technologies into its platform to streamline resource management, communication, and compliance, thereby enhancing project success rates and efficiency. Co-founder and CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan asserts that Rocketlane’s AI-powered solutions are transforming project management by integrating AI and balancing it with human expertise for project scoping, scheduling, and task management, automated time tracking, resource allocation, project accounting, enhancing client engagement, and enabling real-time collaboration and communication tools for seamless client interaction.
Rocketlane leverages AI for risk assessment, automated compliance checks, and real-time monitoring of project health indicators to ensure regulatory adherence while enabling intuitive data querying, real-time analytics, customizable dashboards, and AI-powered trend analysis for informed decision-making.
https://www.rocketlane.com/
Christopher SavoieStarting in 2017, before there was really any discussion about AI, Zapata was already working on their Generative IA solutions for industry. In his conversation with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, Christopher Savoie, Ph.D., JD, CEO and Co-Founder of Zapata.AI discusses several of the industries that they support including:
- Solutions by Industry
- Financial Services
- Government, Defense & Intelligence
- Manufacturing
- Telecom, Media & Technology
- Transport & Logistics
Chris starts off by discussing a real-time IndyCar racing solution they are working on for Andretti Global. Because of the racing aspect of the project, it creates issues that are not normally encountered in most industrial solutions. However, they were able to start with 20 years of historical data which was invaluable to the project. The predictive aspect for racing is very interesting.
The same predictive analysis for racing can be proactively applied to every hop and more of a telco architecture allowing them to operate more efficiently with more reliability.
Lastly, Chris discusses the military supply chain aspect of their solution allows them to identify where problems will happen, what they will affect, and what will need to be done to correct the issue.
Listen in to learn how Generative AI can be applied to your problems and help create solutions for your company.
About: They are Zapata.AI, a global team of scientists and engineers dedicated to solving the most computationally complex problems in industry. They make Industrial Generative AI, a category of enterprise software that harnesses language and numerical models for domain-specific, industrial-scale applications.
Faster and richer simulations, more efficient optimization solutions, inferred data for unmeasurable variables, custom high-performance LLM capabilities
A powerful suite of Generative AI solutions for enriching analytics and customizing large language models tailored to your business.
For more information, go to: Zapata.AI
Mosaicx utilizes 30 years of learning, across a spectrum of verticals, to deliver on the promise of AI improved CX, Podcast
“Mosaicx 360 is an evolution of more than 30 years of innovation and is an ecosystem that includes integrations with over 4,000 businesses and customer experience applications,” says Mosaicx president Rebecca Jones. Mosaicx360 is a comprehensive ecosystem that combines state-of-the-art conversational AI, IVR, data analytics, large language model, and other AI powered technology applications to transform customer experiences and really improve those outcomes for organizations. Leveraging personalized proactive and predictive customer engagements, Mosaicx360 allows organizations to address customer needs efficiently and really boost customer satisfaction. We feel like enhanced customer experiences really drive that great brand loyalty that companies need over time.”
Mosaicx is a cloud-based solution that uses conversational AI, machine learning and natural language processing technologies to automate interactions with customers and employees. Its intelligent virtual agent (IVA) technology delivers fast, easy, personalized service through industry-leading voice recognition and digital messaging capabilities, creating positive interactions that drive improved customer and employee satisfaction. Mosaicx is driving CX trends by offering modern conversational AI solutions that help companies achieve long-term success.
Rebecca tells us that Mosaicx has launched a No Hold Time podcast series, where you can hear discussions on the AI, automation, brand interactions, self-service and other ways to improve customer experience (CX). We learn how Mosaicx is using AI to deliver measurable improvements in CX. The company views CX as something that occurs one interaction at a time: every interaction matters.
Visit https://www.mosaicx.com
The top critical outcomes expected from enterprise digital technology investments are improving customer experience, improving margins, growing revenue, ensuring compliance/minimizing risk, and increasing employee effectiveness. Ivan Ostojić, Infobip’s Chief Business Officer, discusses what it means to be recognized as a leader by Gartner two years in a row, the investments the company is making in its AI hub, the future of RCS, and its exponential growth in North America.
Visit: www.infobip.com
MG Environmental Consulting is a leader in providing cost effective and quality compliance services in attaining and maintaining certifications, ASCDI Podcast
“MG Environmental Consulting, we provide compliance quality certifications,” Puneet Gupta, Founder and Chief Consultant, MG Environmental Consulting. “We assist organizations, looking for getting R2, V3 certifications, ISO certifications.” MG Environmental Consulting helps their customers obtain and maintain certifications.
Acquiring R2 certification, ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management, ISO 14001 Environmental Management, RIOS certification, synonymous with the Recycling Industry Operating Standards, are among the certification processes that MG understands and helps their clients master. “We assist them. We are in operation 13 plus years. We have approximately 200 clients all over the globe. We =have done thousands of internal audits, supporting clients in external audits.”
Bespoke Services
We learn that the firm tailors their offerings. The company acts as a sounding board from the concepts the client may initially have. Care is taken to come up with the right pat. “With all these standards, we provide service based on the customer requirements, what makes sense for them as far as their preference, their marketing proposition is concerned, we develop a plan to make sure that what certification would make sense for them”
MG Environmental Consulting is a member of the ASCDI.
Visit https://mgenviro.com/
What is Anti-PR? TR Podcast, “Public opinion and guiding and controlling public opinion is that it’s not willy-nilly,”
“Public opinion and guiding and controlling public opinion is that it’s not willy-nilly,” says Karla Jo Helms, Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors. Helms has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill back into the good graces of public opinion.
In this podcast, Helms discusses anti-PR, PR, marketing and sales in an unforgiving environment and at a time Google’s algorithm changes might be changing the all the rules. “It’s not like bright idea-itis. It’s actually a codified body of knowledge that when you apply it, you get results. It’s based on physics. It’s based on math. And it’s based on emotion. And if you understand those three points, you really have to learn physics. You have to know math. Right. And then you have to understand how emotion drives people or doesn’t drive people and how you push past emotional barriers. You can understand that people that are on top or companies that are on top need to constantly fill the vacuum.”
Karla Jo Helms* is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors“It’s not like bright idea-itis. It’s actually a codified body of knowledge that when you apply it, you get results. It’s based on physics. It’s based on math. And it’s based on emotion. And if you understand those three points, you really have to learn physics. You have to know math. Right. And then you have to understand how emotion drives people or doesn’t drive people and how you push past emotional barriers. You can understand that people that are on top or companies that are on top need to constantly fill the vacuum.”***
Anti-PR is a strategic approach that goes beyond traditional public relations by leveraging crisis management techniques and media algorithms to create resilient, authentic, and consistent publicity for businesses.
Unlike conventional PR, which often focuses on maintaining a positive image through controlled messaging, Anti-PR emphasizes the power of disruption. It aims to shape public opinion by crafting compelling narratives that resonate deeply with audiences, especially during times of media upheaval. Anti-PR allows companies to navigate the challenges posed by changes like Google’s algorithm updates by fostering genuine, engaging stories that capture public interest, ensuring that companies stay relevant and visible in the evolving business landscape.
Anti-PR is a public relations approach developed by JoTo PR Disruptors that emphasizes measurable results over traditional PR tactics. It involves setting clear, data-driven goals for brand awareness and public perception, using principles from crisis management to deliver precise, effective outcomes.
This strategy focuses on three stages: Disruption, Exposure, and Influence, aiming to turn companies into market leaders through strategic, impactful media coverage.
GNX started 6 years ago with the focus on local and global enterprise, their data and their security. Now that enterprise is amid a global transition where enterprise is moving away from MPLS to SDWAN or SASE/SSE – GNX is in a perfect position to help them.
Rick MurDon Witt, of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, speaks with Rick Mur, CTO for GNX about the enterprise migration process. Whether an enterprise is deploying a hybrid solution or one that is all cloud, there are some key factors that need to be identified and resolved for the end implementation. Where is your data? Where is your data going to or coming from? What is the latency? Who are the best service suppliers from which to select?
Listen is as Rick answers these questions and more in a short and very informative podcast.
About: They believe everyone deserves to own and take control of their global connectivity. It’s your next generation network, right at your fingertips.
They were born with a vision – to simplify global connectivity and everything in between. They are here to break the industry mold, to offer transparency, a carrier-neutral and straightforward approach, and to provide you with the right platform for you to regain total control over your global network. They are here to say: let them make it happen.
They are here to break down barriers. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, they knew what needed to change to make things better, and that’s exactly what they are doing.
For more information, go to: GNX.Net
Mobile-First Rebuilt Quoting Experience, Viirtue Podcast,* Revolutionizing MSP Operations with Mobile-First Quoting, AI Integration, and Bleeding-Edge VoIP Infrastructure at Viirtue*, Part of 1 of 3,
Automation of monthly billing with minimal clicks
“For all the folks out there, that are paying for quoting tools, billing tools, you know, platform engineers and all that kind of stuff, what Virtue does is we put all that stuff together for you in one ecosystem and at a price that’s very affordable for MSPs to be able to make super high margins,” says Dan Rosenrauch of Viirtue. “We see our MSPs making 70, 80 points oftentimes on the products that they’re selling.”
In this first podcast of a series focusing on Viirtue, we learn about this tool’s development and how it benefits the Viirtue partner community.
“Most platform providers have a quoting system … you either have to pay a significant amount of money to integrate if your quoting system will integrate with a tax engine, or something like that. We built all that. We include all those things for free.”
A really wonderful free tool that Virtue has built for service providers so they can go from their entire experience from quote to cash in one platform. And most importantly, it’s free.
We learn how the simplification and automation not only improve the life of the partner, but it also improves CX, helps avoid tax driven issues and much more. “When that’s all done, we can push it right to ConnectWise automatically for you. It’s seamless and you can keep all your other MSP billing within that platform.”
Visit www.viirtue.com
Guarding the corporate crown jewels from abuse theft and ransom, Sotero Podcast, “We want to make sure that all data stays protected, but we also want to make sure that the data can be accessed and used by the company to drive their business.”
“Even if the external defenses were to be breached you can rest assured that your data or the information is still secure and Sotero is going to make sure that nothing happens to your information,” says Purandar Das, CEO and Co-Founder. Organizations of all kinds understand the challenge to find this balance. Data, as Purandar will tell us, constitute the crown jewel of the organization.
Government agency, hospital, trucking company, law firm, or non-for profit, not only is the data a critical asset, but access to the data, indeed easy access to the data, is central to the organization’s ability to carry out its functions. But that exposure opens a door that can take down the firm. The world’s richest, most sophisticated companies, including carriers, entertainment, retailers, from household name companies to regional libraries, many have been humbled. “We want to make sure that all data stays protected, but we also want to make sure that the data can be accessed and used by the company to drive their business.”
“We are actually inside the castle, or if you will, inside the network, protecting data. Even if the external protection were to be breached, you’ve got Sotero in there protecting your information and your data.”
And as Purandar, not only can those attacks come from anywhere and from anyone, but they can also come at any time, and all the time. Many companies lack visibility to the threat.
We learn that even something that might seem harmless, is an opportunity for abuse. “When you put the data into the wild, you’re putting consumers, patients, at risk because their information’s out there. But you’re also helping contribute to building out a massive profile of consumers that is being leveraged by stealing data from multiple sources. When a data set that looks pretty innocuous from one thing, when it’s merged with other sources from like two or three places, now you’ve built an extremely valuable profile of the people you’re trying to attack.”
In this podcast we discuss the nature of the threat, and we explore various approaches to keep data safe. We learn about Sotero’s approach. “The protection we provide against that is keep the data encrypted, even if they’ve somehow got their hands on it, that they have an encrypted copy of the data, which is useless to them. There are two things. One is they can’t hold you for ransom, nor can they go extort you by throwing the data into the dark web”
About Sotero
Sotero is a cutting-edge Data Security Posture Management company that closes the DSPM loop of Data Exfiltration. With our advanced DSPM platform, Sotero is able to stop an attacker in motion and render data useless. We are your true ransomware defense. To learn more about Sotero, visit us at: www.soterosoft.com
Sotero Common Use Cases
- Ransomware Protection
- SharePoint Security
- Insider Risk
- Data Sharing
- 3rd Party Data Sharing
- Cloud Security
- Data Compliance
- Security Ecosystem Consolidation
- Data Identification and Classification
- Data Analysis in Pharma
- Data at the Edge
Private Mobile Cloud Takes on Enterprise Campus Wi-Fi gaps, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Coverage Dead Spots and Bandwidth Hungry AI, Highway 9 Mobile Cloud Podcast, “That’s why to solve this problem, we’ve introduced the notion of a private mobile Cloud. I think the question you have now is, what is the private mobile Cloud?”
“People want continuous coverage without any dead spots,” says Alwyn Sequeira of Highway 9. Now, more than ever, there is an expectation that virtually every enterprise faces that employees, vendors, customers, patients, visitors, students, and partners, will expect and likely need excellent Wi-Fi and connectivity to their respective carrier, that’s continuous. Alwyn notes that Wi-Fi gaps, carrier dead spots, and now the explosive bandwidth needs of AI, can create mismatch of need, expectations and results. In this podcast we learn about Highway 9’s response, Private Mobile Cloud.
“That’s why to solve this problem, we’ve introduced the notion of a private mobile Cloud. I think the question you have now is, what is the private mobile.”
Highway 9 Networks is the industry’s first mobile cloud for delivering cloud-native mobile connectivity and services for the AI-driven enterprise. The Highway 9 Mobile Cloud enables voice + data coverage everywhere, reliable and high-performance mobile connectivity for AI-driven use cases like robotics, factory automation and drones, and always-on mobile data access for top priority apps and communications.
Highway 9 Mobile Cloud enables smart phones, tablets, computers, new AI-driven devices, and the proliferation of next gen IoT to interconnect with apps, data and each other, as well as cloud services. It addresses the key enterprise requirements of cleanly integrating into existing IT infrastructure and security policies, seamlessly operating across mobile service providers, and delivering a cloud-based approach to automate and lifecycle manage the full mobile stack.
Developed by veteran leaders from VMware, Highway 9 networks launched from stealth in February 2024 with $25M in funding from top-tier investors Mayfield, General Catalyst and Detroit Ventures.
In the last year, Highway 9 Networks has been recognized as a ‘Cool Vendor’ in Gartner’s 2023 Cool Vendors in Cloud report. Prominent analyst groups like Frost & Sullivan, IDC and Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) have also validated our position in the market.
Visit https://highway9.com/
“What we figured is, okay, let’s just make it super easy for anybody within an organization,” says Jeremy Snyder, CEO of FireTail.
FireTail has announced a free version of its enterprise-grade API security tools, making them accessible to developers and organizations of all sizes. “No need for bureaucracy, approvals, process, whatever. You want to understand if there’s a risk and what that risk is, just on board, just get started. And that’s where we really feel like the value of the free plan is. You can connect any of your existing cloud environments where you’ve started to build and run APIs in about 10 to 15 minutes. And in under half an hour, you’ll have a clear picture of what some of the top risks to your environment are. And if you leave it running for even a little bit longer, you’ll start to be able to observe behaviors and detect malicious activity as it’s happening across your environment.”
In June, FireTail, a disruptor in API security, unveiled free access for all to its cutting-edge API security platform. This initiative opens the door for developers and organizations of any size to access enterprise-level API security tools. In this podcast we learn:
- FireTail’s unique combination of open-source code libraries, inline API call evaluation, security posture management, and centralized audit trails helps eliminate vulnerabilities and protect APIs in real-time.
- The free plan covers up to 5 APIs, includes 1M API call logs per month, offers 7 days of data retention, and provides clear developer support.
“They hear these promises about ephemeral infrastructure and scale up and scale down and scale out and scale in and really only consume the exact amount of infrastructure that you need. But what they’re finding is that if they don’t change their apps to make that possible, they’re just running servers on somebody else’s platform. As they go through that second transformation, inevitably, they come across a point where they have to start making decisions about architectures and APIs start bubbling up to the forefront. They take monolithic applications; they break them down into components that all talk over APIs. They take third-party integrations that they are starting to bring on board, and that all happens over APIs.”
Perfect for developers and small to medium-sized organizations needing to secure up to 5 APIs, FireTail’s free tier includes comprehensive API security features such as discovery, inventory, assessment, detection and response, and inline runtime protection.
See press release here.
RCD. What is it, and can you trust it? Numeracle Podcast Series, The biggest issue that we have globally, as a lack of established circles of trust
“The biggest issue that we have globally, as a lack of established circles of trust,” Brett Nemeroff, VP of Engineering – Voice at Numeracle. “Just because someone sends you RCD doesn’t mean that you’ll instantly trust it and send it on to your customer. But really, for RCD to become effective, we need to standardize on a few things, such as methods and procedures for doing KYC, enforcement methodologies, if people do things that they’re not supposed to do, what do we do to stop them from doing that, and then inter-carrier and inter-country trust relationships.”
“Because of this, it’s possible to send cryptographically verifiable end-to-end caller information, which really has never been possible before.”
In this podcast we go deeper into RCD, rich call data. “RCD allows the data to be embedded inside of a shaken passport, which means that it’s signed by the originating character that is expected to be performing KYC on the customer.” Adds Brett. “Because of this, it’s possible to send cryptographically verifiable end-to-end caller information, which really has never been possible before.” We learn how RCD is part of Numeracle’s broader vision: “What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to help restore trust into communications.” In today’s recording we learn where RCD being used today, availability domestically and internationally, relevance to STIR/SHAKEN and if it be spoofed? As RCD gains traction, it becomes more central to commerce, communication and more.
About Numeracle: Numeracle is an industry pioneer and leader with actionable solutions for legal callers that prioritizes their calling identity as the foundation to restoring trust in the voice channel and to their calls by removing barriers, like improper spam labels, from harming their phone numbers. Numeracle’s Entity Identity Management™ (EIM) platform puts enterprise brands, BPOs, and service providers in direct control of their identity, which we vet and verify. Our EIM platform can also be used to manage branded communications, to improve call reputation with blocking and labeling prevention and spam label remediation, and we provide visibility into call display to ensure brand identity is presented as intended, with transparency and consistency. Our KYC-based identity vetting and verification is the cornerstone of the platform; developed in support of evolving federal regulations and telecom standards.
AudioCodes Voca CIC (Conversational Interaction Center) finds the CX potential in Teams, Voca CIC is an AI-first Microsoft-certified contact center with an Azure-native integration for Microsoft Teams, Podcast 1 of 3
When you bring a solution like Voca that’s really designed all around Teams, all of a sudden, something very dramatic happens,” Director, Voca CIC Business Line Manager. Voca CIC is an AI-first Microsoft-certified contact center with an Azure-native integration for Microsoft Teams. With a lightweight design enabling rapid deployment and scalability, Voca CIC gives you the trusted reliability of Microsoft Teams Phone, the speed to make visual drag-and-drop changes, the flexibility of a usage-based subscription model, and the power of conversational AI provided completely out of the box. Voca CIC easily scales CX capabilities to every Teams user across the company — for the main service desk or departments beyond the contact center. In this first part of the three-part series, updating the TR community on AudioCodes, we learn have Voca delivers on the CX potential of Teams. “VOCA is our answer for the very… disruptive and exciting world of customer experience, but namely, the world of customer experience that finds itself consolidating with the UCaaS platform, in our case, of course, Microsoft Teams.”
If you think about departments like sales, IT helpdesk, human resources, even a security team or travel desk, right? If you ask them, do you need contact center? They might say no, because not necessarily they even know what contact center is. But if you ask, the sales team, Do you need a better way to bring a call to the right person in the sales team? If you ask a security team, Do you need a better way of handling calls after hours? When you ask the HR department, Do you need some basic automation on the way into the department? The answer is going to be yes, all day long. And that is exactly the very dramatic kind of shift of the CX industry that we are supporting with VOCA is to really kind of supercharge every Teams user with those modern customer experience capabilities, democratizing them and spreading them to every potential department in the enterprise.
Join us in this three part series as we take a closer look at AudioCodes Voca Conversational Interaction Center and related news over the course of this year.
Visit www.audiocodes.com
Rev.io aims to help service providers leverage global corporate IT spending surge, Billing and related services are critical to gaining traction, stickiness
Corporate spending on technology is surging. IT spending is expected to grow by 6.8%. This correlates to a market of $5 trillion dollar. Were IT a country it would be larger than the whole economy of Japan. But how do service providers, who often were the very first technology sellers to their respective clients, remain in place and the vendor companies turn to as they seek to build their technology infrastructure? Evan Rice, President & COO of Rev.io says that they have a ready to go tool that maximizes that opportunity. “I believe it’s really the end customer and in particular, the enterprise that is driving, we want you to do it all for us. The way to take advantage of that growth is you must have differentiated services, and that creates a lot of complexity inside of the business,” says Rice. “And it ultimately leads to needing tools that can manage that for you.”
The way to take advantage of that growth is you must have differentiated services, and that creates a lot of complexity inside of the business, Evan Rice, President & COO of Rev.io
Full View, Faster Time to Cash
In this podcast Rice discusses have Rev.io, now combined with TigerPaw, can help the telecom community remain a central technology resource for their respective customers, whether that customer is using Teams or needing CCaaS services. “If I’m delivering services onsite, I need field tech management, dispatch, optimization of scheduling. I need reporting and analytics so that I can use that information,” says Rice. Rice notes that as the Rev.io platform evolves, its helping providers organize their traditional work, master their new offerings and more. “Those platforms will be combined to have a single 360 view of your customer, regardless of what service you’re delivering to them.” Rice adds, Rev.io’s payment offering will, “…not only just give you the visibility and faster reconciliation of those payments, but faster time to cash.”
Along with capitalizing on growth and new offerings, Rice remains the viewers of a basic idea that some people might remember from the early days of TigerPaw: “It’s easiest to bill for services that you’ve delivered, right?
Visit www.rev.io
Rev.io aims to help service providers
Massdriver’s innovative platform and DevOps-as-a-Service offerings transform cloud infrastructure management, Podcast, Cory O’Daniel, CEO of Massdriver, discusses how Massdriver’s innovative platform and DevOps-as-a-Service offering are transforming cloud infrastructure management
“If you have 150 software developers, 1,000 software developers, but then you have three, four, five, 10 people working in operations, you can actually start to get really good yields out of their time because they’re not spending most of their day’s kind of drowning in technical debt,” says Cory O’Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO. In this episode Cory O’Daniel, CEO of Massdriver, discusses how Massdriver’s innovative platform and DevOps-as-a-Service offering are transforming cloud infrastructure management.
Cory discusses the platform’s robust features, the unique value it provides, and how it simplifies complex deployment processes. We delve into broader trends and challenges in the cloud and DevOps industry, providing valuable insights for resellers looking to stay ahead in the market.
“The way MassDriver works for your operation teams is nothing changes except for the maintenance burden goes away. So you write your code the same way you do today. You use the same tools that you do today. You even put it into GitHub or Azure DevOps or whatever tool you’re using for source code management the same way you do today,” says Cory O’Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO**
Massdriver’s cloud platform integrates advanced automation and orchestration tools to deliver a seamless infrastructure management experience. It supports a wide range of cloud environments, enabling businesses to deploy applications with a few clicks. Features include real-time monitoring, automated scaling, and robust security measures. Our DevOps-as-a-Service offering demonstrates the platform’s capabilities, providing hands-on DevOps support, development of Terraform and CI/CD pipelines, and architectural guidance. This model showcases how resellers can leverage Massdriver to deliver comprehensive, high-value cloud solutions to their clients.
About Massdriver: Massdriver is a pioneering cloud platform designed to streamline the deployment and management of applications across multiple cloud environments. We provide a unified interface that simplifies complex infrastructure tasks, allowing businesses to focus on innovation rather than operations. With Massdriver, organizations can easily deploy, monitor, and scale their applications, ensuring high performance and reliability. Our platform is tailored to meet the needs of resellers, offering comprehensive support and customization options to help them deliver exceptional value to their clients.
Visit https://www.massdriver.cloud/
Datagate enables white labeling with great service, simplicity and tax compliance, Podcast, “Get your tax compliance right so you can sleep at night”
“Get your tax compliance right so you can sleep at night, says Mark Loveys, CEO, of Datagate Innovation. In this podcast, Mark makes the case for white label, and makes the case that having the right billing solution is critical to white label journey, from growing, preparing and finally selling the telecom centered business. Good billing means getting tax compliance right, as a key element. “You’re missing out on all that extra margin if you decide not to white label,” Mark adds. Mark tells us that it’s a combination of making sure your tax compliance is correct, and that the billing solution not only captures all the services sold but helps with customer care and development with new services and new billing.
“What I would normally say to telecom retailers and MSPs is that a lot of them have their retirement strategy built into their business. They’re wanting to grow the value of their business and that extra top line revenue coming through when you’re billing the service and the extra margin is going to undoubtedly build the value of your business a lot faster, give you a much bigger retirement nest egg when you come to sell.”
We learn about Datagate’s approach to helping clients build their brand. And often that’ a mix of technology, people and customer service.
“What we’re seeing all around the world where Datagate operates is that the smaller reseller, the managed service provider, typically has a much stronger relationship with their customer than the large telcos.”
Better billing means better revenue now, improved growth and deeper brand loyalty over the long term. If you are building an MSP brand and business, it begins with the billing solution in use.
Visit www.datagate.com
Datagate enables white labeling
Why host your 3CX license with Telin? Spencer Lee discuses the advantages of hosting your 3CX licenses with Telin
Telin Blog
We have been rolling out a series of video blogs, directed at the 3CX partner community. We think there are ways for the 3CX partners to make their sales even more profitable and to streamline their after sales needs.
In this short reel, Telin CEO Spencer Lee discuses the advantages of hosting your 3CX licenses with Telin. We learn that their are big savings, lower costs and a private connection advantage.
- Keep your existing 3CX partner status and points
- Receive your eligible 3CX license discounts
- Proactively manage your licenses directly through Telin’s One.Console
- Tie your license key directly to your Telin hosted server for better monitoring and management
- 3CX partnership support
- Pre- and post-3CX sales support
The Telin 3CX licensing program was built on the premise that one size does not fit all. Telin offers licensing options to meet every need, no matter how unique or personalized. Their pricing model is based on the number of simultaneous calls you need, not the number of extensions you may or may not use.
When coupled with other Telin services, Telin’s 3CX annual licensing program allows a partner to deploy a bulletproof PBX at a low per-user rate. With licensing options that range from four to 1024 simultaneous calls, there is no system too small or too large to fit in the 3CX ecosystem.
Telin Video Blog: 3CX Licenses
Learn more at www.telin.com
Why host your 3CX license with Telin
https://youtu.be/ek6YrOg8mf4
Sinch offers path to RCS, major opportunities for commerce, improved CX, Apple to roll out RCS support in fall 2024
“RCS means that any messaging experience, whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, will have that richness,” says Robert Gerstmann, Chief Evangelist & Co-Founder of Sinch.
“SMS is largely a one-way medium, whereas RCS is a two-way medium,” adds Gerstmann. “The marketing message not only get delivered to the handset, as you will know on SMS, but actually read by the consumer. And then RCS is conversational by nature. It’s very easy to enable a two-way conversation. Now, this happens to an extent on SMS, especially in the US, but in many places of the world, for various reasons, technical and commercial, it doesn’t really work on SMS.”
Sinch recently alerted its clients about Apple’s intent to fully embrace RCS.
Apple’s movement from reluctance to embracing of RCS, is significant in several ways. “That’s going to come in September with the new release of iOS 18. something we’re very, very excited about. Apple will bring another 1.4 billion people all over the world into the RCS ecosystem,” adds Gerstmann. “Apple demographic is typically the most affluent in each country. So the most valuable customers you can’t reach.”
“Even though Apple hasn’t been explicit about it, at Sinch, we are convinced that Apple will not only support RCS for person-to-person communication between Android and iOS, iOS devices, but also RCS business messaging. Essentially enabling companies to communicate with their consumers all over the globe through RCS. And we believe this is going to be a huge shift in the market, possibly the biggest shift since SMS became kind of the standard way in mobile messaging for how businesses and consumers communicated.”
In this podcast we learn about the importance of RCS, and we hear about transformative use cases. Gerstmann lays out Sinch’s plan to help ready the path for this tectonic shift. Commerce occurs on the phone and RCS appears to be way that commerce will happen.
Sinch is pioneering the way the world communicates. More than 150,000 businesses — including many of the world’s largest tech companies rely on Sinch’s customer communications cloud to improve customer experience through mobile messaging, voice, and email. Robert Gerstmann is the Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder of Sinch. Gerstmann defines himself as brand ambassador for Sinch, driving the business growth strategy by providing input and direction to product and technology roadmaps. He has deep experience with the needs of the enterprise.
Visit https://www.sinch.com/
Read More
- RCS statistics: 30 things you need to know in 2024
- Micromania-Zing: RCS brings big boost to brand visibility and customer interaction
- Picard: Boosting engagement over the holiday season with RCS
- Guide: How to make a compelling business case for RCS
Ooma AirDial works where copper lines are disappearing, Podcast, “Anything, that has a copper line, Ooma AirDial would work for”
“There’s no failover delay.”
“Anything, that has a copper line, Ooma AirDial would work for” says Clinton Fitch of Ooma.
The long reign of copper is over. The sunset of copper’s once ubiquitous presence is underway. Elevators. Fire and emergency phones. Lines once dedicated to fax traffic. The way copper was deployed, in so many places over such a long period of time, can make it difficult for organizations to even know what they own, what they are paying for, in real time, and what needs to be replaced.
In this podcast we learn that a good first migration step is to figure out what you have. It turns out organizations sometimes discover lines and charges that are literally being unused. “We always recommend that customers go and do an audit. And it’s just as simple as taking your phone bill and going literally line by line and figuring out, yes, we’re using this line,” adds Clint.
Clint discusses the AirDial, a full end-to-end POTS replacement solution.
We learn that whether its replacing a now possibly expensive line, still dedicated to FAX traffic, or to replace hard to reach places such as emergency phones or end points on on elevators, Ooma AirDial offers a robust solution with straightforward implementation, and a replacement that does not drop calls. “It completely replicates all the voice packets across two links, so the wired Ethernet link and then the wireless LTE link. This is an active-active technology, meaning that it’s essentially best packet wins,” says Clint. The product carries technology preventing failover. “There’s no failover delay.”
“Whatever the best packet is, the first one that gets there, because jitter and latency are not good for voice. Whichever one gets there first, that’s the one we use.”
https://www.ooma.com/airdial
https://youtu.be/unBviCdcO-c
Fraudsters are now using AI to create deepfake voice clones and perpetrate their robocall scams at scale. In this podcast, iconectiv SVP Chris Drake discusses this problem and what service providers, regulators and telecom vendors are doing to protect the digital identities of people and businesses.
iconectiv provides services to secure digital identity, numerous data exchanges, registries, and other information as a service offerings. These address numbering intelligence, Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB), fraud prevention, as well as network and operations management for the global communications industry. It provides numbering services in more than a dozen countries, including serving as the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) for the United States. As a trusted partner of the communications ecosystem, iconectiv is dedicated to keeping people connected, businesses running and commerce flowing. This includes making sure incoming and outgoing phone calls and messages are verified and identified, and that communications service providers can trust the information in their systems and networks.
www.iconectiv.com
SD-WAN as a Service, scaled for any organization, RabbitRun Podcast, We’ve perfected it: failover that doesn’t fumble calls
Small businesses need the very same things large enterprises need. Capital expenses, buying more than you need, completing claims on limited operations budgets, are among the things that limit what’s smaller companies can get. With that in mind, Pat Saavedra founded RabbitRun, which offers SD-WAN as a service. According to Pat, the MSPs need to be able to offer SD-WAN as an easy to sell, easy to deploy, high margin service, that delivers on the basic promise of the as a service model: selling the end user just what he needs, when he needs it. In this podcast we learn how Rabbit Run has made SD-WAN doable for the “little guy”.
“We really do need something that takes away the upfront costs. This is exactly how we do it. We keep businesses online with our affordable as-a-service SD-WAN: A fully managed service with alerts and everything you need for a managed service,” adds Pat. “MSPs can sell it immediately out of the gate and obtain immediate ROI.”
Solid Failover: We’ve perfected it
Pat tells us that his failover approach puts an end to dropped calls. “Whether you have five phones or 50 phones, with the Rabbit Run device, we’re going to fail you over. Now, failover is one thing, but reliable failover is a totally different thing. Doing that without dropping live voice calls, video meetings, That’s an art in my opinion. We’ve perfected it.”
Pinpoint Problems, Saves Money and Time
We also learn great added benefits such as being able to know when to go right to the ISP with an issue. Pat reports that his MSP clients often say of their customers, “They’re calling me as if I’m their ISP.” With RabbitRun, ISP level issues are identified, which reduces MSP customer friction and speeds to time to close customer service issues.
Visit https://www.rabbit.run/
https://youtu.be/wtKfuh3V7hw
Telin One.Demarc solves customer challenge, offers brand damage rescue, Podcast, Partners get stuck with ISP issues, Telin pioneering solution
“Their first reaction is, hey, let’s call my technology provider, the one that I have an agreement with to provide phone service and IT support and maybe disaster recovery,” says Kyle Wiedinger of Telin.
When phone service deteriorates, people look at the brand on the phone and, just like that, brand damage occurs. The problem might be with the ISP, but it’s the label on the phone or phone system that gets the call, gets the blame, and even if resolved, sees their brand’s reputation get dinged up.
Telin One.Demarc
In this podcast, Kyle discusses and illustrates One.Dmarc, which basically works to create better continuity of service and better continuity of quality of service, along with critical hot failover.
“We set up a specialized VPN connection between that device and the Fusion Hub that we have sitting in our data center,” adds Kyle. “Then we provision an eSIM with 5G cellular data to that device. Now, what this connection does is it has a couple of features to it. What you’re seeing here is going to be bandwidth bonding. So essentially what it’s doing is it’s taking the packets of data and splitting them up between the different internet connections that you have… If it’s just your ISP and your cellular connection, that works just as fine. It’s taking advantage of both connections simultaneously and then reconfiguring those packets on the other end to increase the quality of your service.”
“The most important feature is the hot failover. If someone snuck up behind me right now with a pair of scissors and just snipped the cord to my modem, we wouldn’t even drop. This session would transfer over to cellular seamlessly.”
Visit www.telin.comtelin
Snom recognized as visionary leader, as brand recognition rises, Snom can brand for MSPs very quickly
Channel Vision Magazine has awarded Snom’s Partner Program with their 2024 Visionary Spotlight Award. In this podcast we learn that the award affirms the goals Marc Magliano, Snom’s Vice President, Channel Business for the Americas and Antoine Karachekhlian, Snom’s North America Channel Director, laid out as they laid out a plan to build Snom’s band and Snom’s channel program.
“A solid channel partner program is the heart and soul of your channel,” says Mark. “It helps you build that awareness, and the brand awareness is something, quite honestly, that has challenged us over the past few years but with your help, and others like you, over the past 12 to 18 months, we’ve made strides and now you see Snom everywhere… Our partner Partner program helps us deliver and drive value to our MSPs and resellers, just right across the board.”
“We’ve added, I think the number now is over 250 new MSP resellers. We’ve increased our breadth of partnerships in the ITSP community. We have significantly more partners that are co-branding or branding our technology to their customer base. Things have really exploded for us. Again, I couldn’t be more thrilled.,” adds Mark.
Building a Brand that Brands
As the Snom brand has grown in visibility, Snom has been using its manufacturing power to help their MSP clients, brand their brand. “Everybody can brand, but us our parent company being a manufacturer and we get our stuff directly, you know, from the factory makes us more nimble, and quick, to react to that branding thing, the aspect of the business,” says Antoine. “We can brand products as small as a couple of hundred, whereas they’re doing a couple of thousands. And that speaks to our power, basically, of how we can deliver.”
In Stock
Many customers took notice of Snom, as Covid disrupted overly extended supply chains. With two warehouses in North America, Snom is not only a manufacturer but also a company that maintains available stock. We learn about their fast, advanced replacement ability. We also discuss a personal approach. Customers needing help, replacements, or assistance with making a sale, can get directly on the phone or online with Snom’s leadership team and get personalized attention. A partner program is about the products sold, but it also depends on people, support, logistics and quality.
Visit www.snomamericas.com
Is IoT Poised to Improve Telecom Retail Customer Experience? The telecom industry has witnessed a rising trend in licensed Internet of Things devices that operate on telecom networks and require SIM cards or eSims
“Data is king,” says Jason Raymer, Senior Vice President of Revenue and Client Experience at iQmetrix. The telecom industry has witnessed a rising trend in licensed Internet of Things devices that operate on telecom networks and require SIM cards or eSims. As a result, telecom retailers are now expecting smart home devices to bring in business, with 78.69% of respondents to an iQmetrix survey saying they expect an increase in IoT device sales in 2024.
In this podcast, Jason speaks with Technology Reseller News about consumer behavior in a world of evolving IoT technology, the challenges facing telecom retailers today, predictions for IoT applications in telecom retail and its impact on customer experience, as well as the benefits of integrated technologies for retail spaces.
About iQmetrix
iQmetrix is the only provider of Interconnected Commerce software solutions for telecom retail. Interconnected Commerce is a complete set of software and technologies that are modular, flexible, and have telecom-specific capabilities, enabling telecom retailers to provide an uplifting experience for their customers. We empower telecom retailers to transact, activate, and fulfill products, as well as operate their business, and unify the online and in-store experiences. We interconnect the entire industry, bridging carriers, retailers, manufacturers, and a huge ecosystem of vendors and external system integrations.
Since 1999, we’ve been passionate about helping the leading brands in telecom to grow by providing best-in-class software, services, and expertise that enables them to adapt and thrive. Our solutions powered $17BN in sales last year, handling nearly 60 million invoices and 22 million activations, and are used by approximately 320,000 telecom retail professionals across 1,000 clients. iQmetrix is a privately held software-as-a-service (SaaS) company with employees in Canada, the U.S., India, and Europe. For more information, please visit www.iqmetrix.com.
https://youtu.be/YP0_LnhHQio
Telin puts paging on partner radar with CyberData 25V/70V, Paging systems, door phones, door strikers, panic buttons, the list is really endless when you go into applications
“Our product, this 25V/70V, is a culmination, what we call hybrid paging technology,” says Don Marchetto of CyberData. It’s a combination of SIP and IP along with constant voltage. And constant voltage, both of these technologies have been around for some time, but we’re the only ones that have it in the same box with all the feature sets. It makes a big difference when it comes to installations.”
Same notification coverage, at a fraction of the cost.In this podcast, Don takes a deeper look at how the 25V/70V can offer Telin partners the same notification coverage at a fraction of the cost.
“When you start adding up speakers in areas that don’t need zoning, it’s an amazing savings as compared to using all IP. Again, for the exact same coverage,” adds Don. Human resource department and retail applications are discussed. But paging applications are almost unlimited.
I think there’s a whole new world of additional revenue, and additional ownership of that client, that our partners can bring on, when they sell CyberData,” says Zack Lee, of Telin. “Paging systems, door phones, door strikers, panic buttons, the list is really endless when you go into applications.”
As partners seek to diversify their portfolio, Telin’s partnership with CyberData reflects two things in motion. With paging, there is an almost unlimited number of use cases and a huge number of legacy sites that need to see new and better equipment. CyberData has worked to deliver a product that is cost effective and yet improved over previously installed systems. The CyberData presence in the Telin offering represents Telin’s goal of being a single source for a greater variety of products and services to sell.
Visit https://telin.com/
Infobip is growing rapidly, and that growth is fueled by innovation. Recently, Infobip was recognized as a Fast Company Most Innovative Company for 2024. In this podcast, Ethan Gustav gives us an update on how Infobip is maintaining fast growth. “We were recognized in the automotive category. We created a very cool experience, in WhatsApp for Uber, where Uber users could order their ride through their WhatsApp and powered by a chatbot, which really was like interacting with a human. GenAI is, is enabling us to do some really cool things,” adds Ethan. The recognition placed company in a space alongside companies like NVIDIA, Google and Microsoft and YouTube. We also learn about Infobip’s 10DLC, a critical part of Infobip’s telecom story. As we enter the second half of 2024, Ethan gives us a look at major ongoing and emerging trends.
Visit https://www.infobip.com/
“Everything I’ve talked about is baked into our product”
“It should come as no surprise to anyone that the message really underpinning Cisco’s story across the board is around AI,” says Kristyn Hogan, Vice President of Global Collaboration Partner Sales at Cisco. “When we think about how Cisco collaboration, and WebEx, are really leaning into that message, there’s one north star: experiences matter. That’s what is guiding us.”
In this podcast we learn that Cisco is guided by a changing workplace landscape and work itself being re-imagined. AI is to be deployed to create virtual agents who sound and act natural, and “not robotic”.
“Several months back, we went live with some of those AI assistant features in our meetings portfolio. It’s changed the game. When you record a meeting, at the end of the meeting, you get an email with a beautiful, accurate summary of the meeting and action items already assigned. We’ve polled our customers and 80% have said they’ve seen significant time savings just from that one feature.”
We also hear about Cisco’s partner story. “We have enabled over 30,000 partner sellers’ year to date, and the year’s not over.”
Kristen stresses that AI is “baked into every product”. Recorded on the same day as the closing celebration featuring a private concert with Elton John, Kristyn notes that these AI features are not simply add on SKUs. The Las Vegas Journal Review, in reporting on Sir Elton’s concert, described Cisco as an AI company.
Visit www.cisco.com
More Cisco News
Kristyn Hogan: Experiences Matter, Cisco Live Podcast
Webex by Cisco Using AI and CPaaS to Expand CX, Cisco Live Podcast, “a sense of remembrance”
Cisco announced at Cisco Live last week, new developments in Webex Contact Center, including providing an AI Assistant for contact center agents, and integrate third-party virtual agent solutions. The AI Assistant for Webex Suite will soon be generally available to customers. In this podcast Amit Barave, Vice President of Product Management, Webex, Cisco Systems, discusses these advancements. Amit tells us that these steps forwards will mean better transcripts, more precise recording and a “sense of remembrance”. Whereas a person won’t tend to remember every detail of a transaction, these new AI powered tools will bring back an event with great clarity. “CPaaS allows us to open our platform to an infinite number of developers and use cases,” adds Amit, as we learn about Cisco’s commitment to enabling the developer community to invent on the platform. “AI is here in WebEx Suite and WebEx Customer Experience,” adds Amit.
From last week’s announcements: Making AI work with the Future of Work (read more)
- AI-Powered Contact Center and Hybrid Work Innovations: New capabilities in Webex Contact Center will help organizations design and manage conversational self-service experiences, provide an AI Assistant for contact center agents, and integrate third-party virtual agent solutions.
Additionally, AI Assistant for Webex Suite will soon be generally available to customers. IT admins will benefit from remote device access management in Webex Control Hub, and all- new Desk Reservation with Cisco Spaces makes it easy to find and book desk spaces and Cisco Collaboration
Learn More
- Visit https://www.webex.com/
- Webex by Cisco Using AI and CPaaS to Expand CX, Cisco Live Podcast
“We are the unique all-flash storage. Everything we sell is all-flash”
“We’re very concerned about sustainability, about the private planet,” says Pure Storage’s Brian Ferrar who was speaking at Cisco Live this week. “We see how much money energy efficiency can save our customers in their data centers… there’s no magnet there’s no mechanical devices inside the system there’s no moving parts and so obviously you know that requires less cooling, it requires less power consumption, and that’s a key capability…” AI is continuing to revolutionize many industries yet many organizations are running into roadblocks when developing scalable AI infrastructure (i.e. daunting hardware requirements, time constraints). FlashStack for AI, Pure Storage and Cisco’s end-to-end AI pipeline solution, addresses the complexities of AI deployment and secure expansion with efficiency, enhancing performance, scalability, energy savings, and more.
“What RAG does is it allows you, when you’re doing your prompting and your querying using an AI interface, you can use RAG to take the query and augment that query with your local data, with your local information,” says Craig Waters of PureStorage, discussing the transformative power of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
We learn about a long-term relationship with Cisco that’s critical to achieving the need to help customers enjoy both all the advantages of AI while keeping top their respective organization’s sustainability goals. With AI, power use and sustainability as the hot topics of CiscoLive, we hear that the PureStorage booth was busy, very busy.
Visit https://www.purestorage.com/
Denise Lee: AI can help solve the sustainability challenge
“I think AI is going to be a really big part, to unlock, to drive some of those insights, analytics, and automation, that make all of this come together much faster than it would take for us to do if we had to code and reprogram everything ourselves,” says Denise Lee, Vice President for Cisco’s Engineering Sustainability Office. AI will increase power needs in the data center. Lee sees that challenge as part of the solution. AI has a role in the larger picture of achieving suitability.
AI is being implemented everywhere, but advancements in AI infrastructure can be at odds with energy-consumption goals. Energy and data centers are the foundation for managing the AI boom, so enterprises need to build the right infrastructure to support a sustainable future, now. At Cisco Live, I spoke with Denise Lee, Vice President for Cisco’s Engineering Sustainability Office, about the holistic approach Cisco is taking to reduce energy consumption needed to sustain AI and emerging technologies.
In this special podcast, Lee outlines a path towards a sustainable future that delivers on both the promise of AI, along with having the power to deliver AI. We learn about sustainability beyond the familiar discussion of regulatory compliance, environmental best practices. These important goals can be achieved, but Lee sees those goals as occurring within a broad-based approach that includes powerful financial incentives to save on costs, and to grow new opportunities: saving the planet, saving money, opening new lines of business.
CiscoLive: Sustainability Focus
Lee describes the changing sustainability landscape. “I had one session at the whole show, and it was the only session talking about sustainability… This year, we have over 55 sessions across the show. We have 12 hands-on demos in the sustainability zone, and we have countless sessions.” We learn how sustainability has migrated to being seen as a central and critical part of business operations. Lee also describes how companies that are implementing sustainability changes are noticeably outperforming their peers. The rapid growth of data center energy has caught people’s attention. The economic race to sustainability is on.
Lee offers a glimpse at fresh thinking and new products that my well revolutionize how we transport energy and data. The new thinking will include new processes and new approaches to renewability. “Now renewable energy is what really makes all of this possible because if you can’t harvest renewable energy, store it and then use it accordingly.”
Dumbphones – stripped down phones without apps, like the phones we all used 15 years ago – are coming back into style. But there’s a big problem: dumbphones are unlikely to be recycled or refurbished, according to James Murdock, co-founder of Alchemy, the world’s largest circular tech company. His company has refreshed and resold more than six million devices across the world. In this podcast, Murdock talks about the environmental impact of e-waste, and how we can create a circular economy for devices, which is better for the planet and our pockets. “People and businesses who buy these refurbished devices are making a sustainability impact, saving carbon and also saving money – significant amounts of money,” says Murdock. “You can save money while doing the right thing for the environment.”
James MurdockAlchemy is the fastest-growing circular tech company in the world. They are global experts in recovering, refreshing, and remarketing electronic devices such as phones, tablets, laptops, and wearables. “We recover, refresh and remarket,” says Murdock. “We handle a lot of mobility products like cell phones, and a lot of laptops and tablets from premium brands like Samsung, Apple and Google. We have 400 employees at Alchemy, each with a Mac and a phone, and none of us have ever had a new device. They are all refurbished.”
Visit www.alchemyglobalsolutions.com
“Cisco is our partner, customer investor, says Muddu Sudhakar, Co-Founder and CEO of Aisera. “Aisera is a great partner with Cisco on the AI front.” Aisera is one of the over 20 AI-focused acquisitions and investments Cisco has made over the past several years. In this podcast we get a closer glance at what those investments look like.
Aisera has been doing conversation AI, GenAI, over the last six years. “We offer a GenAI platform on which we work with customers and partners like Cisco to offer IT services, business services, to automate mundane tasks and provide AI workflows for IT, service security, customer service, and support.”
Aisera is regarded as a leading provider of enterprise Generative AI apps and a platform that helps enterprises accelerate revenue growth, improve user productivity, lower costs, and create magical user experiences. Product portfolio includes: AiseraGPT, AI Copilot, AI Search, and Agent Assist – are built on our Generative AI Platform that serves as the fundamental building block for enterprise GenAI applications. Aisera leverages a TRAPS framework (Transparent, Responsible, Auditable, Privacy, and Secure) to meet stringent data governance requirements while adhering to the highest standards of Responsible AI.)
Aisera is one of the over 20 AI-focused acquisitions and investments Cisco has made over the past several years.
The $1B fund announced, however, focuses on recent committed investments, such as Cohere, Mistral AI and Scale AI.
Douglas Wadkins, VP of Product Management & Strategy at Opengear, talks with us at Cisco Live 2024 about their smart out-of-band network management solutions being showcased at the event. Key among them are Opengear’s Lighthouse Smart Management Fabric (SMF), Connected Resource Gateway (CRG) and Lighthouse Service Portal (LSP).
Opengear keeps your network running smoothly with our Network Resilience Platform, enabling connectivity wherever you are. Leveraging our Smart Out of Band solution and automation capabilities, you gain unparalleled presence and proximity to your devices. This allows you to effortlessly deploy, manage, and remediate your networks—on the First Day, Worst Day, and Every Day. It’s why 75%+ of Fortune 500 companies trust Opengear for their networks, whether on- or off-premises or in the cloud.
“Customers is expectations continue to change,” says Cisco’s Brian Heikes. “Where previously, just having a phone number available was sufficient or an email address you could reach out to, Now customers are expecting more and more for us to meet them in the channel of their choice in the manner that they want, which means asynchronous delivery of service so that they don’t have to interrupt their day to wait on the phone for an agent to be available or for an answer to come to them. And with WebEx Connect, we’re powering that and delivering that for customers.”
In this short podcast Heikes outlines how CPaaS is being used to deliver customer experiences that match and exceed customer experiences, and how those solutions are spreading across the enterprise. “We see more and more enterprises leveraging CPaaS, what you see is multiple departments trying to leverage the same resources at the same time.”
About Webex by Cisco and CPaaS
Webex by Cisco focuses on enabling richer, smarter customer interactions, incorporating proactive two-way communications and reactive communications. Webex puts customers’ demands first to deliver end-to-end customer journeys across multiple communication channels, that integrate with existing back-end systems. Its enterprise-grade cloud communications platform (CPaaS) automates, orchestrates, and monitors interactions at scale for a range of enterprises globally, enabling businesses to easily deliver seamless experiences, while saving time and reducing costs.
Podcast previously LIVE at CiscoLive 2024
Philip Meyers of mpro5 at Cisco‘s CiscoLive is the new CEO of mpro5. In this short livestream from CiscoLive, Phil discusses his maraki related products and use cases, focusing on sensor driven actions and ROImpro5. mpro5 is the Process Management App trusted by facilities management, retail and food service organizations to quantifiably improve operational efficiencies, cost savings, visibility and compliance.
Phil joined mpro5 in August 2023 as COO, bringing a wealth of experience in IoT and process management. His previous experience includes Vice President of Capabilities and innovation at Inmarsat Global, the world leader in global mobile satellite communications, senior positions in smaller satellite businesses and Channel Sales Manager for BlackBerry.
To learn more, visit: www.mpro5.com
Stu Holloway of SmarTrak.ai tells us about SmarTrak.ai‘s road map for Cisco hashtag#Partners to grow revenue with the customers they already have and from the data Cisco already generates. SmarTrak.ai uses hashtag#AI to identify in that data the best hashtag#techrefresh recommendations, a deeper understanding of how power is being used, a strategy towards renewing programs, migration and much more. This means more revenue from the customer relationships a partner already has.
SmarTrak.io’s platform can transform Cisco revenue management: AI-Driven Insights: Leverage advanced AI to turn complex Cisco data into actionable intelligence, Operational Efficiency: Save thousands of hours annually with automated workflows and processes, Revenue Optimization.
“I would definitely say keep it simple to start, says Jason Smith, Sales Engineer Supervisor at CallTrackingMetrics. With a staggering 80% of customer service and support organizations projected to utilize generative AI in some form by next year, it’s clear that this technology is poised to transform the way we approach call tracking and customer experience. In this episode, we delve into the world of AI-powered call tracking, exploring its immense potential to boost agent productivity and elevate customer experiences. Jason Smith, Sales Engineer Supervisor at CallTrackingMetrics will shed light on how organizations can harness the power of generative AI to gain deep insights from call data, streamline processes and make data-driven decisions that drive customer satisfaction. Jason discusses how, generative AI can, if companies take it step by step, streamline how data is consumed and create actionable information that leads in improved EX and CX.
Jason SmithAbout CallTrackingMetrics
CallTrackingMetrics is an award-winning, global conversation analytics company founded and led by a husband-wife team that enables marketers to make effective data-driven decisions and increase ROI. Over 100,000 users, including Morgan and Morgan, SearchKings and ServiceMaster, rely on CTM to track and attribute all online and offline leads across multiple platforms through native integrations with core tools like Google Ads and Analytics, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoom, and Facebook. CallTrackingMetrics is named an industry leader, year after year, by top software publications like G2 and Capterra and regularly recognized for its growth and innovative culture. CallTrackingMetrics.com
Integrated Financial Technologies Introduces Organizational Assessment Program to Help Channel Partners Generate New Service Revenues, Podcast
Listen as IFT (Integrated Financial Solutions) President Tod Chisholm introduces a new program for MSPs and VARs, who can resell high-margin Operational Assessments to their end-users. Through these assessments, IFT’s team of efficiency experts will review the end-user’s processes, workflows, and infrastructure, providing recommendations that will maximize productivity. MSPs can gain margins of up to 18 percent on this service, which can be white labeled by the partner, with the potential to generate ongoing engagements and recurring revenues for the MSP.
“Approximately 75% percent of the operational assessments we’ve done on a consulting level have led to broader ongoing service engagements and longer-term smartsourcing projects. With smartsourcing, we bring subject matter expertise and cutting-edge technology to the outsourcing equation. It’s a much more modern solution that many businesses are not even aware of. We’re trying to bring expertise to the MSP’s customer in areas where that company is not necessarily able to develop expertise on their own, because they are focusing on building their businesses. This presents an ongoing revenue opportunity for the channel partner in this increasingly commoditized market.”
Visit www.iftsolutions.com
Read the news story: Integrated Financial Technologies Introduces Organizational Assessment Program to Help Channel Partners Generate New Service Revenues
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Healthcare sector endures surge in cybersecurity attacks, faces headwinds in effort to respond, Podcast with David Lee – Vulnerabilities in outdated medical devices further exacerbate risks, enabling remote manipulation by hackers
The Sunday TR Podcast
David Lee transitioned from a software engineering background to become a harbinger of change and inclusivity in the tech world.“If you’re a company today, as soon as you have a website, you’re a tech company,” says David Lee, a noted industry expert in cybersecurity for twenty years, often focusing on call identity and access management. “It doesn’t really matter if you’re baking bread. In this case, if you are in the medical profession, you’re selling plastic bottles, you are now in the tech company. And if you’re a tech company, that means you’re vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks and threats.” Healthcare, which includes a sprawling number of companies, organizations, suppliers, vendors, contractors and more, not only have the vulnerability of all tech companies, but have the added responsibility to safeguard patient records.
In this podcast we look at the surge in cybersecurity attacks targeting the U.S. healthcare sector, evidenced by a significant increase in data breaches compromising millions of patient records in recent years. Specific incidents like the cyberattack on Change Healthcare underscore the severity of these breaches. Healthcare data breaches continue to be the most financially damaging across industries, costing millions per incident. Vulnerabilities in outdated medical devices further exacerbate risks, enabling remote manipulation by hackers. The healthcare sector’s unique challenges, including reliance on closed-off technology and limited integration with external partners, amplify vulnerability to cyber threats.
To address these issues, healthcare entities must adopt comprehensive cybersecurity strategies involving critical functions and stakeholders. However, the industry faces a significant shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, emphasizing the need for upskilling and training efforts. Effective cybersecurity practices rely not only on technologies but also on skilled individuals for successful implementation and management, underscoring the urgent need for improved cybersecurity measures in healthcare.
David takes us for the big picture to how he helps organizations break the challenge down into bite size bits. “We’re going to take a step at a time. Like, here’s the 15 steps we’re going to have to take. I don’t want you to focus that on right now. Right now, step one to two, and then two to three, and then so forth and so on.”
About David Lee
David Lee transitioned from a software engineering background to become a harbinger of change and inclusivity in the tech world. With over two decades of experience, he has left his mark on government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and numerous fields, specializing in identity and access management. Recognizing that for technology to truly transform the world, it must embrace diversity, David serves as an agent of transformation, inspiring individuals to unlock their full potential. His influential voice and actionable insights have solidified his reputation as a respected figure in the ever-evolving tech landscape. When he speaks people listen.
- He is The Identity Jedi. http://www.theidentityjedi.com.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/identityjedi/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamhdavidlee
Healthcare sector endures surge in cybersecurity attacks
SEO and Content Crafted for Telecoms, ClimbCode Podcast, SEO-optimized content ready for use within the TEM industry, aiding businesses in improving their online visibility and lead generation
@Doug Green
Everyone reading these words has likely experienced the session at the conference, labeled Marcom Track, SEO. The advice offered is vital and helpful. But implementation is often a struggle. Many people in our market might have also invested in resources to improve SEO, only to discover that many offerings lack the specialization for carriers. Content creation is especially challenging for many organizations. In this podcast, we learn about ClimbCode, that aims to close that gap. Earlier this month, ClimbCode launched a new e-commerce platform, tailored for the Telecom content creation sector. “This platform provides SEO-optimized content ready for use within the TEM industry, aiding businesses in improving their online visibility and lead generation.”
“We help create that content at scale. The content we produce is unique to the customer, so we never create, sell the same content again. And we make sure that the content that is created to help you brand, is based on something which is very thoughtful and meaningful for the end customer, so they learn something from the content. It’s unique to you and it’s got a unique placement for you. When people search for keywords on search engines, they find your site where this content is going to be placed eventually. So, we help you bring up your website via the search engines,” says Raj Goodman Anand, CEO of ClimbCode.
- Visit climbcode.com
By Chrissy Calabrese, Vice President of Product Marketing at Playvox
AI in CX, Quality Management and Contact Center Solutions: Why the Contact Center is Here to Stay
To say that artificial intelligence (AI) has been written about frequently over the past year would be an understatement. There is probably one area where there are more expectations for AI than in customer experience. For many organizations, particularly in the telecom arena, contact centers are seen as cost centers, so those operating contact centers or holding support centers under their P&L are always seeking new ways to streamline costs in their business.
While recent studies show the expected growth and impact of AI over the next decade, there’s also potential for job creation. Most experts agree that customer service jobs will be augmented and automated, not replaced. Many believe that by automating mundane tasks, we’ll be more productive, efficient, and AI will enable businesses to provide better customer experiences with more self-service options and help fix employee burnout.
No matter what side you are on, the promise of AI is significant. In this article, we’ll discuss the history of AI being used in a contact center, how AI tools are utilized today, and the future of AI in improving CX.
AI in the Contact Centers: Looking Back to Look Ahead
Before we jump in and look at AI in customer experience today, it’s key to reflect and understand how AI has been previously used.
Workforce Management Solutions
Anyone who has worked in a service center for a long time is familiar with the teams of people, number of spreadsheets, and the hundreds of hours that have traditionally gone into creating schedules. There’s the initial analysis of determining when customer interactions come in (the hours when it’s the busiest), another analysis of which team members are available or not (noting special circumstances, when agents need to leave or any other schedule limitations), and then matching all this together to optimize schedules to deliver the agreed-upon service level agreements (SLAs) for response and wait times, and first contact resolution (FCR).
One of the early ways that AI was leveraged was to optimize all the previous steps via a modern workforce management solution (WFM). WFM solutions automate the entire process outlined above and consider the most accurate real-time data to produce a schedule for your agents that accounts for hours and number of people needed, and the differences in agent availability — to create customer experiences in accordance with agreed-upon SLAs. This process is all done using AI.
Chatbots
Another tool that’s been in use for a few years is chatbots. These AI-powered virtual assistants can provide immediate responses to customer queries, offer product recommendations, and even help troubleshoot. As chatbots continue to evolve, they can handle multiple customer conversations simultaneously, help reduce wait times, improve overall customer satisfaction, and transform CX at the contact center.
Personalized Customer Experiences
Personalized customer experiences aren’t new, nor is the ability of AI to create these kinds of experiences. A few examples include:
- Using AI to provide relevant article recommendations on a website that relates to an article the visitor has already downloaded. In this case, a database saves information about a customer’s online identity and what they might have searched for or previously downloaded.
- Matching the caller ID with a record in Salesforce: Through robust integrations with Salesforce, this type of AI lets a contact center agent greet a customer by name as their phone number “pops” in the agent’s CRM when the contact calls. This type of AI has been in use for many years, and although it might seem basic, it’s still in action in the typical contact center.
Whisper Technology
Whisper technology is when an AI-type assistant “listens” to an agent’s interactions and suggests the right resource or answer to an agent via a “whisper” into their technology. Several years ago, this also could have been a supervisor remotely monitoring the call and/or and suggesting something to improve the interaction. The long-standing problem with this type of AI is that when you send an agent too many queues or suggestions, the agent either ignores or turns off the technology altogether. This is like help desk articles that might pop up, crowding an agent’s screen, and making it difficult for them to do their job due to the constant distractions of “helpful” technology.
AI in Customer Experience: A Look Ahead
AI in the contact center isn’t a new concept. From AI-driven WFM to chatbots and personalization, AI is already being used. But in the near and long term, there are many opportunities to leverage AI in customer experience.
- Sentiment Analysis: Sentiment analysisis understanding the “feeling” the customer had when a particular interaction ended. This is whether the customer interaction was rated positive, negative, or neutral by the words the customer used in their text-based interaction. Positive customer sentiment and experiences can lead to increased brand loyalty and spending. A recent study by Deloitte showed that customers are willing to spend 140% more after having a positive customer experience.
- Automated Quality Management (AQM): Quality Management is the process of scoring a statistically sizable number of interactions by each agent and is usually monthly by a team lead, supervisor, or quality analyst. It uses a scorecard and may score things such as greeting and closing, resolution of customer’s issue or problem, speed of responsiveness, and anything else that can add or take away from optimal customer experiences. This process is automated, enabling you to see what drives customer interactions and underlying customer sentiment, and lets AI assist your analysts with a more efficient scoring and feedback process. Further, by spending more time fixing problems than simply identifying them, you can improve customer experience.
- WFM Powered by Your Agents: The WFM solutions of the future will lean more on agents’ wants and needs, while also aligning with customer experience expectations. While systems of the past focus on determining SLAs needs, and then staffing and scheduling to match this, future solutions will determine the SLAs and optimize for agent satisfaction – offering more flexibility and assisting with shift swaps to improve agent engagement and motivation.
The Future of AI In Customer Experiences
Companies are opportunistic about what the future of AI holds — and there is no reason why they shouldn’t. AI can help lower costs, improve efficiency, and customer experiences. As you look to incorporate AI into your support center, remember that an AI solution alone won’t magically fix any issues or problems you may have today. It’s important to align with a trusted partner who can be with you for the long term to help you experiment, leverage, and implement AI to improve your overall operations without disruption. The future of customer experience will likely be using more AI tooling but used deliberately and thoughtfully.
Links:
Website: www.playvox.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/playvox
X: @playvoxcx
“What ChatGPT does, is able to do, is just mind-boggling,” says Daniel Foppen, VP Product and Product Marketing at Convoso, an AI-powered contact center software for sales teams. “And especially with the latest version, the 4.0 model, this is really going to replace a big chunk of customer service agents. That’s a full stop. I’m envisioning 20 to 30% within the next year or year and a half… Klarna, the payment service provider from Sweden, just released recently the news that they replaced 700 agents with ChatGPT virtual agents.”
Daniel FoppenHowever, Foppen does not see workforce reduction. He sees workforce reassignment and growth. If you were staffing your call center to cope with surges of calls that occur at lunch time or other point on the clock or calendar, to filed inbound calls, you will now be reassigning those workers on outreach. From defense to opportunity. Foppen calls for a new approach to outbound call management. In this podcast we discuss…
- Call campaigns at Scale
- Leveraging AI and Automation
- Enhanced Data Insights
… and we touch on how call centers can achieve higher closure rates on outbound calls. The technology change mirrors a significant role-playing change: the contact center from being a point of customer care to becoming a revenue center.
About
Convoso is a leading CCaaS contact center software provider for sales and lead generation teams. Since 2006, Convoso has remained at the forefront of innovation, consistently developing solutions to foster customer growth while supporting adherence to regulatory standards. Its omnichannel capabilities include conversational AI game-changer www.Voso.ai to scale sales and revenue further.
Storied communications brand strives to meet customers where are on the migration path
“It’s a hybrid setting,” Martin Bitzinger of Mitel. “Some portions are going to be delivered out of the cloud. Other portions are maybe delivered out of some sort of private cloud that could have data sovereignty reasons, that could have security reasons, that could have performance reasons in terms of how real-time requirements, especially with AI entering the picture, there are fundamental requirements … or there could be cost reasons as well in many cases where it might be fundamentally cheaper to do things, one way versus the other.
In late April, Mitel unveiled a unveiled a portfolio strategy emphasizing hybrid, vertically integrated, and multimodal solutions.
In this podcast, Martin outlines Mitel’s view of how to best serve today’s enterprise. We demystify cloud communications and discuss digital transformation in practical terms. One of the big takeaways, in this podcast, is the acknowledgement of how different verticals will need different solution sets. A big focus is on frontline workers, almost half the workforce and the people everyone depends on for food, hospital, education, first responder, basic industries, and much more. We learn about Multimodal Capabilities for Frontline Workers.
Visit www.mitel.com
“If you think about it from a cybersecurity perspective, how do you defend as an organization what you don’t thoroughly understand?” asks Stephen Aiello, Field CISO at AHEAD. “For most organizations, when you think about the age of a lot of large-scale organizations, they’ve grown, they have developed over time. A lot of them have grown through acquisition and just the legacy infrastructure and the size and complexity of the infrastructure is really, really challenging for most organizations to manage. You build and build and build over time. And then people retire, people move. It just worked with a large insurance firm, a global insurance firm. And they were talking about one of their cloud environments. And they said, you know, none of the people that built this environment work here anymore. Like nobody really knows how it was stood up.”
Steven AielloIn this podcast, a frontline CISO and an active member of the Cisco Advisory Board, describes the challenge from the inside out, including the real-world challenge of kit-bashed networks, assembled over time and different IT leadership teams, along with the ongoing challenge of a cybersecurity threat that changes by the hour. Stephen Aiello walks us through the issues and discusses Cisco Hypershield. “We’ve been saying that we want to get security as close to the asset or as close to the data as possible.” We discuss how Cisco Hypershield answers that need, especially in light of industries that not only have special IoT needs, but also operate under a rigorous regulatory structure.
Visit www.cisco.com
Phone.com’s newest take on AI delivers an enterprise grade solution for the solopreneur
You can’t cut hair and answer the phone at the same time. You can’t cook in a commercial kitchen or grill and take reservations or pick up food orders. You can’t see a client, and take a call and book another client appointment, at the same time. Inbound calls remain a basic, critical, communication tool for millions of small, businesses. But millions of people who work on their own have limited means to manage those calls. Old school voicemail is as good as lost business.
In this podcast Amber Newman of Phone.com walks us through AI-Connect. AI-Connect is designed to interact in natural, free-flowing conversations with callers, enabling it to efficiently handle tasks such as call routing, schedule management, or answering FAQs. This capability is made possible by combining state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural language understanding (NLU), natural language processing (NLP), text-to-speech (TTS) and large language model (LLM) technologies.
We see how AI-Connect works, including its ability to handle responses beyond yes and no. People use jargon, and AI-Connect handles jargon. AI-Connect also learns as it goes, improving with each use.
Visit www.phone.com
“I’m a very practical person, so I love technology,” says Russell Crampin of Axians. “I love seeing what’s new out there, but I always ask the question, so what? How does it help me? How does it help my customers? How can we make money?” In this podcast, Russell outlines the practical side of AI and how AI is already being used to help MSPs, and the clients of the MSP community, do routine organizational tasks, better. Russell stresses that AI innovation is part of a larger, longer continuity that stretches backwards and forwards in time, of applying machine-based technology to leverage the advantages of processing data, quickly.
Wi-Fi, for example, is an everyday tool that almost every organization offers to employees, and typically onsite guests. Here’s a place what MSPs can shine for their customers in overcoming challenges and delivering better experiences “Why is my network running really slow? Why is the Wi-Fi user in this part of network not getting a good reception? And this network will be learning, the tool will be learning, well, what’s going on there? What’s specific about this environment? What patch levels are they on? What is the connectivity? What is happening? What are the firmware levels? And it will start to diagnose and make recommendations. And that means that we can use our engineers to be more customer service focused and talk and proactively help users and customers rather than be doing hard coding, trying to run scripts and finding out what’s going on, because all that’s taken care of…” adds Russell.
Axians is an organization with 16,000 employees, across 37 countries, with revenue of €3.6.
Visit www.axians.com
“Whether it be an old trunk or an analog line from our old days to all of the latest integrations, whether via Zoom, Cisco, Teams, just to mention a few, it’s one recording platform, one pane of glass view of all of that data consolidated in one place, meeting all of the customers’ global needs as far as, you know, compliance is concerned or data sovereignty and having everything in one place,” says Ryan Kahan, CEO at CallCabinet. “One place to manage security, one place to view your calls, playback your calls.”
In this podcast, Ryan updates us on how CallCabinet has been bringing that level of management unity, visibility, security and control to the real world of the enterprise where hundreds of sites can be distributed across many different platforms and processes, installed or initiated over different eras by different management teams. “We have customers that are recording everything from Bloomberg turrets to Avaya contact centers to, you know, to Cisco, to Teams, and they record all of that stuff, but there’s one place for their compliance data. They log in, they can see exactly what calls were recorded across all the platforms.”
We discuss important measures taken to make sure that data and process are compliant with today’s more vigorous regulatory environment, and how CallCabinet approaches maintaining the highest possible security.
Visit www.callcabinet.com
Bre Fernie and Russ Liptzin of HPE Aruba Explore the Power of Wi-Fi 6E, Tech Talks with Bre Fernie Podcast,* Unveiling the Next Frontier in Wireless Connectivity***
“It’s like Wi-Fi 6 on steroids,” says Bre Fernie. “So, the E stands for extended, and it brings some exciting enhancements to the table, more channels, less interference. Wi-Fi 6E provides even more available channels for devices to use. With the addition of the 6 gigahertz frequency band, there’s less interference from other devices, so you can say goodbye to buffering during your favorite shows, faster speeds.”
In this edition of Tech Talks with Bre Fernie, Bre’s Sales Engineer partner, Russ Liptzin, from HPE Aruba Southern California, join us on a journey into the realm of Wi-Fi 6E. In this episode, they dissect the buzz surrounding Wi-Fi 6E, the extended version of the Wi-Fi 6 standard, shedding light on its game-changing features and technical intricacies. From expanded spectrum and lightning-fast speeds to seamless streaming and future-proofing networks, discover why Wi-Fi 6E is the ultimate solution for anyone seeking a superior wireless experience. Tune in for expert insights, practical advice, and a glimpse into the future of connectivity.
“This is a game changer for high density deployments and minimizing co-channel interference. Having 59 new single channels is a pretty big deal,” adds Russ.
- Contact bre.fernie@hpe.com
- Visit https://www.arubanetworks.com/products/wireless
Bre Fernie and Russ Liptzin of HPE Aruba Explore the Power of Wi-Fi 6E
https://youtu.be/aFD6o74vBXQ
Clearspan offers solutions from POTS migrations to Microsoft Teams Integration
“PING is Clearspan’s modern collaboration solution designed to facilitate seamless communication across all devices, anytime, anywhere,” says Jim Machi, Chief Product and Marketing Officer. “It offers features such as chat, video conferencing, file sharing, Teams, personal conference rooms (PCR), and calls, empowering users to stay connected and productive. It replaces the basic call only client that exists today.”
In this podcast we catch up with one the cloud community’s “under the radar” innovators. Clearspan has been busy offering curated paths from POTS, innovative solutions such as PING and a “single pane of glass” admin panel called OpEasy.
“We’re flexible with how we can deploy. That whole flexibility that I talked about before, customization, that’s really our DNA. And that serves us well in these large deployments that we’re able to do that. And so that’s why people use us, because we can do things faster than maybe some of the other guys, even though they’re big companies.”
Visit https://clearspancloud.com/
Mark Iannuzzi of TelNet Worldwide takes a fresh look at a long-term challenge, calls for changes
“Our telecommunication policy that started in 1996 and how service providers interconnect their network was based upon TDM technology, but here we are in 2024 and we know that IP is the rule of the roost,” says Mark Iannuzzi, President of TelNet Worldwide. We need the FCC to step up and to update the regulations so that the carriers, in fact, do play by a new playbook for interconnecting their network on an IP basis. And if we do that, now you have an end-to-end system.”
Recorded just before last month’s Cloud Connections Conference, and just after a committee of the CCA met with the FCC, this podcast covers some of the stickier challenges of the STIR/SHAKEN era. Along with the benefits and steps forward of STIR/SHAKEN, Mark discusses how a legitimate organization with legitimate needs to call contacts, can be labeled spam, and not know it. Mark explores these problems along with a call for policy reforms and refresh.
The CCA’s Government Affairs Committee, which Mark discusses, is a key and core activity of the CCA, as the CCA works to retain communication by phone as a critical link for organizations and people.
Visit www.telnetww.com
24×7 Advantage Spins Up Customer Support that an MSP was able to offer a client in need
Michelle Fiegehen of 24×7 Advantage is back this week, this time with a case study. In the previous podcasts we heard about SOC, outsourcing and more. This time we hear how customer service could be something an MSP could offer as a resale offering. Michelle’s company has deep resources that can spin up a curated service, where the MSP simply had to walk their client over to a new white labeled customer service program, that replaced a troubled vendor, and created a friction free win for the MSP.
Visit www.24x7advantage.com
Save money. Make money. Save time. These are the three big reasons most businesses buy a product, a service or even hire a person. Sometimes hidden behind those big three is productivity. Teams is being adopted by organizations, and Momentum not only wanted to help their clients do Teams, but to do Teams better. Too realize productivity. In this podcast Rick Garcia of Momentum share with us his journey, as a founder of G12, and now, through Momentum’s acquisition of G12, a part of Momentum’s quest to help companies get the most from Teams. “Our job really is to communicate with the enterprises, to communicate with businesses, share with them what Microsoft Teams is capable of. We’ve got a plethora of UC platforms as well, but Microsoft Teams right now, if you look at it from a productivity perspective, cost perspective, and just feature tool set, this is quite impressive.”
Visit www.gomomemntum.com
“It’s really the spirited discussion around connectivity solutions that’s going to drive value for viewers,” says Lauren Malhiot, Director of Product-Led Growth and Technical Marketing at Massive Networks. “The audience can expect us to touch on the things that have been on their mind lately, including edge computing, AI’s impact on networking, and where the networking industry is headed.”
According to Lauren, “Massive Networks is bringing together some of the most knowledgeable networking experts all in one place, which means we have so many different viewpoints colliding to give you the most well-rounded view of the industry. We’ll be talking about everything from downtime concerns to hidden costs of connectivity. Combine that with our Rebel Alliance theme, and it’s going to be a good time all-around.”
The panel includes, Mark Thiele, Lauren Malhoit, Kevin Flake, James Coberly, Joe Onisick, and Robert P Boles.
Learn more https://www.linkedin.com/events/7186766329016647680/comments/
In a leaner environment, optimization matters
“This is a game of workflow automation and data.” says CEO & Co-Founder Dennis Thankachan as he discusses telecom vendor management and network cost optimization “And when it comes to workflow automation and data, computers will do this job better than my brain and a pen and paper can. And that’s the whole thesis we’ve undergone with Lightyear.”
Lightyear returns to the TR podcast to discuss the latest enhancements to their rapidly growing software, launched in 2019. In just 10 minutes, CEO & Co-Founder Dennis Thankachan, covers new product releases that systematically identify enterprise network cost optimization opportunities. Plus, get a glimpse of these features in action with a quick walkthrough of the product.
Topics include the Network Inventory Manager, Bill Consolidation, and the Lightyear API.
Resources:
- Explore more in Lightyear’s Upcoming Webinar: Diving into the Latest Product Releases
- Learn more at https://lightyear.ai/
- Read more from Dennis Thankachan
“One thing I learned is our industry sometimes treats our customers very poorly, especially in the aspect of service,” says Dean Simon. “You know, usually when you call into a service of a large provider, you have a minimum hold of 30 minutes to 45 minutes. You get transferred around a few times, and then finally you’re talking to somebody and it’s an offshore, you know, support person when you have those challenges of communication. So, you spend half of your time on hold, you know, waiting for technology support than actually getting things done. And that’s the one thing I wanted to change with line one. I want it to be more of a boutique service provider to our customers to where they can instantly get service on demand 24/7 without that hold time.”
In this podcast we learn how Dean took those observations and that determination to make a change. Dean outlines how LineOne is different.
Visit https://line.one/
Everyone has been to one of those conferences where advice on marketing has been offered. Sticky. Relevant. Brand. Many in our community of MSPs and Channels take or make some small steps, but soon the weight of the needs of the day crowds in. However, in this podcast we learn how being both an indispensable and future ready brand has a new urgency. Faced with service price deflation and AI, Mitch Duckler says that establishing brand difference and brand indispensability, is more pressing than ever. Mitch offers a broad overview of the challenge and begins a discussion on the way forward. Mitch offers two books on the topic and offer consultation services. He has worked for household brands, including Coca-Cola and Univeler.
Visit www.fullsurge.com
“Phound is a little play on words,” says David Erickson. “It’s a mixture of being carrier found and phone, obviously. And the idea behind it is that we used to have phone books. We used to have directories, and now everybody kind of would rather hide their phone number and I think the idea with found is that we’re a permission-based carrier meaning you have to ask for permission to call people and so people are more likely to want to get found right and then allow for contact on their terms with the people that find them and so we’re going back to the idea of having a directory of phone book you know but the ability to kind of lock down my communications and only allow through the people that I want to allow through.”
You might have encountered David before, as the founder of freeconferencecall.com (www.freeconferencecall.com ). Now David is back, solving he next big problem: the need to update a communication system invented in an era of printed directories and rotary dials. Now a permission based system, familiar to the era of social media, can be achieved for the first means of reaching people, in real time.
Visit https://www.phound.app/
In this podcast you’ll learn more about:
- How AVOXI Cloud Service (new, integrated software and support) improves global voice delivery for the enterprise.
- Trends in contact center voice and why voice is more important than ever to customers.
- AI’s impact on contact center voice and operational efficiency.
AVOXI (www.avoxi.com) delivers a new generation of international cloud voice solutions to companies that need to easily connect and converse with customers. With unmatched global coverage and number types and a software platform that provides visibility and intelligence to manage voice service like never before, AVOXI’s 5,000+ clients use voice to more effectively serve and sell to customers as part of a modern contact center approach. AVOXI’s global team of cloud voice experts prides itself on ensuring clients receive the highest level of service possible – anywhere and anytime.
Recently, Trustifi, the premier provider of AI- and cloud-based email cyber security solutions, announced it is launching a new Email Security Awareness training module, a threat simulation tool that MSPs can offer to their end-customers. The module helps train network users to recognize and avoid phishing attacks, then goes a step further to provide actionable strategies, analytics, and reports that help administrators evaluate the module’s results and enhance the protection of their networks. The Email Security Awareness tool identifies users who are most vulnerable to phishing attempts, allowing IT administrators to apply warning banners and training strategies to users who fall prey to the program’s mock phishing attacks. The module and its campaigns can be conducted by the end-users’ IT department, or by the managing MSP itself, depending on the customer/MSP business model. Information on the Email Security Awareness Module can be found here.
Zack SchwartzIn this podcast, Zack Schwartz, Vice President – Strategic Partnerships, discusses this new tool and opportunity for the MSP community.
Trustifi is a cybersecurity firm featuring solutions delivered on a software-as-a-service platform including sophisticated AI-driven tools. Trustifi leads the market with the easiest-to-use and deploy email security products providing both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor. The most valuable asset to any organization, other than its employees, is the data contained in its email, and Trustifi’s key objective is keeping clients’ data, reputations, and brands safe from all threats related to email. With Trustifi’s Inbound Shield, Data Loss Prevention, Account Takeover Protection, and Email Encryption, clients are always one step ahead of attackers. www.trustifi.com
Follow Trustifi: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Douglas McKee, Executive Director, Threat Research at SonicWall, recently evaluated the company’s telemetry data and found the most widespread network attacks to small businesses (SMBs) today are older vulnerabilities. In light of this data, prioritization is a critically important factor for today’s CISOs who are asked to manage and prioritize risk. In this podcast, Douglas will talk about:
- The Top 5 threats impacting SMBs today and how old they are
- The methodology used to assemble this data
- How to prioritize those threats
- The importance of ongoing patch management
- The tactics used by attackers
- How SMBs can better utilize MSPs to help develop a better security posture
About SonicWall Capture Labs
SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers gather, analyze and vet cross-vector threat information from the SonicWall Capture Threat network, consisting of global devices and resources, including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 215 countries and territories. SonicWall Capture Labs, which pioneered the use of artificial intelligence for threat research and protection over a decade ago, performs rigorous testing and evaluation on this data, establishes reputation scores for email senders and content, and identifies new threats in real-time.
About SonicWall
SonicWall is a cybersecurity forerunner with more than 30 years of expertise and is recognized as a leading partner-first company. With the ability to build, scale and manage security across the cloud, hybrid and traditional environments in real-time, SonicWall provides seamless protection against the most evasive cyberattacks across endless exposure points for increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled users. With its own threat research center, SonicWall can quickly and economically provide purpose-built security solutions to enable any organization—enterprise, government agencies and SMBs—around the world. For more information, visit www.sonicwall.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
“The starting point of the SOC is team of Triage staff,” says Michelle Fiegehen of 24×7 Advantage. “These analysts review raw data and respond to alerts. They configure and tweak the parameters of monitoring tools to minimize false threats, as well as responding to and resolving actual incidents promptly. This tier of activity is the easiest to outsource and integrate with an in-house SOC and reduces the risk of alert-fatigue on more senior and expensive in-country resources.”
In this short 24×7 Advantage Wednesday Podcast, we learn how a SOC can be expensive. However, the expensive bits might also be the places where savings might be found. 24×7 Advantage offers a set of services that enable companies to focus on other needs. Outsourced SOC could reduce costs and it might also be a channel opportunity. “24×7 Advantage can also provide Incident Responders and Threat Hunters or SME’s but we recommend the MSP starts with the triage level,” adds Michelle.
Blog: https://24x7advantage.com/cybersecurity/blog-outsourced-soc/
Email web version: http://139807196.hs-sites-eu1.com/blog-outsourced-soc
“We have both best of the worlds to offer to our enterprise customers,” says Hon Kit Lam, the Vice President of Hybrid Connectivity Services for Tata Communications Network Business. In this last segment of a special three-part series, we drill down on how Tata Communications delivers Internet WAN, and how Tata Communications’ approach ultimately improves EX, and finally CX.
Hon Kit LamIn this podcast Hon Kit Lam describes Tata Communications’ global reach and how that reach is combined with other tactics to aim higher. He describes benefits for both enterprise customers and for carrier partners. We learn how a marriage of scale, partnership, and approach combines for services that overcome compromises. In a market with so-called price deflation for services, you are going to want to partner with a company that can achieve a noticeable difference.
- Visit https://www.tatacommunications.com/
- Watch Part 1
- Watch Part 2
“Waste Nothing”
“Some of us have, we have clients, they stretch into all continents,” says Ulf Berglund of Remade in Sweden. “This is why we also need friends in other parts to help us handle those clients when they have needs in these other areas outside of Europe.”
“We’re 20 people compared to the companies that we do business with they have usually thousands of employees and for us We need to show them that we’re a trustworthy partner trustworthy company Not just some tech guys sitting in the basement drinking coffee, you know playing games So the first thing we did when we started the company we got certified in ISO 9000, which is quality ISO 14001 for environment. We also have ISO 2701 for information security.”
In this podcast, Ulf tells us how Rename serves a core European market, while partnering with companies to serve further afield. We also learn how the ASCDI helps Remade find companies to work with and to work together on issues of shared concern for the whole industry.
Visit https://www.remadeinsweden.se/
Simplifies comprehensive testing for the complex PNT challenges of the future, delivering real-time feedback for mission-critical testing scenarios
PAIGNTON, UK – April 30, 2024 – Spirent Communications plc (LSE:SPT), the leading provider of test and assurance solutions for next-generation devices and networks, today announced PNT X, its next-generation positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) simulation system. Designed to deliver unprecedented performance and flexibility in PNT simulation and testing, PNT X offers the highest fidelity and most signal sources in a single test platform to address the future of enhanced autonomy, safety, efficiency, and precision.
Watch our special podcast below.As developers look beyond GNSS alone to address increasingly complex positioning challenges, PNT X brings together signals including L-band, S-band, and alternative navigation (AltNav) signals, as well as industry-first Regional Military Protection (RMP) support, into one innovative, compact, and flexible system. With the power to run multiple signals from different PNT sources concurrently, the new platform simplifies comprehensive testing, delivering real-time feedback for mission-critical testing scenarios.
“We have built PNT X with the future in mind,” said Adam Price, Vice President of PNT Simulation at Spirent. “It’s designed to leverage the best technologies for each application, ensuring our customers can achieve deterministic testing at every stage of the development cycle, while saving money and reducing lab footprint. Most importantly, it can do all of this without compromising on performance. It will enable users to support cutting-edge application testing with more precision and simplicity than ever before.”
PNT X brings together the broadest set of features and capabilities needed to protect future generations of mission-critical systems. These include the patented I/Q spatial awareness capability, an enhanced controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA) testing interface, the highest available continuous dynamic range for jamming evaluation, and a standard update rate of 2 kHz for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and high-dynamics vehicle testing. Along with a host of other groundbreaking enhancements, these make PNT X the world’s most advanced test solution for mission-critical systems and NAVWAR robustness.
“An evolving and escalating NAVWAR threat landscape has made comprehensive testing of layered PNT solutions an absolute imperative,” said Rob VanBrunt, President/CEO at Spirent Federal. “PNT X accelerates product development cycles, enabling defense developers, governmental agencies, and aerospace enterprises to deploy mission critical PNT solutions faster.”
Peter Terry-Brown, General Manager of Positioning at Spirent, added, “It’s nearly 40 years since Spirent delivered the industry’s first GPS signal generator, and today we are again leading the industry in the shift from GNSS to PNT. As the latest milestone in our commitment to support and propel the next generation of PNT-reliant technologies, PNT X ensures our customers can continue to deliver world-leading products that perform under all conditions.”
For more information about Spirent PNT X, visit: www.spirent.com/products/pnt-x-simulation-system.
About Spirent
Spirent Communications plc. (LSE: SPT) is the leading global provider of automated test and assurance solutions for networks, cybersecurity, and positioning. The company provides innovative products, services and managed solutions that address the test, assurance, and automation challenges of a new generation of technologies, including 5G, cloud, autonomous vehicles and beyond. From the lab to the real world, Spirent helps companies deliver on their promise to their customers of a new generation of connected devices and technologies. For more information visit www.spirent.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
“We’ve been refurbishing and reusing hard drives since 1996,” says Ross Gentle of Ultratec. “When we found out we could work with the Turing Trust donating some hard drives, it was a complete and utter win-win as far as we were concerned.”
Ultratec, a U.K. based specialist refurbisher and repairer of Hard Drives and SSDs, is in the business of doing the right thing: every hard drive that can be restored to active use, is another device that’s not in a landfill. Recently, the ASCDI member company, made another good choice. They donated five hundred drives to the Turing Trust. The donation helped the Turing Trust in its work, while Ultratec took steps to make sure the drives were properly wiped of previous data, protecting customers. The entire process protects the earth from the issue of improper disposal of IT equipment, and drives themselves, as we learn in this podcast, are now helping people achieve new goals.
In this podcast, Noah van der Linde of the Turing Trust offers a brief presentation of his organization’s work in helping everyone share in the benefits of the digital revolution. We learn how donations, such as the one Ultratec made, can help people, and even entire communities, gain needed equipment for new uses, such as education.
Ultratec is part of a long standing ASCDI tradition, dating back to the early days of commercial grade computing, of companies giving back to communities near them and around the world. The ASCDI- The ITAD Association is a non-profit. In a related statement, Joe Marion, ASCDI President, said that the Ultratec donation demonstrates, ESG- Environmental Social Governance, in motion. “Choosing Ultratec and other ASCDI Members is their safest route to ESG because ASCDI covers the E & S in ESG.”
The Turing Trust
“Founded by Alan Turing’s family, The Turing Trust seeks to continue his legacy by using technology to empower disadvantaged communities. Alan is widely regarded as the father of modern computing, and he saw IT as a tool for solving immense challenges. He also had a passion for helping others: he funded one member of his foster family to work in Africa and sponsored a Jewish refugee’s schooling during World War II. In honor of Alan Turing’s altruistic spirit, we refurbish IT equipment, install a range of educational software and provide it to those who need it most. In the last 13 years we have enabled access to computers for over 169,000 students across Africa, Asia, and the UK. With your help and a great deal of hard work, we believe that one day every child will be able to enjoy the transformative power of technology that Alan envisioned.” – James Turing, Founder of the Turing Trust.
Ultratec
Founded in 1996, it is a specialist refurbisher and repairer of Hard Drives and SSDs. Globally, it supplies between 600K and 1M drives per year, with over 250,000 drives currently in stock. Ultratest uses the industry-leading Genesis Solution to ensure that all devices are fully Data Sanitized, in accordance with Industry Standards: NIST 88-800, and are returned to Grade A peak performance.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ultratec/
Website: www.ultratec.co.uk
Ultratest Solutions
Created in 2018, Ultratest was built on the knowledge gained by Ultratec over 20+ years of buying/selling and refurbishing Hard Drives and SSDs. Ultratest has developed the industry-leading Genesis Solution, a blend of hardware and software that not only Erases Data but can also repair and refurbish devices to return them to a Grade A full-health status. Ultratest has also designed the Nemesis, a revolutionary solution for the Data Erasure or Networking Equipment, such as Switches, Routers, Firewalls and Access-Points. Products that are regularly overlooked when it comes to data sanitization. The solution also ensured that the product licensing remains intact so that the asset value is retained.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ultratest-solutions-ltd
Website: www.ultratestsolutions.com
“I know a lot of your audience may be gun-shy at the prospect of outsourcing’” says Michelle Fiegehen of 24×7 Advantage. “Many MSPs we chat to have had negative experiences with the outsourcer unable to deliver what they promised, so I thought it might be useful to share a specific customer experience.”
In this short podcast, Michelle tells us about a case study of a company and their experiences with outsourcing and how this might be a great idea for many MSPs, both as a way to improve their bench of service, and as a white label opportunity.
- Blog: https://24x7advantage.com/msp/case-study-msp-outsourcing-rightsize-technology/
- Email web version: http://139807196.hs-sites-eu1.com/case-study-rightsize-technology
- Learn more at 24x7advantage.com
A new report from Zayo unveils a concerning trend in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, indicating a significant increase in intensity and duration throughout 2023. With the average attack lasting 68 minutes and costing businesses nearly half a million dollars on average, the financial toll is staggering. Notably, the shift towards multi-vector attacks adds a new layer of complexity, targeting specific components like IP addresses and email systems with heightened precision, making detection and mitigation increasingly challenging.
Industry-specific findings underscore the widespread vulnerability, with telecommunications companies experiencing the highest frequency of attacks, closely followed by sectors such as retail, healthcare, government, and education. In this evolving cyber landscape, characterized by political unrest and hybrid work environments, the need for advanced DDoS protection is paramount.
Anna Claiborne, Zayo’s Senior VP of Network Connectivity, joins Doug Green to discuss findings from the recent report and how businesses can navigate these challenges.
Visit www.zayo.com
Simplicity is the message.
“I think for the enterprise, they definitely need to look for a provider to remove the complexity from you and to provide the flexibility and scalability for your solution,” says Hon Kit Lam, the Vice President of Hybrid Connectivity Services for Tata Communications Network Business. “You may have a lot of complex business requirements, but the network solution you should look for is someone you rely on to provide the simple, like on some basis platform as a service for you.”
Hon Kit LamIn this second part of a three-part series, we take a deeper look into the needs of the enterprise and how to manage that complexity. We learn more about Hon Kit Lam’s portfolio, Hybrid Connectivity Services. The message is that the enterprises want simplicity, and yet they also seek, and need, services that are robust and secure. We hear the argument to choose a trusted a source that can step up to these asks. We also hear a somewhat parallel message to the carrier community.
- Visit https://www.tatacommunications.com/
- Read more from Hot Kit Lam
- Watch Part 1
“I have already had my marching orders from Clark and Joe that I’ve got to make these panels as interactive as possible so you know we will definitely be getting some impact and questions from the audience and the other service providers,” says Matthew Townend of Cavell. In this podcast we catch a look at some of the exclusive content that will be presented at the Cloud Connections 2024 Conference.
The Survey Says: 2023 – 2024 CCA Annual Service Provider Survey – Predictions and Forecasts for the path ahead! Cloud Communications Alliance
Matt tells us that almost the very first session of day one, attendees will be the first to hear the results of an annual survey. “We’ve now been doing that for three years… and with those results you kind of get the heartbeat of what the industry is thinking about.” The survey is famous for providing very detailed information about trends, and the data often packs some surprise findings. The gathered intelligence helps CCA members in gaining a better understanding of their larger business environment.
Top Cloud Platforms
“Both the CCA and Cavell really focus on practical advice, that help people turn some of the ideas into to action on things they can actually do.” On one panel, Top Cloud Platforms: Innovations Propelling Cloud Adoption into the Future, Matt tells us that, “…we’ve got the leading Cloud Platform players: Cisco, Alianza, Inc., NetSapiens a Crexendo Company, and Intermedia Cloud Communications. The panel will explore what’s driving growth and how to maintain growth.
Visit https://lnkd.in/gnR_iYJB
Fax remains a critical tool in certain industries, but copper service is disappearing, and prices are rising
“Here it is, 2024, and we’re still talking about faxing,” says Bob Webb of ClearlyIP. “And a lot of folks are still using and relying on faxing. The reason it’s become more difficult is because the legacy copper providers have been yanking that copper out of the ground and replacing it with fiber and basically, transparently to the end user, putting them on a voice over IP platform that’s not designed to carry faxing. But if you happen to be lucky enough where you rely on fax and you still have the copper, those same legacy providers are jacking up the prices.”
In this podcast, Bob outlines Sendfax.to. “Basically, we’re going to marry … multiple email addresses to multiple phone numbers but that’s the key because faxing is fundamentally a phone number to phone number communication…” Bob explains how this approach saves money and restore security to fax communications.
Visit www.clearlyip.com
How collaboration is going to be sold, promoted, ingested, service supported by firms in the coming years
“Change doesn’t just knock on the door,” says Janet Schijns, JS Group, CEO. “It practically demolishes the door to make its grand entrance. And the next few years, we’re going to ramp up even that pace of change we’ve all become used to in the industry. AI is the new workforce, automating everything from customer service to network optimization and bringing rapid innovation to our space with varying impacts. Channel partners, even competitors creating integrated solutions that offer more value to end users. And then on top of that, partners working with partners, working with partners, working with partners is now the norm. And with all that innovation, in AI and in collab, there’s a laser focus also on security…”
“I’m going to be sharing our proprietary research on how collaboration is going to be sold, promoted, ingested, service supported by firms in the coming years amidst all this change.” In this podcast, catch a look at the future and catch a look at this special content to be offered at this week’s conference. “Nobody’s talking about the vendor’s brand anymore. They’re talking about the experience for the customer and many times their own brand.”
Visit www.jsgnow.com
Alan Rihm is LIVE this week at Cloud Connections 2024
“People can be your biggest competitive advantage,” says Alan Rihm, Fall Forward CEO and Co-Founder. “Or you can waste a lot of time and have a huge amount of turnover and a lot of disgruntled.” In the creative storm of the cloud communications industry, Rihm reminds is, in this brief podcast that organizations are as defined by their people, their talent, and how that talent led, as by the services and products they offer. The two tracks run side by side. Rihm tells us that our technology might be radically different just two or three years from now. But the company culture is also a thing in motion. Will your team look forward, each day to coming to work, to doing the actual work? Will be inspired to see new things in the new technologies? Or will a poor culture make the least of the most advanced innovations. “We’re all about trying to help leaders leverage technology to get the most out of their team.”
Alan is joined by Dave Gilbert, Cloud Evangelist at Cavemen Investments LLC. Both Dave and Alan have led organizations up through stages from beginnings, take off to an eventual successful sale. They have seen the seasons of technological changes and the continuity of the human element: the need for the CEO to build a special culture. Alan Rihm and Dave Gilbert are LIVE at Cloud Connections 2024. Today Alan leads fall Forum, helping startups with a venture studio.
Visit www.fallforward.com
CCA CPaaSAA CPaaS Special Podcast, Cloud Connections 2024
“AI is synonymous with CPaaS in how it gets deployed in the organization when it comes to anything communications related”, Kevin Nethercott of the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance. This week, the Cloud Connections 2024 Conference will offer a panel labeled “Unlocking Revenue Streams: Seizing the CPaaS Advantage” and a second panel called “UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS, Security: Crafting the Ultimate Collaboration Suite for Revenue Growth”. CPaaS will be a major topic at the event. According to Nethercott, AI and CPaaS, go together. “They’re absolutely kind of kindred spirits of a sort. It’s hard to do one without the other. And we’re seeing global deployments of it in front of contact centers, in front of CCAS. And so, it really is converging everything down to the user. And that’s why we really like to focus on the user experience as the critical element of what this technology can be used for.”
Last year, CPaaS and AI had a kind of wonder appeal. This year, we are seeing practical applications, what Nethercott describes as commercialization. In this short podcast we learn how those dots are linking up: CPaaS can be deployed to solve customer challenges, and to create revenue. Looking into these opportunities will be a big part of this week’s event.
Visit www.cpaasaa.com
“How do you integrate with all the different platforms, whether it’s Teams and Zoom and all the other options? How do you bring a cellular or mobile option to a UC provider? Those kinds of things are really important changes that are coming to unified communication providers, collaboration providers.” Mark Lindsey of ECG will be exhibiting answers to these challenges at Cloud Connections 2024. “We’re talking about how to integrate in new members of the engineering team to help build those products out and make those kind of new product ideas a reality.”
Mark sees the CCA’s annual conference as a place for people share fresh thinking on challenges, learn about new opportunities and come together to build a stronger industry. “It’s a great show because the people there are really talking about a lot of new ideas, kind of what’s around the bend, around the corner things. Mark also notes how CCA’s event looks at the interface between products, services, innovations, with public policy, regulation, and the law.
Visit www.ecg.co
“Increasingly, people are deskless,” says Lee Essex of Tango Networks. “They're hybrid workers. They work from home, they're out in the field, or they just don't have an office anymore.” In this short podcast, Lee previews his coming talk at the Cloud Connections event. “I'm here to help you solve problems. From this point of views, let's just have a chat. You know, you've got a problem, you've got an inquisitive mind, or you want to explore something. Let's do that. Let's have some fun with the session.” Lee will be participating in the Cloud Mobility Revolution: Revealing the Power of Mobile Connectivity session.Lee also tells us about what he and his team at Tango Networks do. “We've done this with a lot of the major UC providers, but recently in the past 18 months to two years, we've been focusing a lot of our work with what I would call the industry leaders for a number of reasons, Microsoft, and Cisco. But we are all about working with those vendors to produce a native mobile experience for their subscribers. And when I say a native mobile experience, it's probably worth me taking just a few minutes to explain why.” Watch this shot podcast and learn about Tango. Attend this session to.Visit https://tango-networks.com/
Glacier Consulting helps organizations with R2, ISO 27001, ASCDI Podcast, We have a niche in R2“We are a business development consulting company,” says Michael Hutchcraft of Glacier Consulting. “We have a niche in R2 and the related certifications management system certifications, so we're we are heavily involved in used electronics, whether we're talking mobile phones, laptops, tablets, or wearables like watches.” Glacier helps their clients implement maintain and build management systems required to offer these certified services. “I do R2 about 50 to 60 hours a week. It is my specialty. It's my passion of what I work in.” Hutchcraft explains how he helps his clients make the most of opportunities in front of them, while doing the right thing, by keeping many products in service and avoiding landfill.Glacier Consulting is a new member of the ASCDI. In this initial podcast, we learn about Glacier Consulting and how Glacier Consulting is already partnering with the ASCDI community. We also learn about the company’s offerings to the larger IT community.“ASCDI offers so many things. We could probably have a podcast just on what that offers,” adds Hutchcraft. In keeping with long standing ASCDI community traditions, Hutchcraft tells us that his door is always open to other members. Visit https://glaciercs.com/ ASCDI NewsGlacier Consulting helps R2 ISO 27001
“Most of the customer base is coming to you over the open Internet or, in some cases, dedicated Internet, that, in addition to the fact that you don't have visibility on the customer's LAN routinely, causes issues,” says Paul Buss, of Reply Cloud. “What we try to solve is reducing the amount of time that a provider is spending in answering performance questions about LANs and firewalls. and wide area networks and other ISPs that the customer's chosen to reach you through as a channel and bring that to light.”Reply Cloud is a service assurance platform, a member of the Cloud Communications Alliance and an exhibitor at the upcoming Cloud Connections Conference. Buss tells us how Reply Cloud partner with companies, such as the CCA members in a very seamless way, and with white label programs.In this podcast, Buss offers a real-world example, with slides, of Reply Cloud in action.Visit https://www.replycloud.io/
Jonathan Marashlian will be speaking at the Cloud Connections Conference “What California is doing is it's undertaken a rulemaking proceeding to determine whether or not there are different types of voice -over IP service that require a more stringent degree of regulation,” says Jonathan Marashlian. Marashlian is a member of the CCA's Government Affairs Committee that carefully monitors legal regulatory issues in the US, UK, EU and elsewhere, as part of the CCA’s effort to look out for the best interested on the cloud communications industry and the industry’s millions of customers. “Regulation that may impose market entry requirements like licensing might require them to get surety bonds, may even impose transfer of control obligations on certain types of voiceover IP providers.” He cautions that a single state can cause a “snowball effect”.In this podcast, Marashlian gives us a quick update on this and several other hot topics that may, or may already, be impacting cloud communications companies. We get a glimpse of some of the news, on the legal front, that will be discussed at the upcoming Cloud Connections Conference: spam, robocalling, fraud, STIR/SHAKEN, “…call it the whole ecosystem of cracking down on us, bad traffic, bad calls, telemarketing calls.”Marashlian is a telecommunications attorney, and a managing partner Marashlian & Donahue, PLLC, The CommLaw Group https://commlawgroup.com/ and The Commpliance Group https://thecompliancesquare.com/
Unwanted robocalls and text messages plague the PSTN, wasting time and potentially leading to scams. While the STIR/SHAKEN and Campaign Registry frameworks promise a solution, incomplete and onerous implementation leaves us vulnerable. This podcast dives into the fight against illegal robocalling/texting and spoofing. We'll explore the limitations of STIR/SHAKEN and the TCR, discuss the need for a strong caller name labeling system, and how regulators and the industry can work together to finally silence these unwanted calls.Visit www.telnetww.com
Wildix integration with the new Apple Vision Pro VR headsetWildix recently announced the launch of the revolutionary AI-powered solution, x-hoppers, tailored for the retail sector. This revolutionary tool harnesses AI to transform staff-customer dynamics. From AI-driven theft detection to real-time incident response, coupled with an AI assistant for instantaneous product information, x-hoppers is set to revolutionize the retail communication landscape. In this podcast, Wildix’s Tim Truelove brings u up to date on a set of differentiating products that Wildix is offering to its partner community. Among these are Wildix’s integration with the new Apple Vision Pro VR headset.Tim discusses revolutionizing Sales with AI-Driven Communication - x-bees, a pioneering AI-enhanced sales communication tool. This platform stands as a testament to how AI can elevate sales interactions to new heights. It offers real-time AI support, delivering live feedback, insightful analytics, and strategic managerial interventions. This fusion of technology and human expertise is engineered to amplify sales productivity and deepen customer relationships. x-bees now more AI-fueled offers more features available, including real-time transcription services for instant speech-to-text conversion and seamless saving of summaries and transcriptions directly into CRM systems. We also learn about new phones with new features for a changed workspace and a changed workforce.Visit www.wildix.com
Networks Reimbursement Program (SCRP), an initiative designed to Remove Replace and Dispose (RRD) of certain non-US equipment. Regulatory agencies urged rural carriers to buy less expensive products to speed connectivity to sixty million Americans who live in rural areas and smaller towns, that are often left behind by a lack of connectivity. Later, the same agencies began to urge the same players to replace many of the same products as security, including national security issues mounted. Congress launched a program designed to help with those replacements. Many rural carriers have small subscriber bases, serve modest income customers and simple lack the cash and capital to abandon long term investments before their (usual) time.Congress funded the replacement program, however, only partially. In this podcast Summit Ridge Group’s Armand Musey walks us through the problem. Due to the lack of full funding from Congress, many participants have been stuck waiting to approve and start the Rip & Replace program. In many areas of the country, the work required to replace the telecom equipment takes several weeks or sometimes months. If wireless carriers’ emergency shutdowns aren’t accounted for, there will be major disruptions in service across the country as many carriers will be forced to go bankrupt to make these repairs.Summit Ridge Group is the leading financial and business valuation consulting boutique focused exclusively on the telecommunications, media, and satellite industries globally.
Mary Clark is the New President of Numeracle“Whether it's a call or a text message or an email, our vision is to restore trust, says Numeracle President and COO, Cathy Clark. At the recent Enterprise Connect 2024 event, Numeracle, an innovator in Verified Identity and Entity Identity Management for communications, announced a series of innovations and initiatives designed to specifically help enterprises preserve and improve the value of their contact centers and other parts of their communications complex, by ensuring trust and transparency with every phone call made. “We can help make sure that enterprises are not mislabeled to spam when they're trying to reach consumer, that they're appropriately labeled and get through to that consumer.”Clark is Numeracle’s new president. In this podcast, Clark shares her insights as person with a deep background in the telecom industry and perspective on the problem of solving fraud in communications and returning trust to all calls.Trusted Logo and Name, Test How You’re Being SeenClark explains how Numeracle’s approach ultimately places a logo, the trusted brand logo of the enterprise, on the phone of the customer or call recipient. “You will see the logo and the reason for the call and the name of the company, giving the person on the other end, that consumer, myself, my kids, my parents, your parents, the opportunity to feel more confident in answering that call.” Numerical also offers Number Check, where organizations can test how their calls are delivered and displayed on consumer devices, utilizing screenshots of real phone calls across all top 3 wireless carriers.Channel OpportunityClark also reaches out to the partner community with an opportunity. Organizations have huge investments in their brand and companies of all sizes need to be able to reach customers, clients, patients, students, citizens, vendors, and contractors via calls that will be answered and texts that will be seen and read.https://www.numeracle.com/contact-us.
“When you think about the big pillars today, flexibility, mobility, AI…. these are going to be pillars for your productivity and collaboration at a workplace in the future, says Vandana Thomas Principal Group Product Manager Microsoft. In this podcast, Vandana shares with us how AI is being applied, almost as a loyal companion, eager to help with everyday projects, while quietly working across and being accessible from, many platforms. “Let's say I'm on LinkedIn or I am writing a Word document and I have a few thoughts. But if I want to structure the thoughts well, to use a certain tone, a fun tone and a somber tone, a formal tone, I can let Copilot know and Copilot can create the content to suit the needs.” Vandana tells us she used it in connection with this upcoming conference. “I, in fact, used some of it to create my bio for the Cloud Connections Alliance.Vandana Thomas will be at the upcoming Cloud Connections conference and will be speaking on Cloud Mobility Revolution: Revealing the Power of Mobile. In this short podcast we catch a glimpse of her thoughts on this key topic and learn a little bit about Microsoft’s approach. Microsoft seems determined to take AI and mobility, together, to deliver a seamless step(s) forward.
“Our solution is to provide the simplicity,” says Hon Kit Lam, the Vice President of Hybrid Connectivity Services for Tata Communications Network Business. “Our solution is to provide simplicity to consume all those connections between the cloud, between data centers, and even between their offices.” In this podcast, first of a series of three, we get an overview of Tata Communications and their approach to the paradox of modern communications, where a series of decisions and layers of technology may have made the network more complex, while enterprises need to be able to use simplified process to communicate to people, be they customers, employees, partners, investors, vendors, or contractors. “It's more complicated at the background and we try to also make the complicated things simple for them to use.”Hon Kit LamWe learn how Tata Communications is using AI to deliver simplicity at the user level. “The complexity itself can be addressed. However, the platform they need to select needs to have the intelligence, and to be open for the customers to consume with the API. They also need to have the muscle… they need to select the providers with the muscle plus the intelligence.” In this podcast series we learn how Tata Communications endeavors to deliver both. Visit https://www.tatacommunications.com/ Read more from Hot Kit Lam
Webex's Jono Luk Says: Experience Matters, in the delivery of better EX and CX, AI—should serve the human component of work..."Experience matters...," says Jono Luk, Vice President Of Product Management, Webex Contact Center, Webex by Cisco. In this podcast recorded live Enterprise Connect EC24, Jono outlines a broad-based vision to help the enterprise step up EX and CX. Cisco is unveiling general availability of the all-new Webex Customer Experience Essentials for customer-facing employees who are not traditional contact center agents. Cisco is also announcing new innovations in the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, quality management functionality and CRM integrations.AI—should serve the human component of work...In this podcast we also discuss the role of AI in the service of helping people work. From a related Cisco blog (read below): "That is why, experience matters. Any tech—even #AI—should serve the human component of work. It should work quietly and transparently in the background, making things easier, better, and faster. Our entire Collaboration portfolio is designed with that goal in mind: to deliver unrivaled experiences for customers and employees." Visit www.webex.com More on Cisco Webex's Jono Luk Says Experience Matters___________________________Previously Published... Cisco Blog on AIExperience Matters: The Role of AI for Customer and Employee Experiences We are in the middle of a major technological transformation that promises to change how we work and collaborate. We’re already seeing the benefits that AI can bring, but in an AI-first world, human interactions – experiences – matter more than ever.Experiences, connections, interactions—these are at the heart of collaboration. Things like real-time discussions, sharing of ideas, and brainstorming are the moments when teams make progress and real work gets done. Your customers want to engage in different ways, too. The difference between satisfied and unsatisfied customers is your ability to connect with them. And the bar for using AI in customer experiences is high—it must make human interactions better.That is why experience matters. Any tech—even AI—should serve the human component of work. It should work quietly and transparently in the background, making things easier, better, and faster. Our entire Collaboration portfolio is designed with that goal in mind: to deliver unrivaled experiences for customers and employees.Customer ExperiencesThe bar has never been higher for what it takes to deliver a great customer experience. Customers expect a personalized experience that is accessible through their familiar channels of communication. That’s why we built a world-class contact center platform with support for a wide array of digital channels in addition to voice.Webex Contact Center is built on the same platform as the Webex Suite, which means we can scale innovations across workloads, including AI. We believe that AI will have a profound effect on customer experiences—the future of customer experience will be intelligent.The AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center is a key part of our self-learning contact center. We have brought industry-leading AI capabilities to all the places that matter, empowering agents and customers alike. Innovations like topic analytics and automatic customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, now available in beta, intelligently analyze large amounts of data to improve agent performance and maximize customer satisfaction.The same audio and language intelligence capabilities powering meeting, message, and call summaries in Webex also enable virtual agent and dropped call conversation summaries, which will be available in beta later this year. And AI-powered suggested responses, agent coaching highlights, and wrap-up summaries are also expected to be available in beta later this year.We are also introducing new workforce optimization quality management ...
“We want to make sure we're delivering a product out the gate that meets the needs of the peer network,” says Josh Blalock, Chief Video Evangelist at Jabra. “Knowing full well that those needs are evolving at lightning speed.” Hearkening to both past traditions of “evergreen” products, while at the same time, building devices that anticipate changing needs and technologies, we learn how Jabra is working to make product investments last. Jabra is also looking to help people use video better, to literally be their best selves in video and to get more out of conferences. We learn how AI will play an active role in doing that and more.Visit www.jabra.com
“Call Fabric is sort of like the second coming of the entire SignalWire platform, says Anthony Minessale, founder, and CEO of SignalWire and FreeSWITCH. Call Fabric simplifies complex communication technologies into user-friendly building blocks, enabling the creation of tailored communication solutions, from call routing to AI interactions, without requiring advanced technical expertise. “Call Fabric is the culmination of all the, say the true vision of SignalWire,” adds Minessale.In this podcast recorded live at Enterprise Connect, we learn about a set of products that SignalWire is offering the large enterprise community, that enable more choice, often lower cost and open the door to more customized experiences.Visit www.signalwire.com
The Pulver’s 25 Cent Solution, Enterprise Connect Podcast, The key to successful deployment for AI in a company is one word, discernment.“It's 40 years old, 40 years old, has not necessarily been tried out in this capacity yet. But imagine that before you initiate a call to call someone, you paid something. $0.25,” asks Jeff Pulver. In this Live podcast recorded at Enterprise Connect, Pulver looks at an old solution to a growing problem. People aren’t answering the phone. Everyone now has a phone. Everyone has a phone almost everywhere they go.But no one is answering the phone because calls can’t be trusted.Can charging strangers a simple 25 cents (or some sort of fee) be the spam speed bump the industry has been looking for?Discernment“The key to successful deployment for AI in a company is one word, discernment,” declares Pulver.“I mean, the key to successful deployment for AI in a company is one word, discernment. If you learn how to discern and you understand, if you're the person running the company or running the department and your boss says, well, you must be using AI tools now, it really doesn't matter so much whose platforms you're using. But what does matter is the people whose hands you give the tools to, that they understand the problems being asked.”Visit www.jeffpulver.comMore Jeff Pulver
Arnold sees three large use case families, analyzes the role of AIAre we at a Jeff Pulver AI Moment?“AI is dominating every conversation, probably more than the Informa folks who produced this show maybe care to realize because the show floor is still dominated by vendors in the comms and contact center space,” observes leading industry analyst and speaker, Jon Arnold. In this special show wrap podcast, Arnold goes beyond the slogans and tag lines on AI, to take a closer look at how AI will change the enterprise and especially the way enterprise’s use their vast contact center investments, to engage the many people who need to interact with an organization. Arnold links past trends to things shaping the future. “My focus is on the impact of AI on speech technology, specifically in the enterprise.”Arnold also gives us a glimpse of the presentation he made at Enterprise Connect. Arnold has organized the technologies into three broad types: employee based, line of business based, and organization based. Everyone in our industry should look at this interesting model, especially as we enter a period of intense change.2025Arnold walks us through a what we might be seeing in the coming twelve months and we look at the growing need for a better and more certain regulatory structure. Capital isn’t shy of risk, but capital does not like regulatory uncertainty, where a sudden arbitrary decision can create unintended impacts. Are we at a Jeff Pulver AI moment?Visit https://www.jarnoldassociates.com/
Phone Design propose des services de studio exclusivement en marque blanche, offrant ainsi aux professionnels des télécommunications la possibilité d'intégrer ces services de manière transparente dans leurs solutions.Le studio donne à ses partenaires l'accès à un extranet complet, offrant une gestion fluide et simplifiée de tous les services du studio. En outre, leurs partenaires bénéficient d'un site web dédié aux prestations studio, personnalisé en leur nom et couleurs, pour une expérience client transparente et sans embûches pour leurs clients.Les solutions personnalisées du studio permettent non seulement aux partenaires d'assoir leur position d'expert sur le marché, mais également de se différencier grâce à une offre de téléphonie complète.Saisissez dès maintenant l'opportunité d'étoffer vos solutions de télécommunications en ajoutant ce service à forte valeur ajoutée à vos offres.Phone Design sera présent à notre événement la Coud Connections les 17, 18 et 19 avril prochains ! Venez les rencontre plus d'informations.
Phone Design offers studio services exclusively through channel and in white label, providing telecom professionals with the opportunity to seamlessly integrate these services into their solutions.The studio gives its partners access to a self-reliant extranet, offering streamlined management of all studio services. Additionally, partners benefit from a dedicated studio website customized in their own name and colors to provide a smooth and branded experience to their customers.The studio's tailored solutions not only elevate brand presence but also drive market differentiation and are designed to offer an unparalleled ease of use to its partners.Seize the opportunity to diversify your telecom solutions by adding this high-value service to your business offer.Phone Design will be attending our Cloud Connections event next April 17th to 19th. Come and meet them for more information.
“Private cellular networks are more secure and more robust” - Stephen Kowal, CCO of NextivityIn March, Stephen Kowal, CCO of Nextivity, appeared on the Telecom Reseller Podcast, discussing the need for private networking solutions and why relying on wi-fi is no longer sufficient. In this week’s follow-up episode, Stephen explains the need for private cellular networks, and their impact on industries including healthcare, manufacturing, schools, warehousing, and distribution. Stephen also gave an overview of Industry 4.0 for the enterprise, hashtag#CBRS (Citizens Band Radio Service), and the three tiers of hashtag#CBRS, and highlighted hashtag#HARMONY Private Network as a Service (hashtag#Naas), @Nexitvity’s private networking service.About NextivityNextivity, Inc. makes the world’s most intelligent, powerful, and easy-to-use cellular, public safety, and private networking coverage solutions that advance connectivity and allow people and businesses to achieve their most ambitious goals. Nextivity solutions include the popular CEL-FI products, which are powered by the proprietary IntelliBoost chip. IntelliBoost uses digital signal-processing to enhance cellular performance in real-time and deliver unbeatable coverage for organizations, homes, and vehicles in over 100 countries. All Nextivity solutions are unconditionally network-safe and used by over 200 mobile network operators globally. Nextivity is headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA. Visit us at nextivityinc.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
The venerable Session Border Controller is the workhorse for many organization’s communications needs. According to Alan Percy of TelcoBridges, the SBC is something people want as a Service. “They were coming to us for professional services packages. And then the other situation was we actually had some customers come to us and say, ‘You know, the people that had set this up and were using it, have left my company, and I don't have the resources, and I really would rather have this hosted and managed instead of me trying to relearn all this and hire somebody and have to go through training again and all that on the software’.”In this podcast, Alan gives us a look at how TelcoBridges is changing up the SBC space with their new ProSBC as a Service. Register https://www.cloudcommunications.com/events/cloud-connections-2024 Visit cloudcommunications.com Visit https://telcobridges.com/
William Rubio, CallTower, Speaking at Cloud Connections 2024“We were one of the first to actually do voice within Microsoft back in the days of Link and even Skype,” says William Rubio of CallTower. In this brief podcast Rubio discusses how his organization was one of the pioneering firms in doing Operator Connect on Microsoft Teams going back to September of 2021, along the way of trajectory of mastering how to make Microsoft Teams deliver on its full potential. Rubio will be speaking on, “Mastering the Microsoft Matrix” at the upcoming Cloud Connections event. Rubio reminds us that his talk will be part of a tradition at the Cloud Communications Alliance of cloud communications companies helping each other learn, peer to peer, sometimes, competitors, sometimes partners, building on a shared wealth of learning.“I think when you really look at working and navigating within Microsoft and understanding the value add that you can bring to your customers, it's exciting. We have a lot of expertise there and we still learn every day something new that we just didn't know. And it's really it keeps me up at night at the same time. It's exciting.”Visit www.calltower.com
Michael Quinn will be speaking at Cloud Connections 2024“The metrics have changed for valuing your business,” says Michael Quinn, the founding partner at Q Advisors and founding member of the Cloud Communications Alliance, CCA. “That means that your strategic exit has to change and how you think about it and the types of services that you deliver to your customers has to change as well because you're being valued on different things than you were five or six years ago.”Michael has not only witnessed but has actively participated in the rise of the cloud communications community, from a small collection of ten-million-dollar annual revenue companies to a group of one hundred-million-dollar companies. Along the way, technology, the role of technology giants such as Microsoft, and changing macro-economic conditions, such as a higher interest rate environment, have changed the way a company can grow, merge, or acquire other companies. In this short podcast, we catch a glimpse of the talk Michael will offer on this new landscape at Cloud Connections 2024.“You're not going to want to miss the new cartoons that we're rolling out in our presentation,” adds Michael. Show Registration https://www.cloudcommunications.com/events/cloud-connections-2024 Cloud Communications Alliance https://www.cloudcommunications.com/ Q Advisors https://www.qllc.com/
“Thanks to some specialized equipment that we deploy, our customers were not affected,” says Chris Baird of OptConnect. OptConnect is a premier provider of IoT connectivity solutions, serving diverse sectors, including ATMs, vending machines, smart safes, digital signage, security assets, and irrigation systems. In this podcast we learn about a special dual carrier device and an on-board autonomous agent, that together, enabled OptConnect customers to be seamlessly connected to another carrier, automatically.Chris BairdOptConnect is focused on helping customers design, deploy, and manage their IoT initiatives. The company continues to innovate and simplify connectivity for its customers. In the Internet of Things, without a reliable internet connection, your “thing” breaks and your business suffers. No matter what you are trying to connect, OptConnect has the right hardware bundled together with all the services and support to give you the best connectivity possible with the industry’s best customer service. With the strategic acquisition of Premier Wireless Solutions (PWS) in 2021 and the recent addition of M2MDataGlobal in 2024, OptConnect has solidified its global presence and commitment to delivering cutting-edge wireless connectivity solutions. Visit https://optconnect.com/
A new way for agents to succeed in the complex Cisco market“ScanSource is a Cisco distributor, but most agents find working with the Cisco normal model very difficult and frankly very expensive,” says Mike Baur, CEO of ScanSource. “We partner with Cisco to put together a special program for agents to allow them to find opportunities for Cisco products and services and then work as a sales agent with ScanSource backing them up.”In this very brief reel, Baur tells us a little more about this program that would enable agents to go deeper in the Cisco market, leveraging ScanSource resources. “The idea is how can we enable agents to add devices to their portfolio because at the end of day the end user is asking for a total solution, hardware, software, and services. And we think we can provide an answer to make it a lot easier.”Visit scansource.com
“Welo is a great adjunct platform for channeling,” says Chance Myers. “It is a very simple holistic collaboration platform. It allows channel partners, resellers, MSPs to have a platform that is a plug and play. It's very simple, there's no programming, there's no learning curve whatsoever and it can lay on top of the current platforms that you're offering right now, and it allows you the opportunity to white label a unique differentiator that helps you with customer retention and initial sales instead of coming in with a platform with just a price.”Myers outlines how Welo might be the different sort of thing a channel might be looking for: situational awareness. Those are two words we don’t see often used together. In a virtualized organization, with widespread hybrid work and a distributed workforce, Welo promises to duplicate some of the “visual cues” we would have in a shared physical office.“We bring you a true white label solution that allows you, or to help you, own the customer at the end of the day. Because that's your goal, is to own the customer.”Visit www.welo.space
“Technology is constantly changing and our business expertise in the industry really entails market development funds that we offer our solution providers, technical engineering expertise, our account management expertise and of course our operations,” says Rick Chapes, AVP of Sales for AT&T Partner Exchange (APEX). Chapes explains, “AT &T Partner Exchange is a resale channel of AT &T's indirect partner solutions organization. What we do is we offer our fiber and wireless connectivity services to resellers in the market, or commonly referred to as aggregators, and they take our fixed wireless and mobility services, and they bundle it into their value proposition in the market, and then resell it to their end -user customers.”“What makes it different for me is the customized, the bespoke service of it. Our customers can really buy internet connectivity 5G just about anywhere, but it's the customization, the attention to detail that really sets the Apex program apart from some others in the marketplace,” says Max Joseph, Sales and Business Development at AT&T, who joins Chapes on the podcast. “Our differentiation in the market is that we have portals that our solution providers can utilize, so it's all about speed and simplicity when our solution providers are going to market with our fiber and wireless services.”Visit https://www.business.att.com/industries/partner-solutions/att-partner-exchange.html
“We meet our channel partners where they are in terms of their journey and their capability around wireless services package. And you can use this as a turnkey, or you can use pieces and parts that fit very nicely into your portfolio capabilities,” says Evan Tomlin is chief Technology Officer for Hyperion Partners (hyperionpartners.net). “We tend to really focus on fixed wireless, which is just a fancy sounding name for using 5G as your primary internet connection. And depending on, again, what kind of channel partner you are, we have tailored programs that go from Hyperion doing everything on our partners we have, literally product, services, maintenance, warranty, technology in terms of commerce and procurement, everything, or we can thread in pieces and parts of those solutions depending on where our partner specializes.”In this Channel Partners podcast we learn more about Hyperion Partners, their different approach that opens an onramp to a wide range of channel companies to play and win in the mobility market, and about some of the programs Hyperion has curated for the channel community. We also learn about their new Light NOC program targeting the agent community. “We are a full-service provider in the space. And we're highly adaptable to the needs of our partners.”Visit www.hyperionpartners.net
By Stacy Hamer, Chief Operating Officer, iQmetrixIn challenging market conditions, telecom retail businesses that want to remain competitive will need to retain the loyalty of the customers that they already have. This means keeping up with rapidly evolving consumer expectations for customer service. This has become increasingly true as demanding younger consumers—such as Gen Alpha, who were practically born with phones in their hands—start to come on stream over the next decade.So, how can telecom retailers meet customer expectations and provide great purchasing experiences? Here are the trends to stay on top of—or get left behind.1. Fully understanding the customer and personalizing their experience is more crucial than everWith the typical buyer’s journey now spanning multiple channels, it’s no longer enough to have a partial view of your customers. You could be missing crucial information that might help you land a sale or keep that customer loyal. But how do you get on top of customer insights to create a fully personalized customer experience that today’s—and future—customers expect?At a panel event at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Brian Higgins, Verizon’s Chief Customer Experience Officer, discussed the concept of the “segment of one” — meaning that each individual customer is their own consumer segment with very specific personal wants and needs. His perspective is that with new AI technology coming on stream, true customer personalization can finally be achieved.“We’ve previously had offers that go out to hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s been fine, but where we are moving to is the segment of one,” Higgins said. “As a retailer, you know about this customer through data and purchasing behavior, and you’re going to offer them promotions that are relevant to them. That’s happening now, but customers don’t realize that’s all AI in the background.”Retailers need technology and systems that offer a 360-degree view of their customers—and that includes processes that save time in other areas to create space for engaging with customers and listening to their needs, and creating their personalized package accordingly.Businesses that truly understand their customers’ needs will have a major advantage — Gartner has projected that this year, these retailers will outperform competitors’ CX metrics by 20%.2. Efficient processes are mandatory, and inefficiency will not be toleratedToday’s consumers are loyal to experiences, not brands, and will jump ship if they think they can get a better experience somewhere else. The evidence is there in the research: 94% of consumers are frustrated by disjointed experiences across a brand 54% of consumers will stop using a brand after just one bad experienceThe top indicator of a bad experience? Wasted time. 86% of consumers have left a store because of frustration about slow lines 74% of consumerswill go to a competitor’s store if they feel like the lines are shorter there 73% of customerswill leave without making a purchase if they have to wait more than five minutesOptimizing store tools and processes is no longer optional. Retail operators need to do what it takes to implement systems that improve transaction times and reduce frustrations, such as needing to enter the same information multiple times.The same applies to omnichannel retail experiences. If your customer is buying online and picking up in store, for example, you need technology and systems in place that create a seamless, frictionless journey with a consistent experience across all touchpoints. This will make the customer feel as nurtured as if they were in the store talking to an attentive sales associate—while giving them the now-expected convenience of shopping online or starting their purchasing journey on social media, or at a pop-up event, or anywhere else.3. Employee experience is important, too, and affects the customer experience
“We've been doing AI since before it was a household name, but most recently with the semantic search capability,” says Scott Kendrick, who's the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Alliances at CallMiner. “We are allowing our users to get insight more easily and readily with our system. Leveraging models to allow for somewhat of a natural language interface to query context, you know, ask for interactions that may have had a certain characteristic and getting responses from those.”“Sure. CallMiner is a conversation intelligence platform. What we do is analyze interactions that happen between companies and their customers. And those can be interactions with humans or humans and bots, or even one-sided pieces of feedback, so a review or possibly a response within the survey platform. We analyze all that information and provide performance improvement direction for contact centers and their agents, but also general business intelligence insights in terms of other ways that they can improve their business.”In this special EC24 Snom at the Show TR Podcast, we also learn about the CallMiner channel program, and more details on how resellers gain with CallMiner.Visit www.callminer.com
“It's interesting that the trifecta, the UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS have all become relevant to enterprises,” says Sanjay Srinivasan, Chief Architect, GM, SVP, Business Services, Vonage. Sanjay will be speaking at the Cloud Connections 2024 event in April: Seizing the CPaaS advantage.“From what I'm observing, there's a distinct change in the buyer behavior that I've seen in the past year, starting maybe a year and a half ago, but then now it's firmly rooted in the past enterprises, the CPaaS buyer, which rarely there was one because that world was new to them, the UCaaS buyer and the CCaaS buyer were all different, different departments, different decisions, different budgets, et cetera. But in the last year and a half, certainly we can see that UCaaS and CCaaS buying is coming together. And this is a strong trend.”In this short podcast we catch a glimpse of how CPaaS is moving beyond the developers and onto the big stage of major enterprise deployment. CPaaS is an opportunity.Visit www.vonage.com
“We're going to be featuring headset telemetry,” says Vern Fernandez who is the Senior Manager for Strategic Alliances at Jabra. Most people don't know that you can get that but if you're trying to find needles in the haystack or understand call quality monitoring this is something that you should have you know you had it when you had phones and you should have it from the headset.”We also will be seeing products that monitor sentiment. Humans don’t just communicate with words. The way those words are delivered makes all the difference. An agent might be on script, a customer’s words might be ‘correct’. But sentiment might indicate a very different situation. AI can be used to watch, or literally hear, tone.Catch a glimpse of Jabra’s take on what’s next at Cloud Connections 2024.
Mutare will be at Cloud Connections 2024, April 17th-19th, 2024, The Vinoy, St. Petersburg, FloridaAaron Klein of Mutare, Inc. is talking about Voice Traffic Filter (VTF). The Voice Traffic Filter acts as a firewall for the voice channel, eliminating nuisance and nefarious calls at the beginning of the contact center’s call flow. Utilizing proprietary voice data analysis capabilities built into five distinct layers of filtering technologies, VTF detects and removes all forms of spam, scam, spoofed, and otherwise unwanted calls before they enter the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system... and you can see a demo of this at the upcoming Cloud Connections 2024. See it all at Cloud Connections 2024 https://lnkd.in/gAfMYDgV Visit mutare.com
Cristina Betanzo of GXC tells us about new opportunities with their new tiered partner program in this short podcast from Channel Partners. Learn about the incentives. Learn about the service. In big open spaces, for industries with a big physical footprint, GXC delivers seamless wireless private networks.Partners advance through the tiers – Authorized, Silver, Gold, and Platinum – leverage escalating discounts on our turnkey solutions, mirroring your dedication and achievements. Meanwhile the partners get comprehensive marketing support, where the partners advance their own brand, and gain footing in the key mobility market.
“AI technologies are definitely maturing, and more and more communications providers and technology developers are using AI to enhance their solutions,” says Elka PopovaVP and Senior Fellow for Connected Work Research, at Frost and Sullivan. “I think at the moment most of the AI-powered innovation that we're seeing is in contact center, more specifically contact center as a service, and to some extent in cloud meetings. There is, however, huge potential to continue to enhance voice communications, analytics tools, and other parts of kind of the broader business communication space using AI technologies. And I think the onus is on the vendor community to figure out which AI-powered features and capabilities need to be table stakes and provided to customers free of charge and just kind of used to create customer value but not necessarily create revenues.”Popova will be one of the featured panel members on a session labelled: Forecasting the Cloudscape: Navigating Present Realities and Future Horizons of Communications, UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS, Security: Crafting the Ultimate Collaboration Suite for Revenue Growth. Popova’s work focusses on UCaaS, Collaboration and the Future of Work. She has spoken and participated in CCA events and is widely respected expert on these markets and trends.“And then there will be other features and capabilities that will have to be offered at a premium. And once the vendors monetize these capabilities, I think this will kind of elevate the industry to a different level.” Visit frost.com Visit CloudCommunications.com Register for show at https://www.cloudcommunications.com/events/cloud-connections-2024
“We really want to highlight our Vision 360 platform,” says Max Edwards, Sales Engineer of Kakapo Systems. “We've had a lot of interest. We've been doing a lot of demos for prospective customers. We have a lot of people on our lab and evaluation platform, so we want to keep getting the word out, keep talking about the benefits and how we can replace and improve upon ECCR and DBS in many ways with our Vision 360 product.” Kakapo Systems is a sponsor of Cloud Connections 2024 and will be featuring these products at the conference.“We do have a small to medium-sized business contact center that sits right on top of your BroadSoft ACD deployment using the BroadSoft as the voice channel with the addition of web chats, emails, SMS queues, as well as web callbacks and Twitter or X, however you prefer to call it.”Kakapo Systems has developed flagship Unity applications for BroadSoft. These modular software applications, all able to work collectively with full omnichannel capability in the consolidated Unity Contact Center product.Unity for Teams greatly enhances the overall solution by adding BroadSoft directories and overlay services, such as call center, which can all be managed from within Microsoft Teams. Unity for Teams options include Desktop, for UC users, as well as Agent and Supervisor to embed the BroadSoft ACD functionality within Microsoft Teams.Visit https://www.kakaposystems.com/
UCaaS and CCaaS coming together with Teams and in the age of Hybrid, Forecasting the Cloudscape“I'll be on a panel with a few other analysts, and we're basically going to be talking about trends and what our crystal balls are showing us, and all about cloud communications and things that the service providers are interested in,” says Blair Pleasant, President and Principal Analyst at COMMfusion. Blair will be one of the featured panelists in special session forecasting the cloudscape.“I'm sure we're going to be talking about the growing role of contact center and CCaaS and customer experience. And most UC vendors now are also offering contact center capabilities... and along those lines, I expect we'll be talking about the integration of UCaaS and CCaaS and how they're coming together and how organizations are using these integrated solutions.” Pleasant adds that Microsoft Teams and the changing world of hybrid work will also be covered in the session.“And I have a feeling we might talk about AI a little bit,” adds Blair.In thinking about the upcoming event, Blair had been looking at how service providers will bring AI into their solution portfolios. “How do I get them on the road to AI?”“… Because it's not just a one and done thing.”Visit https://www.commfusion.com/
Brian Beutler of Alianza, Inc. says: "So transitioning legacy communications networks to cloud seems to be increasing in priority and urgency, and we're excited to talk about it in more detail. I think over the course of the last year, even the course of the last six months, just feels like the winds have changed. And service providers, large and small, that used to be questioning maybe what their communications platform strategies are now all looking to the cloud. It's becoming the de facto solution for… we call it the landing zone."Learn more about cloud as the landing zone... Brian is speaking at Cloud Connections 2024. See it all at hashtag#CloudConnections2024 Don't miss it https://lnkd.in/gAfMYDgV
“This week we launched what we call the GoTo Contact Center Pro so GoTo Connect which is our UCaaS and CCaaS product family has been a really well regarded reliable product for all your communications needs for mostly small but not so small size companies and on the contact centers side we had a great solution and have a great solution that's supported people up to, you know, probably about a hundred agents and people told us that they loved what we did,” says Peter Mahoney, CMO for GoTo.GoTo, introduced GoTo Contact Center Pro, a solution that expands its Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) offerings to medium and large companies. This new offering gives growing businesses a modern, flexible, yet affordable platform which includes omnichannel capabilities, powerful integrations, and unparalleled agent interfaces and access to rich data and deep insights.Read the story https://telecomreseller.com/2024/03/11/goto-launches-contact-center-pro-bringing-effortless-affordable-and-convenient-ccaas-to-mid-market-and-enterprise-sized-businesses/Visit www.goto.com
“70% of internet of traffic traverses our network,” says Rob Westervelt, Global Channel Leader of Arelion. Arelion is one of those quiet giants that you have very likely used or experienced, without knowing it. Now, Arelion has appointed Rob Westervelt to build a larger channel. In this short podcast we learn that Arelion, with its large and robust set of offerings is now looking to build a larger channel community and looking to that community to build new relationships with organizations of diverse sizes and verticals. “We are looking to obviously look for enterprise accounts that cross the expand the globe It could be in just North America, or it could across the Globe multi -location deals, mid -size to large enterprise accounts.”Visit https://www.arelion.com/
Buch is offering his insights at the upcoming conference.“Cloud Connections is, you know, one of the marquee events in our industry,” says Anand Buch, Chief Strategy Officer and General Manager, Software Division at Crexendo, Inc. Cloud Connections will be held in St. Petersburg, Florida, April 17-19. Anand co-founded NetSapiens in 2002 and serves on the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA) board. Buch tells us about the panel he will be on, Top Cloud Platforms, Innovations Propelling Cloud Adoption into the Future and reflects on the success of Crexendo Powered By NetSapiens. “We've obviously been in the space for a long time and now we continue to get recognition and the biggest recognition that we get is because of the adoption and the marketplace of our platform over the last several years.” Visit crexendo.com Register for the show https://www.cloudcommunications.com/events/cloud-connections-2024
A great fit for the business depending on how you want to engage.“We're built for service providers to enable them to leverage their brand, which is a huge deal for service providers, to leverage their brand, leverage their carrier network if they like and have an award-winning modern UCaaS integrated CCaaS solution that they can offer to their customers to help grow revenues today,” says Patrick Sheehan, Vice President of Channel Development and Distribution at Intermedia. Intermedia Cloud Communications announced a strategic expansion of its partner program tailored to meet the distinct challenges faced by Service Providers (SPs). The announcement occurred in the run up to Channel Partners.“Intermedia has been around for a lot of years working with resellers, agents, MSPs, VARs, all types of businesses. So if you're in IT and you're providing any type of solutions we're a great, great fit for the business depending on how you want to engage. We've got an advisor model for those that are more of an agent. They like to sell a service and receive their commission. What's unique about our advisor model, why we don't call it the agent model, is because they're agents who want to have a little bit more control of their guests and they create quotes themselves in a portal and provides a beautiful proposal right out of the mat. They can sell and close that deal and then we'll handle the implementation, the billing and support beyond that. And they can be as involved in that process as they wish. Our reseller model, we call it the core. Customer ownership reseller model enables the VARs and MSPs, those are really wanting to bill and support the customers. We're built for that, which is a great solution for all those types of IT solution providers that really want to own that customer relationship, bill it, get that top line revenue, and set their pricing and their margins and leverage their brand or intermediate's brand.”Visit https://www.intermedia.com/
Frank SwindlerDave GeorgeTwo-way radio technology has grown and developed. Traditional 2-way radio has improved with better technology. Advancements were made with push to talk over cellular. With the emergence of wifi-radios, there are now multiple solutions for any given situation.
Listen in to Dave George – President & Chief Technologist, Pryme Radio and Frank Swindler – Technical Director, Cardinal Wireless as they discuss with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, the 2-way radio market and how to make sure you make the correct handset purchase as well as equipping it with the best accessories to meet the tactical requirements and maximize the user experience.
Public safety will have different requirements from hospitality. It is best to work with an organization that knows what products will work best for what situations. If you have low quality headset for hospitality, you may not be able to hear if a room is ready for a client making him register later and store his bags with the bell hop. How much is the cost for a dissatisfied customer. These are real issues that need to be addressed up front and you need people with experience to make it happen properly.
For almost 30 years, PRYME has been a leading manufacturer of high-quality products for professional users of two-way radios. Located in Brea, CA, their line of accessories serves many markets including public safety, police, fire, emergency services, healthcare, security, oil & gas, tactical and hazmat professionals, as well as industrial, commercial, hospitality and entertainment markets.
Cardinal Wireless has been in the Wireless For Work business for more than 30 years. Founded in 1980 as Cardinal Two-Way Radio Communications, Inc., they specialized in efficient, cost-effective services for business and industry. From there they grew to become a major radio and wireless equipment dealer, service center, and airtime supplier serving the Central Indiana market. Today, they focus their efforts on providing high-quality UHF/VHF trunking, digital or analog radio communications, GPS systems and accessory equipment.
For more information, go to: https://cardinal-wireless.com/ or https://www.pryme.com/
Industry leader Haifa El Ashkar of CSG sees era of connecting businesses through ecosystems: collaboration, co-creating, bringing together beyond connectivity solutions.
Haifa El Ashkar“Most of the operators are witnessing flat revenues,” says Haifa El Ashkar, Director of Strategy, Telecommunications Market and Solutions at CSG. “To unlock that topline revenue, they’re going to have to go beyond connectivity.” In this far-reaching podcast, Haifa outlines the critical role telecom companies will play building ecosystems and designing new infrastructures to help support an increased connectivity demand – and what it means for telecom companies to move beyond connectivity and into the role of a tech company. Haifa believed that we sent the previous decade connecting people through social media. Over time, social media became a place of commerce, a market, for businesses to sell, or at least connect with consumers. “I like to talk about this decade, 2020 to 2030, as the era of connecting businesses through ecosystems: collaboration, co-creating, bringing together beyond connectivity solutions.”
Haifa discusses how several new technology announcements this year (GenAI, and new AR headsets to name a few) and the proliferation of new technologies means for telecom companies shifting to a more tech-focused role. Is there opportunity in Generative AI? How will AI and 5G impact telecom opportunities and, together, offer new unique products and services to sell. We explore the future of selling and offering technology solutions, in this episode.
CSG is a leader in innovative customer engagement, revenue management and payments solutions that make ordinary customer experiences extraordinary. Our cloud-first architecture and customer-obsessed mindset help companies around the world launch new digital services, expand into new markets, and create dynamic experiences that capture new customers and build brand loyalty. For over 40 years, CSG’s technologies and people have helped some of the world’s most recognizable brands solve their toughest business challenges and evolve to meet the demands of today’s digital economy with future-ready solutions that drive exceptional customer experiences. With more than 5,000 employees in over 20 countries, CSG is the trusted technology provider for leading global brands in telecommunications, retail, financial services and healthcare. Our solutions deliver real world outcomes to more than 900 customers in over 120 countries.
- Learn more https://www.csgi.com/
- More MSP news
“There is no shortage of talent,” says Sunny Kaila. “There is a shortage of right talent.” In this episode of the Telecom Reseller podcast, Doug Green is joined by Kaila, the founder and CEO of IT By Design, a master MSP that provides 24/7 NOC services for MSPs set on growing and scaling with profitability. Their conversation dives deep into the biggest barrier preventing MSPs’ growth: talent. Green and Kaila discuss the challenges surrounding the talent landscape post-COVID, why companies struggle to hire and retain the best talent, how leaders can find talent that aligns with their business’ needs, the mindset necessary to build a strong talent pipeline and company culture, overcoming critical hiring mistakes, Kaila’s five key pillars for building an effective talent operating system, and Kaila’s favorite piece of advice for enterprise leaders about talent. About IT By Design
IT By Design specializes in custom business solutions for managed services providers. With 20 years in the industry, ITBD leverages its expertise and commitment to further its clients’ success and create partnerships that take the MSP’s business to the next level. IT By Design’s team of highly trained technical talent can support any MSP at a moment’s notice. The company continues to refine an all-in-one software solution that helps MSPs manage staff, keep objectives on target, and establish a strong and happy company culture.
Kaila’s book, “Talentpreneurship: How to Build a Healthy Business, Transform the People Around You, and Live the Life of Your Dreams,” is available on Amazon. You can sign up for Build IT LIVE 2023 in Orlando, from Sep. 18-20, here. You can learn more about IT By Design at itbd.net.
News on MSPs
“This is just the beginning.”
“I believe that the magic is in being human to human, says Kartik Khambhati, Co-Founder & Chief Business Development Officer of HoduSoft. Kartik thinks that the silo like definitions of B2B and B2C are perhaps too confining and possibly distort the purpose of delivering products or service. Kartik vision and values are routed in human-to-human contact and in the ways technology and organizations, together, can make humans better off. In this most interesting podcast, as a new member of the Cloud Communications Alliance, Kartik talks about stakeholders, and the stakeholders have to do with meeting the needs people have. UNICEF is a client of HoduSoft. However, Kartik describes how the stakeholders include the parents and children UNICEF helps. Helping UNICEF with its ambitious vaccination program, makes everyone up the chain from client to MSP to carrier, all better off. The “magic” occurs by making people better off, improving lives, and in this way building a, from the ground up impact. “The consumer is an individual,” adding that his approach is being proactive. Kartik discusses a heuristic view, where business success is based on first improving the well-being of people, as technology serves as a bridge to bring people together.
“The biggest stakeholder in any business is a person, the human being… The biggest asset in any business is a human being.”
Kartik walks us through his major product groups: HoduCC (Call Center Software), HoduPBX (IP PBX Software), and HoduBlast (Voice and SMS Broadcasting Software). Their PBX is now STIR/SHAKEN complaint. We learn about a refreshed approach across these product areas.
“The magic is not in the technology. The magic is always in the people.”
Visit https://hodusoft.com/
The Next Generation of Caller ID is all about KYC…is all about Vetted Identity?
Darth Vader. No, really! Brett Nemeroff, VP of Engineering, Voice of Numeracle, was putting together a slide deck for the company’s masterclass series, on caller ID when Darth Vader called. That was the name being displayed as the incoming call on the Brett’s phone. Brett answered the call, where Mr. Vader graciously explained that he’s a real estate broker, that, with non-telecom engineering skills, simply logged into his account and set his name as Darth Vader. “It just underscores the problem with caller-Id, that it’s not a source we can trust,” says Nemeroff. “It does not take a tremendous amount of technical competence to figure out how to change your name and to ultimately how to change it to something that might make it more likely to get answered by somebody.”
In this podcast, Brett discusses how this degradation of the caller-ID service has impacted the utility of by phone communications. Basically, people have lost trust in being able to know who’d calling. That, combined with an ocean of nuisance and scam calls, has devastated the utility of simple outbound calling as a way of communicating.
“It all starts with KYC, Know Your Customer,” says Brett.
Brett discusses guidance on understanding and defending privacy and security in a world of continuous changes and challenges, as well as the responsibilities and roles in this defense. We get insights into how Numeracle’s Entity Identity Management™ (EIM) and Verified Identity™ associate and manage the identity of communications, supporting evolving regulations and standards. Brett offers a perspective on the future of phone calls and the telecommunications industry, including an understanding of how to progress forward with expertise and integrity
Numeracle is an industry pioneer and leader with actionable solutions for legal callers that prioritizes their calling identity as the foundation to restoring trust in the voice channel and to their calls by removing barriers, like improper spam labels, from harming their phone numbers. Numeracle’s Entity Identity Management™ (EIM) platform puts enterprise brands, BPOs, and service providers in direct control of their identity, which we vet and verify. Our EIM platform can also be used to manage branded communications, to improve call reputation with blocking and labeling prevention and spam label remediation, and we provide visibility into call display to ensure brand identity is presented as intended, with transparency and consistency. Our KYC-based identity vetting and verification is the cornerstone of the platform; developed in support of evolving federal regulations and telecom standards.
“To me, the biggest benefit is customer ownership,” says Sean Breeden, SkySwitch’s Director of Channel Sales. “In our world you own the customer, the customer signs direct contract with you, you dictate the longevity of those agreements.” In this podcast, Sean makes the case for becoming a white-label reseller, and the opening argument is control. By controlling the relationship, a channel company is protected from changes of things such as commission, or where a provider might seek to deal directly with the customers. Sean points out the SkySwitch doesn’t pay commissions. SkySwitch sells services wholesale. The partner decides for themselves pricing. “You control your profitability.”
Sean notes that SkySwitch offers minimal entry barriers, which fade to zero if the channel company sells as little as 100 end points. With some minimums achieved, a company is a position to sell services with a high margin, especially in the recurring income model. Data MSPs can easily add voice services with SkySwitch. “If you can drag and drop, click on a radio button, that’s a s much sophistication that goes into it,” Sean comments on the simplicity of setting up on the SkySwitch GUI. We learn about the on-boarding process, and the sales support that occurs after launching.
“If you’re looking to increase your book value, this model is good for you.” The contracts that put a partner in control simply creates owner equity.
Visit https://skyswitch.com/ Read the blog
Join Doug Green from Telecom Reseller in conversation with Ron Romanchik, Chief Strategy Officer at CallCabinet, as they trace the evolution of enterprise call recording. From compliance-driven origins to cloud-enabled scalability and AI-driven insights, this episode covers data privacy, future trends, and CallCabinet's versatile solutions for secure collaboration. Explore more at CallCabinet.com and keep an ear open for the next podcasts which will go into more detail regarding Conversation Analytics, Business Intelligence, and more.
Visit www.callcabinet.com
You don’t want to do blocking on STIR/SHAKEN data. We’re not there yet. That’s the big message in this podcast. Mark Lindsey at ECG tells us that, “You don’t want to cause an Earthquake by doing the right thing.” Mark and his team consulted with their colleagues at Microsoft Teams, and our relationships at major STIR/SHAKEN software providers Neustar (part of TransUnion), TransNexus, and Sansay. This gave them insight into the data and wisdom of many engineers and managers at major service providers and at software firms. The undisputed result is this: Every expert recommends against blocking based on SHAKEN data available today. Now this was a little surprising: the very companies that are most likely to benefit from using the STIR/SHAKEN data are saying "woah -- you have to hold off!"
This podcast gives us a first look at longer presentation Mark will make: SHAKEN without the EARTHQUAKE" to be presented at SIP Forum's SIPNOC meeting, September 12-14, 2023, in Herndon, Virginia.
We learn more about ECG’s approach to this situation. ECG gives Service Providers the temporary experts they need to make their networks effective and compliant for all kinds of Voice Service Provider projects. It's critical for Service Provider leadership to audit to verify STIR/SHAKEN implementation is working. And if you're relying on a Third-Party Certificate company to sign your calls for you, there's every reason to believe that practice will be blocked by the FCC soon. You need a way to protect your customers against spam calls, without creating an outage when you do it. ECG can work with your engineering team to find and implement protection against spam calling. If your calls are flowing through TDM-only PSTN Gateways, many of the calls made by your customers will likely be labeled as "Spam Likely." You need to look at ways to get better SIP interconnection to protect your customers and your core business.
The Problem with Unregulated Call Labeling Analytics Engines, Numeracle Podcast: Verified Identity directly to call recipients without relying on intermediaries.
Even in the shadow of the STIR/SHAKEN effort and several public and private sector initiatives, illegal robocalling continues to bedevil legitimate use cases, legitimate corporate, government and NGO operators of outbound calling operations. Numeracle is an industry pioneer and leader with actionable solutions for legal callers that prioritizes their calling identity as the foundation to restoring trust in the voice channel and to their calls by removing barriers, like improper spam labels, from harming their phone numbers. In this podcast, we visit with Keith Buell, General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy, who walks us through his organization’s comments to the FCC and offers us a better understanding of Numeracle’s vision: Verified Identity directly to call recipients without relying on intermediaries.
“We’ve gone from an industry where carriers have a duty to deliver calls with 99.999% accuracy to an industry that favors overzealous blocking and labeling without consequence to the blocker,” says Buell.
On August 9th, 2023, Numeracle filed comments in response to the FCC’s Seventh Report and Order, Eighth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and Third Notice of Inquiry in the matter of ‘Advanced Methods to Target and Eliminate Unlawful Robocalls.’ A central point, explains Buell: “The FCC should not allow the AEs to insert themselves into the call flow, regardless of whether the call originator or recipient wants them there, and give the AEs carte blanche to make errors and then charge to fix those errors.”
Numeracle has offered to provide Verified Identity data to help the analytics with an additional vetted source by which to identify good actors apart from the bad.
Numeracle is an industry pioneer and leader with actionable solutions for legal callers that prioritizes their calling identity as the foundation to restoring trust in the voice channel and to their calls by removing barriers, like improper spam labels, from harming their phone numbers. Numeracle's Entity Identity Management™ (EIM) platform puts enterprise brands, BPOs, and service providers in direct control of their identity, which we vet and verify. Our EIM platform can also be used to manage branded communications, to improve call reputation with blocking and labeling prevention and spam label remediation, and we provide visibility into call display to ensure brand identity is presented as intended, with transparency and consistency. Our KYC-based identity vetting and verification is the cornerstone of the platform; developed in support of evolving federal regulations and telecom standards.
Visit www.numeracle.com More news on Numeracle
Role AI plays in the contact centers and why human involvement is critical, Cisco looks to AI to improve EX, cut agent churn by improving human involvement
“The concern has been ‘Will AI replace my job?’,” Lorrissa Horton, SVP/GM and Chief Product Officer and Collaboration at Cisco. Horton recognizes that this might occur where the agent is still doing the simplest tasks. “The reality is that where we see the human value is where it’s not simple Q&A but actually these complex tasks and the complex conversations that require empathy, that require knowing the concern that your customer has and that where it will be handled very differently than a virtual agent.”
“I think we will see agents turn into, basically, knowledge workers.” Horton sees AI as freeing agent time from some of the repetitive tasks that take their toll on mental health and morale. She sees a future for agents as holding a more stimulating, rewarding, and interesting workload: from task work to answer seeking. Even the metrics will change, from handle time to customer satisfaction.
It has been the year that AI broke into the popular imagination as the next great disruptive force, fear over job loss and human displacement has often outpaced optimism over a newfound tool to remedy problems. In this podcast Horton a fresh take. As we discuss the role AI plays in the contact center, Horton makes the case that AI can help improve employee experience, as AI is deployed to manage the simpler bits of customer traffic.
Expanding on Cisco’s vision of the new contact center, that was presented at Cisco Live 2023, Horton offers a vision of very different environment than what has come before in this space. Using Ai, she describes a place where people are learning from people, where best approaches and practices to challenges are shared, but in an environment that is agent and employee friendly. Hortons notes that when we look at health care and finance, which are already a very large share of contact center activity, human to human conversations will remain central, while new AI technologies will help agents learn, and learn. AI, CPaaS, stepped up use of texting, will transform the contact center, as we have known it.
Visit www.Cisco.com Cisco Webex, Contact Center https://www.webex.com/customer-experience/contact-center.html
View on YouTube
https://youtu.be/Vj8-P09AVuQ?si=cOTdCox-U4Y0NU4u
“They have a one stop shop, in terms of managing their requirements,” says, Ardavan Nawaby, Founder & CEO of E-MetroTel. “E-Metrotel provides a graceful migration for customers,” Ardavan continues. In a crowded and busy UCaaS market and in a communications landscape that’s rich with choice, E-MetrotTel distinguishes itself by, not only offering the widest possible set of migration choices, but also paths of migration that reflect actual need verses a forced set of choices. Customers can keep their legacy desktop phones or plan to change them out at their own pace. They can begin to move to soft phone options and mobility, and again at the pace that the customer needs. Partners can choose for their customers either an on prem or cloud solution, reflecting a choice that is often not available now. Meanwhile the company offers a simple single point of contact to get whatever product or service is needed: video conferencing, collaboration as well as traditional telephony capabilities. “You can migrate one cabinet at a time, instead of taking out the whole PBX. You can maximize your investment overtime.” Hospitals, government, supermarkets are among the many types of environments that continue to have a specific communication solution. Partners looking for new opportunities might look to E-MetroTel for new conversations with these and more verticals.
Visit www.e-metrotel.com
Building a new voice network in Namibia and beyond, A model for rural communications transformation, Webinar offered from TelcoBridges, Jerasoft and Paratus Africa, A model for rural communications transformation
Alan Percy of TelcoBridges discusses a unique story of a customer that recently built out a voice network, from scratch. “You normally don’t get that opportunity, as a network engineer, a designer, to build a network from scratch,” says Percy. In this podcast, we get a look at a recent webinar where we learn from Ricky Innes, Manager of Voice at Paratus Group, in Namibia, about that story.
“It is an exact model of what we envision the cloud communications community undertaking as they do this network transformation for service providers, especially in the rural parts of North America. Start with fiber, build IP infrastructure onto of that fiber, and then layer on top of it a voice network.”
About the webinar
When building new VoIP networks, capturing call details about subscriber traffic is critical for billing and settling with interconnect operators. In the webinar, you will learn the benefits of a fully integrated solution, leveraging ProSBC with Jerasoft billing software to reduce billing errors and settlement effort.
Watch to hear from Ricky Innes, Manager of Voice at Paratus Africa as he shares their story in building a new voice network in Namibia and beyond. Speakers: - Alan Percy, CMO at TelcoBridges - Ricky Innes, Manager of Voice at Paratus Group - Mike Stukalin, VP of Sales at JeraSoft.
More TelcoBridges Visit TelcoBridges Watch the webinar
Watch the podcast below
Telcos and Techcos are Blending as Both Look to Capitalize on New Revenue Streams: iconectiv is helping telcos and techcos embrace this shift, and overcome key challenges that must be addressed in the process
TR Publications Weekend Listen
In today’s digital world, telecommunications and technology companies are starting to blend, as both identify new revenue streams and business opportunities. In this podcast, Peter Ford, Executive Vice President at iconectiv, tells us how his company is helping telcos and techcos embrace this shift, and overcome key challenges that must be addressed in the process.
“This is a significant shift. Historically, telcos and techcos have had differing go-to-market strategies,” says Ford. “As the two blend, telcos need to adapt their organizational culture to be more agile and innovative, while techcos need to understand the complexities of managing and maintaining a reliable network infrastructure, which may not be their core expertise.”
iconecitv is a trusted partner of the communications ecosystem, dedicated to keeping people connected, businesses running and commerce flowing. This includes making sure incoming and outgoing phone calls and messages are verified and identified, and that communications service providers can trust the information in their systems and network, and ultimately, operate as cost effectively and efficiently as possible.
www.iconectiv.com
x-hoppers creates a market
“We’re not here to provide software,” says Tim Truelove, Country Manager Americas of Wildix. “We’re here to find solutions.” In this podcast Truelove is joined by Ian Rowan, Country Manager UK as they explore the Wildix solution for retailers, x-hoppers. According to Rowan, x-hoppers takes on the real-world challenges facing retailers: how to offer differentiated service to create refreshed instore in an online shopping environment, theft, staffing and training.
In one use case, Rowan describes a small retailer who adopted x-hoppers. If the same company had adopted a regular UCaaS solution, it would have been a $20 a month opportunity. X-hoppers, delivering a sophisticated set of tools to this same retailer, including AI powered solutions is instead delivering a $700 a month opportunity back to the MSP. X-hoppers solves the price contrition problem by simply blasting out the confinement of UCaaS, where the MSP is in a market all their own, offering a unique solution set.
x-hoppers is a communication headset and SaaS retail solution that puts a retailer one jump ahead. With x-hoppers, you get the best of communications software, SaaS solutions for retail and retail analytics, all available through an easy-to-use wireless headset. Here’s how easy it is to hop on board with x-hoppers:
All headsets are linked to a single voice channel Each headset starts off muted by default to prevent chatter Push the Call button once to talk to colleagues, and push again to mute The main voice channel also issues audio alerts from incoming calls and customer call points Answer calls routed to that headset by pushing the Hook key While on a call, push the Hook key again to return to the retail voice channel, then push a third time to return to the call
x-hopper for Retail: https://www.wildix.com/x-hoppers-team-communication-headsets/
AI, mobility, and other intensifying trends in technology use are all projected to climb dramatically, just now data centers are competing for water and energy, often with other consumers near their location. Meanwhile cost and other environmental concerns are escalating. In this podcast, Dr. Kelley Mullick, Vice President of Technology Advancement and Alliances of Iceotope, tells us about how her company and how precision cooling and precision engineering comes together to deliver a solution that very accurately delivers cooling to where it’s needed. The amount of energy required is dramatically less and the data center is no longer depending on potable water.
“You’re extending the life of your IT equipment,” says Mullick. “You’re in an environment where there’s a much more evenly applied solution.” We learn that part of the ROI is not only considerably lower power (an possibly water) costs, but that the actual equipment will last longer.
Iceotope's chassis-level precision immersion cooling solutions are engineered to cool the whole IT stack, in every use case, from Hyperscale to the Extreme Edge. By removing the need for fans and air-cooling infrastructure, Iceotope’s technologies operate in near silence — bringing game-changing reduction in energy and water consumption, and significant cost reductions in the design, build and operation of data centers. For more information, visit: www.iceotope.com.
WhatsApp is the new main street, high street, or shopping mall. Two billion consumers, twenty-four hours a day, and the app’s new business API enables businesses to engage customers on that app, directly. The services we have grown to expect online, to show, to view a catalog and to talk to customer support, are what businesses should be gearing up to offer on mobile apps. Some businesses have been there for a while, some not as much. The online widget I now a chat, and the customer is expecting a response, at any time of their convenience. In this podcast, Gaurav Kachhawa, the Chief Product Officer at Gupshup, a high-scale, conversational AI platform. We learn how quickly the AI platform learns responses to 80% of expected questions, how it learns from your own corporate website and how it hands off conversations to human agents, as needed, with complete context and background. Kachhawa explains how this company’s approach to automation offers what he calls “very simple steps of getting companies ready for this age of automation and AI.”
Gupshup.io is the leading conversational engagement platform for marketing, commerce, and support automation. Gupshup’s automation solutions enable 45,000+ brands across India, Latin America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the United States to deliver better customer experience, and increased revenue while saving costs. Citibank, AkzoNobel, Khan Academy, Unilever, MPL, Netflix, Flipkart, and Ola are a few of its leading clients. With a single messaging API for 30+ channels across voice, text, and chat, the conversational engagement platform powers over 10 billion messages per month. Valued at $1.4 bn, the company has marquee investors such as Tiger Global, Fidelity Management and Research Co. LLC, and others on its cap table. For more details, please visit: www.gupshup.io.
Goal of setting information and communications technology (ICT) specific standard for global supply chain security
“This standard is intended to allow a network operator to assess the security hygiene of its vendors,” says Mike Regan of TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association). According to Regan, the SCS 9001 standard takes a very broad overview of the vendor, “…how they manage their products, from conception, through their entire lifecycle, to disposition,” Regan adds. SCS 9001 is more than just a standard, it is a complete cybersecurity and supply chain security management system that verifies trusted ICT providers and suppliers for businesses, governments, and consumers.
Developed by TIA QuEST Forum's Supply Chain Security Working Group, the standard provides guidance for key components of supply chain security:
Secure software development Validation methods for ensuring software ID and source traceability. Product security Governmental requirements on source of origin and transparency of internal controls
“We don’t think you can truly have a secure product without assuring that the supply chain has also been pursued with security at top of mind,” says Regan.
We hear about SCS 9001 in the context of the administration’s efforts, with the U.S Cyber Trust Mark program to be a “good housekeeping seal” for ensuring IoT devices have passed a certain cyber security threshold.
Visit https://tiaonline.org/what-we-do/tia-quest-forum/working-groups/supply-chain-security-working-group/
“It goes all the way back to Microsoft OCS,” says Greg Zweig, Director, Solutions Marketing at Ribbon Communications. Ribbon, a company whose deep telephony roots and IT DNA reach back to the beginnings of telecommunications. The brands and product lines that went into the making of Ribbon, have been aligning with Microsoft’s communications footprint almost from the software giant’s earliest entries into the market. In July, Ribbon announced that Beanfield is leveraging Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect to facilitate and enhance its deployment of Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams.
An as a Service (aaS) solution, Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect offers portal-based administration tools that enable service providers to simplify selling, provisioning, and billing of telecom services, making it easier for businesses to transition from legacy telephony services to Microsoft Teams Phone. Ribbon Connect dramatically reduces the integration efforts typically required to enable Operator Connect by providing pre-assembled API integration, sales enablement, and a multi-tier portal. The Ribbon Connect portfolio is built with Ribbon’s proven carrier-grade security products and services, that are already trusted and deployed in many of the world’s largest telecom networks.
In this podcast, Zweig walks us through the announcement with Beanfield. Zweig offers a deeper look at Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect. We also learn more about the deep technology connections between Ribbon and Microsoft and the literal presence of Ribbon SBCs in Microsoft’s R&D labs. “When they’re doing testing, they’re actually testing their products against ours, with every release cycle.”
Visit www.rbbn.com
Beanfield Simplifies Teams Phone Integration with Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect
Possibility to make IT shipments more secure, deliver on promise of IoT, Pod Group, SODAQ, and Lufthansa Industry Solutions launched the first commercial Smart Label Tracking Device
“It looks like a piece of paper, it’s a little thinner than your traditional piece of paper, 2 mm thick, to accommodate the printed battery inside,” says Sam Colley, CEO, Pod Group. Pod Group has launched a new Smart Label tracking device, developed in partnership between Pod Group, Lufthansa Industry Solutions, and SODAQ. “It can work like a traditional shipping label, but you have built in this visibility for the supply chain.” In this podcast we learn about a shipping label that offers information about journey and events of a shipment, well beyond the last scan along the way.
Smart Label is 2 mm thick
The Smart Label uses the low-power cellular 5G connectivity standard (LTE CAT-M) to send data regarding device location and temperature back to a centralized dashboard, enabling logistics companies to track valuable goods which could be as small and light as an envelope containing important documents or as large as a full-sized oil painting. The powerful middleware platform provided by LHIND enables the use of geofences with notifications that can be set to alert the user when the package enters or leaves key points along the supply chain.
Colley sees this device as the beginning of what is needed to scale out IoT and to begin to deliver on the full promise of IoT. As he looks down the road at coming versions, he sees this as being a model for a wider assortment of shipments and shipping needs.
Visit https://www.podgroup.com/
In this episode of the podcast, Doug Green is joined by Matt Hayes, Manager at ISN, the global leader in contractor and supplier information management, to discuss the cybersecurity landscape of the telecom industry.
Over 74 million U.S. telecommunications clients’ data has been leaked onto the dark web in 2023 alone. With only a few major providers, each collecting a wealth of sensitive data about their customers, the telecom industry has remained a prominent target for hackers. Unfortunately, the extensive use of contractors and subcontractors in the telecom industry has opened the space up to further risks. Knowing they are already at higher risk of a cyberattack, telecom companies using high numbers of contractors need to ensure security procedures are thoroughly spelled out and effectively communicated.
Matt Hayes
Matt provides insights into how the widespread use of contractors in the telecom industry can open up the space to new cyber threats. He also shares how telecom companies can effectively communicate best practices to contractors to tighten up their security posture, and what should be included in an effective cybersecurity training for contractors. Click here to learn more about ISN's cybersecurity offerings.
Matt Hayes is a Manager at ISN, overseeing ISN’s efforts in the Utilities, Telecom and Public Sector industries. Matt has been at ISN for 10+years, managing team initiatives focused on sales strategy, customer retention and client services.
Prior to his current role, he worked in leadership roles at ISN throughout the Business Development department, most recently overseeing teams in the Manufacturing space, including Automotive, Consumer Goods and Pharmaceuticals. Matt holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Risk Management from Baylor University.
Newest Quark.ai board member has a distinguished background in science, leadership corporate development, Girl Scouts and Head Start
“When you think about human development, education is the key,” says Sylvia Acevedo, Quark.ai’s newly appointed board member. Acevedo observes that historically, education sees the “sage on the stage” while the students passively learn. “With AI, and generative AI, you turn that and really flip the script. Students can now own the learning process at a speed that is customized to them, and then the teacher’s role is really the expert, the mentor, the guide who can really crystalize the learning for the student.”
“What really drew me to AI is its incredible potential to make an impact on the world, and my belief that we can navigate its challenges to make sure its benefits are realized.”
Acevedo is an experienced independent board member, currently serving on two public boards, Qualcomm Inc, and Credo Technologies, and a privately held company, Ambri Inc. Previously, she served on two private company boards, Dynamic Signal, a SaaS employee communications company, and Synergis Education, a higher education services company. Ms. Acevedo has a proven track record as a CEO and has been highly awarded for her success in a variety of industries, technology, education, federal government, and national non-profits.
Quark.ai’s potential to change customer service.
In this podcast we discuss the immense potential of AI but also the dystopian possibilities. We learn that as Quark.ai’s founder, Prosenjit Sen, began to talk to Acevedo about Quark.ai and the potential for great change, the conversation included a thought process that includes encouraging the market to use these new technologies wisely, train people for positions where they a re leveraging AI vs being replaced by AI, along with the nearly revolutionary way the technology might transform industry after industry.
“We have built something special,” says Sen. Reflecting on the global discussion on how AI will change industries and employment, Sen reflects on the idea that with proper training, AI has the potential to make employees in, for example major industries such as automotive, more productive. “Regular people will be able to do sophisticated jobs.”
An experienced leader
Acevedo held executive roles at Apple, Dell, IBM, and Autodesk.
Reflecting on her time as Chief Executive Officer of the Girl Scouts of the USA from May 2017 to August 2020 and as interim CEO from June 2016 to May 2017, Acevedo discusses how she led the organization to help close the gender gap among young people in STEM. “What I am really proud of is that over one million STEM merit badges were earned and over 180,000 of these were in cybersecurity.”
Rocket Scientist
A rocket scientist by training, Ms. Acevedo holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from New Mexico State University and a M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. She has also been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from Duke University and an Honorary Doctorate from Washington College.
“What really drew me to AI is its incredible potential to make an impact on the world, and my belief that we can navigate its challenges to make sure its benefits are realized.”
About Quark.ai
Quark.ai’s Autonomous Support Platform is the industry’s first pre-trained, purpose-built Generative AI platform that uses Large Language Models (LLM), classical Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Computer Vision technologies to provide a unique platform for Technical Support, Field Support, and Sale Support. The platforms unique IP enables the user to input a query to then get generated answers with very high accuracy (> 90%), 100 traceability to the right section sections of the documents that were used in generating the answer, minimal hallucination, and – at the lowest cost of ownership.
Quark.ai is the Generative AI leader in Autonomous Customer Support,
Snom delivers unique opportunity for partners to create new recurring income relationships as clients navigate migration path descions
“We’re the only IP product that solves the puzzle of how to put a fixed line on a virtual button on the phone," says Chris Trittin, Senior Sales Director, Snom Americas. As Tritton explains, for partners who have clients what are holding on to their legacy key-system technology, and its robust and simple underlying functionality, but now could be candidates to make their move to the cloud, including having mobility, Snom has filled the gap. No retraining of on-prem staff, not shifts in work process, but the partner is now able to convert a legacy installation into a recurring cloud model. Snom products fill the gap.
Snom recently expanded its product offerings, all complete with the company’s leading DECT technology. Most notably, the Snom M500 Wireless Family is a wireless office system that allows for flexible wireless deployment anywhere within a business location. The Snom M500 is an “Office in a Box” – this lineup includes the M500 Multicell Base Station, M58 Desk Phone and the M55 Handset which are easy to set up, intuitive to use and can expand with your business. Other offerings for various business sizes and applications include the M100, M900 and M900 Outdoor.
In this podcast episode, Trittin, discusses Snom's specialty – its high-quality VoIP phones – including DECT-based mobility solutions and the company’s reputation for innovation, reliability, and an abundance of features. Snom’s DECT solutions offer a wide wireless range, support a significant number of handsets per base station and are designed with high standards of quality and durability.
For more information, please visit www.snomamericas.com. Snom is a subsidiary of VTech Holdings Limited News on Snom
https://youtu.be/EKFc4MRqalI
Wildix has positioned itself to stand out in the crowded communications crowded market.
“We decided to go 100% to the channel, says Steve Osler, CEO Wildix. Recorded at the Wildix Partner Day Conference in Chicago, this podcast walks us through a top-level view of how Wildix has positioned itself to stand out in the crowded communications crowded market. The largest message of the conference and the podcast was Wildix’s absolute focus on the channel, and on making each partnership really work. According to Osler that includes three big ideas: commitment to keeping the partner as the only customer facing presence, delivering to the customers unique experiences that are only offered by their Wildix partner, and offering products that keep the partner as the customer’s problem solver.
Osler walks us through the special retail solution called x-hoppers, a complete retail communications solution that uses AI and tackles head on retail challenges by engaging consumers and helping to maximize scarce labor resources. We learn how x-hoppers boosts sales and cuts labor time in unproductive tasks. We also hear about x-bees, a customer communications platform built to boost sales for clients that are more B2B, where other tactics are needed to engage business customers. Osler reports that his company has one of the lowest churn rates in the industry because Wildix supports their partners and continues to enable the channel to offer inventive solutions to their clients.
Visit www.wildix.com
“People are angry,” says Sarah Delphey, VP of Trust Solutions of Numeracle. “It’s very empowering,” adds Delphey. As people continue to receive nuisance and scam robocalls, one of the things that they can do is file a complaint with the FCC. Delphey tells us that she is among those that have responded this way too. Nobody is immune from the onslaught.
The challenge for organizations, of all sizes, is the compromise of brand reputation. “Just like any company can develop bad online reviews… in just the same way, a company that’s just going about their business, not committing fraud, not committing anything illegal, if their calling is leaving the wrong impression, or if people think it’s an impersonation attempt, that could cause people to file complaints about you, without your knowledge, and those complaints could be having a negative impact.” Delphey notes that in her previous work inside a carrier, these complaints can move the carrier to consider cancellation of service. Her experience is that customers were often unaware that there was even a problem.
In this podcast, Delphey outlines the damage that can occur, and how Numeracle can help clients have visibility to the problem, before it escalates, along with actionable information. She notes that when a carrier’s client can outline how they are responding, it moves the carrier to see the client as a responsible actor.
Numeracle is an industry pioneer and leader with actionable solutions for legal callers that prioritizes their calling identity as the foundation to restoring trust in the voice channel and to their calls by removing barriers, like improper spam labels, from harming their phone numbers. Numeracle's Entity Identity Management™ (EIM) platform puts enterprise brands, BPOs, and service providers in direct control of their identity, which we vet and verify. Our EIM platform can also be used to manage branded communications, to improve call reputation with blocking and labeling prevention and spam label remediation, and we provide visibility into call display to ensure brand identity is presented as intended, with transparency and consistency. Our KYC-based identity vetting and verification is the cornerstone of the platform; developed in support of evolving federal regulations and telecom standards.
Read the White Papers Visit www.numeracle.com
TelcoBridges Announces Media Gateway Certification of Interoperability with Metaswitch CFS
Last month, TelcoBridges, a leading designer and manufacturer of carrier-grade VoIP gateways, today announced successful completion of certification testing by Metaswitch, a Microsoft company. This accreditation certifies that versions of TelcoBridges Tmedia gateways are now fully interoperable with the widely deployed MetaSphere Call Feature Server (CFS). As a result of the successful certification, TelcoBridges now offers “Tmedia for Metaswitch Networks” as a software option/upgrade for existing and new Tmedia products. This includes integration with Metaswitch’s MetaView Service Assurance Server, for rapid call tracing and fault diagnosis. The new options are now available from the TelcoBridges web site at www.telcobridges.com/metaswitch.
In this podcast, Alan Percy, CMO at TelcoBridges walks us through the announcement and why it’s a gain for the smaller, distributed service providers to meet their goals of expand or modernize their networks, in a cost-effective method. Percy discusses the announcement in the context of a wider TelcoBridges Tmedia™ family of VoIP media gateways are a highly reliable solution for telephony service providers, interconnecting legacy TDM and modern VoIP networks.
“We’ve been able to deliver really outstanding reliability to the customers and we have the customer feedback to prove it.”
Visit https://telcobridges.com/
News on TelcoBridges
https://youtu.be/PKDDE5U0WBw
In this episode of the podcast, Doug is joined by Sriram Sampath, Vice President - CX Management & Collaboration Platforms at Tata Communications, a global digital ecosystem enabler, to discuss the changing landscape of hybrid work.
Is hybrid work an advantage or a disruption? Sriram explores how businesses have taken this opportunity to adapt and evolve their technology solutions to support remote and hybrid work. Enterprise technology has boosted productivity for virtual teams through high-speed connections, availability of smart devices, cloud services, and improved network security and collaboration services. However, there is a challenge too. While collaboration services and tools make it easier for people to work from anywhere, employees tend to be isolated, and a distance grows with how managers work with their teams.
Sriram provides insights into Tata Communications' role as a CommTech player to power enterprises with remote and hybrid work adoption. He also offers a forward-looking perspective on the direction of hybrid work, emphasizing the importance for businesses to stay ahead of the tech-driven and ever-evolving workforce trends. Click here to know more about Tata Communications offerings for Unified Communications and Business Collaboration.
by Gary Audin
I hate robocalls and spam so much that when it was at its worst, I let all my calls go to voicemail, no matter who I thought was calling. The FCC decided to do something about it to protect American consumers and mandated that carriers implement call blocking and labeling analytics on their networks. Because they're run by algorithms, they have become overzealous, labeling up to 25% of calls as spam.
Improper call blocking and labeling have been an issue since 2017, and many businesses don't know it could be happening to them. If you're a business conducting outbound calls directly, via a call center, operating a help desk, supporting emergency services, conducting surveys, etc., mislabeled phone calls can significantly impact your operational success.
Do you know if you have these problems affecting your calls right now?
In this 18-minute EDUcast, "Number Reputation Management, DIY or Not," Molly Slater, Product Enablement and Lifecycle Manager at Numeracle, and Gary Audin discuss the recurring problem of mislabeled phone calls and how a Number Reputation Management Solution that prioritizes your calling identity can solve it.
There's also the added problem of having phone numbers get mislabeled repeatedly, even when the initial spam or scam label has been resolved. This is why an ongoing and active approach to your number reputation is crucial for your business. Molly provides insight into these issues as well as the solutions available to do it yourself or by partnering with a trusted industry solution provider.
The agenda of this EDUcast includes:
The Problem with Spam Number Reputation About Numeracle Number Check Solutions Valuable Resources
You can tackle this problem yourself if you believe you already have all the necessary resources, or you can streamline the process by leveraging Numerable's Entity Identity Management (EIM) service. The EIM platform enables enterprises, call centers, and service and platform providers to manage the identity of end entities and implement Know Your Customer (KYC) identity vetting and verification policies to outbound communications, developed in support of evolving regulations and telecom standards.
You can leverage their EIM solution to establish yourself as a Verified Identity™ with the analytics and carrier to prevent 97% of improper call blocking and labeling events on your phone numbers. They'll work on the remaining 3% of troublesome numbers with their Number Reputation Management solution and Remediation capabilities to remove the labels and barriers preventing you from completing your calls.
The platform also allows you to add and manage your branded presentation across the wireless network via their Smart Branding solution to further ensure that your brand and identity are presented as intended, with transparency and consistency.
For more information, visit www.numeracle.com or reach out to them at https://www.numeracle.com/contact-us.
“Crawl, walk, run,” says Josh Robbins of SimpleVoIP. “We build everything through templates. Measure twice, cut once.” In this podcast Robbins discusses the methodical approach his company takes to deploying SimpleVoIP, by careful planning, beginning with a couple of sites out of many and then rolling out a consistent plan. SimpleVoIP specializes in enterprises with multiple sites. Today, these distributed organizations face challenges from migration of updating a company with multiple retail stores and other such business locations in other service industries such as restaurants. “We make it very easy for our customers, we make it easy for our partners.”
Elevators and POTS lines
We also learn that SimpleVoIP offers solutions for one of the year’s harder tests for firms with many legacy locations: POTS lines. City and county regulations have placed a POTS line in most elevators. There are other locations on every enterprise campus that have similar, rarely used, but must be operational lines. We learn how SimpleVoIP has an effective solution for that challenge as well.
SimpleVoIP is now a member of the Cloud Communication Alliance.
Visit www.simplevoip.com
Sanjay Macwan
Vonage has managed to assemble a communications platform that captures and inspires the 1.15 million developers’ creative entrepreneurial spirits to envision tomorrow and deliver it today. Vonage’s core includes cloud native, SaaS native, security first and data driven characteristics which provides the creativity power developers need to construct applications that respond to the customers needs.
Sanjay Macwan, CIO, CISO at Vonage Speaks with Don Witt of The Chanel Daily News about businesses and how they can ensure security while migrating from a PBX to the cloud. There are many benefits in moving to the cloud including ROI, financial as well as the employee and customer experience. Vonage enhances the cloud solution with Two Factor Authentication (2FA).
Of course, Vonage is involved in AI and is seeing more significant adoption of AI-enabled automation across all enterprise workflows and processes. The number of routine clerical and administrative functions can, and will, increasingly be fulfilled by AI-enabled solutions. Listen in for more very informative discussion about Vonage and the Industry.
Now we're talking! Technology is supposed to make things easier. Right? So, why does the business communications business seem to make things so complicated? It’s simple to Vonage: They want you to understand their unified communications solutions without needing a PhD. They want to maximize the impact and minimize the jargon. They don’t want to work with celebrity spokespeople. They’re too busy working with businesses and developers. They don’t care about their technology being fancy, they want it to be so good you forget about it. Because it’s not about how advanced the technology is, it’s about what you can do with it. They’re keeping communications how they should be: straightforward. Now we’re talking. It is all about the experience!
For more information, go to: www.vonage.com or call 1-844-365-9460
COTU is a suite of cloud-based SaaS applications that integrates seamlessly for Wildix partners who have customers who operate a contact center. In this podcast, Sam Hodgetts, Director at COTU, walks us through several key products available from COTU through the Wildix partner portal. We learn about ipScape, an innovative cloud-based customer experience technology that is feature-rich, scalable and offers integration capabilities. ipScape enables easily build out of campaigns and access live reports to monitor customer service and sales teams. Partners with contact center customers can also offer RAMP (Recording Archive Management Platform, which delivers secure, GDPR compliant, long-term storage of call recordings. MyWallboards an easy to configure enhancement of your Wildix Customer Experience is something that will be a gain for any PBX customer.
Branding
Sam also describes how COTU works to maintain Wildix’s major focus on having partners maintain their brand. Not only do COTU products maintain partner branding, COTU’s products allow the partner to enable the final customer to brand, so that as the contact center operation interacts with callers and contacts, the customer’s brand is what people experience and see.
Learn more at cotu.uk Wildix partners can work through their Wildix representatives as well.
“Frameworks should not be a burden. They are really an asset,” says,” says Walt Czerminski, CEO at Cytellix. “Frameworks give you that advantage. They let you know where your doors are open in your house, what you should be taking care of, what needs to be addressed and where your risks are. And that visibility allows for quicker movement and taking action that matters that reduces obvious risk.” In this way, Walt explains how structure equals utility. In this podcast, we learn that we live in a risk environment where the, “… volume is logarithmic.” Thanks to AI, faux emails are looking more genuine. Bad actors are probing more and more often. Frameworks are a tool that CISOs can use to standup an effective defense. In this podcast we learn how a combination of technology security initiatives and creating a security conscious, a security hygiene corporate culture, to punch back at the threat. Much as a home has a frame, and protects the occupants from the elements, in cybersecurity, a framework can be modified for different risks, and as with a house, conscious choices are made.
Cytellix is a first-of-its kind patented SaaS platform that brings together cybersecurity, compliance, and risk management under one fully integrated umbrella. Cytellix helps companies better understand their “real security posture” and provides a new way to manage and deploy cybersecurity capabilities, risk awareness, and compliance with a plan tailored to specific situations and needs.
Visit www.cytellix.com
Vonage (Voice on Net AGE) has been on my radar from their start way back at the end of the last century. At a time where nothing in Telecommunications happened for 150 years and all things were proprietary and wired. They started their journey delivering VoIP and targeting the home and small business because big business was controlled by the AT&T, Motorola NCR, etc., and high-speed internet and SIP were not around.
Sanjay Macwan
Sanjay Macwan, CIO, CISO at Vonage takes Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, and the rest of us back farther adding some additional communications history to the story. He also describes early Vonage with a current core business product set of Unified Communications, Contact Centers and CPaaS APIs.
Sanjay does a great job on this podcast as he walks through the evolving technological landscape and describes how Vonage is committed to a security-first approach for their customers to become more productive, mobile, flexible, profitable, and more security-focused. He then moves into two factor authentication.
Reinventing communications all over again
Change is an essential part of the Vonage DNA. Their original business brought VoIP to families and small businesses. And now they’re making communications more flexible, intelligent, and personal to help enterprises the world over stay ahead. They've brought leaders in unified communications, contact centers, and communications APIs all under one roof. Together, they’ve created the world’s most flexible cloud communications platform.
Unified Communications, Contact Centers, Communications APIs: take your pick.
... or pick them all. They’re uniquely flexible when it comes to our capabilities. Choose from their stock of proven applications, all ready to go. Select from their extensive portfolio of APIs to create your own apps and integrations. Or get the best of both: choose the apps you need and customize them with their APIs. You can’t do that with anyone else.
For more information, go to: www.vonage.com.
“We’re looking for the top 3% of fractional consultants,” says Robert Burke, CEO and Founder of Sobo. “We have a very tight and very extensive vetting process to make sure that we’re getting consultants that will perform many types of engagements and are trained and happy to do those engagements.” Burke adds,” So you need a fractional VP of Sales. We’re going to give you that fractional VP of Sales, he’s going to build out your sales team, he’s going to hold your sale’s team accountable, he’s going to take you from a lackluster sale to a high-performance sales team.”
“You’re getting what you need when you need it, and you’re getting it on demand from a trusted source.” Burke notes that as with the Uber model, the consultant is being paid upon achieving milestones, rather like completing each trip along the way. In the world of hiring outside help, this avoids the problems of hiring the wrong help, or somehow having little to show for your spend.
Sobo is a tech company who’s on-demand platform delivers actionable insights and verified consultant matching with AI to help owners, leaders, employees, and fractional advisors make businesses better and stronger. Fractional consulting is an agile business model that enables consultants to offer their specialized skills on a part-time, as-needed basis. This setup allows startups to tap into high-level expertise without the hefty price tag of a full-time executive. The 'fractional' aspect ensures the consultant's time and skills are flexibly allocated across multiple projects, aligning their services with each startup's unique needs and constraints.
Visit www.sobo.ai
“It’s very much a patchwork quilt out there,” says Akixi’s Mike Wilkinson. Offering a glimpse at his recent talks given at the Netaxis Solutions Inspiration Day 2023, Wilkinson notes that the Teams ecosystem is still forming, especially the rapid way in which Teams became so widely adopted. Presenting on the collaboration market, Wilkinson was struck by the dominance of Teams in the collaboration market and how so many companies have positioned themselves or repositioned themselves as firms offering still-needed services that you might need even as you use for collaboration. It’s thought that 300,000,000 of over 400,000,000 “PBX seats” might now involve Teams. The paradox is that even as teams becomes ubiquitous, none of the many firms now in the orbit of the Teams world, are dominant.
“We kind of know the sorts of things that, small businesses, in particular, need to know about their telephony infrastructure. And that does not really change that much whether the infrastructure is sitting on BroadWorks, or sitting on Teams or is sitting on Webex calling.” Akixi can overlay the analytics, even in the fragmented market.
We learn about upcoming Akixi offerings on Webex Calling that will present a nicely sized and cost effective solution for Cisco customers running a small inside sales desk or a small customer service center.
Akixi is a fast-growing and profitable private equity (PE) owned company, operating in the UK, Europe, and US, and headquartered near London. Akixi work with leading service providers to offer cloud-based, real-time call reporting and business insights software to small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). With over 7,000 customers and more than 300,000 users benefiting from Akixi’s multiple award-winning solution, Akixi is a Cisco Select Developer Partner and proudly part of the Cisco Partner Ecosystem. Akixi is an active member of the Cloud Communications Alliance.
Visit www.akixi.com
“Everything is done from one pane of glass, everything is done under one roof,” says Sean Breeden, Director, Channel Sales at SkySwitch, about the online store that his company has established for partners to easily find, order, provision, customize and drop ship products to customers. In this podcast, Sean describes how SkySwitch is committed to making it easy for partners to brand while selling their customers products and services. In our first podcast on SkySwitch, we learned how the company’s unique and thorough onboarding process, fosters channel confidence, depth of product and solution knowledge and partner independence. SkySwitch seeks to be the channel’s steady source for every need, while staying in the background, vis-à-vis the customer. The channel partner is customer facing. In this podcast, we learn how SkySwitch backs that up by encouraging the partners to own their customer relationships by offering many channel facing resources.
“You can actually put the name of your company on the phone, with a physical name plate on the phone, as well as (on some models) the phone can be configured to have the partner’s name right on the phone’s screen,” Sean adds. “You can really customize things to get brand recognition.” We also learn that the billing comes from the client, the client pays the partner directly cementing a monthly point of contact for the partners and consolidating the billing process, allowing the partner to be the technology source for multiple client needs.
Visit www.SkySwitch.com
Promise of 5G is arriving as infrastructure investments amplify long promised gains
“The hard work of putting the fiber on the ground, mounting the radios on the towers, and securing the spectrum, which is one of the largest capex investments that needs to go in for the telcos to secure the right spectrum… and we are getting to a point in the US for example… that the coverage of 5G is almost there,” says Ragu Masilamany, VP and Global Head of Solutions Engineering. “Now we are starting to talk about advanced services over the infrastructure.” According to some industry analysts, by 2030, 5G will reach $7 trillion in economic value. In this podcast we learn about how that value is being delivered in practical and timely ways.
Communications service providers (CSPs) want faster monetization of 5G – and as recession fears loom and energy costs increase, some have a shortsighted view of the network’s true long-term impact. However, industry leaders see a much different picture, with 5G investments already paying off for customers through increased video/gaming usage on 5G (vs. 4G), private 5G networks and customized network packages, demonstrating a taste of what's possible.
“Mobility is here to stay. Flexible workforces are here to stay. And, the quality of the communication is ever more important,” adds Masilamany. “Almost every call is a video call and so that brings additional demand son the network.” To conduct business in the distributed hybrid work model, to achieve factory automation and to do many other things from smart city initiatives to logistics, 5G, or at least the things 5G delivers, has moved from potential gains to expected and needed services.
Visit www.amdocs.com
“Spreadsheets, yes spreadsheets,” says Jimmie Lee, CTO of Xfactor.io. According to Lee, CROs use spreadsheets (yes spreadsheets) to plan their path and angle of attack as they guide their respective organizations through their go market pan. In this podcast, Lee tells us how Xfactor.io has taken those behaviors, and using AI, to build a platform that can inform a CRO how best to invest company funds, to understand predicted results from investments under consideration and to build out sales teams to generate revenue. By utilizing new technologies is a very informed way, Xfactor.io can provide the type of information that was once only available to the very largest firms, and even then, possibly not as deeply insightful as what can achieved on the Xfactor.io platform. AI as a planning tool, has arrived.
“Sustaining revenue is the hard part,” says Lee, noting that the platform provides a very accurate insight into what will be needed as a company goes from step one to step two, from take-off, to sustainable revenue and growth. The mis-investment of resources is a big cause of young firm failure.
Lee discusses the new MIKEY platform, which features an AI model that was built and trained on XFactor.io’s market data and the combined knowledge of the company’s leadership team. The launch of this platform marks a pivotal moment for XFactor.io and comes after the company recently acquired DecisionLink. With this latest offering, XFactor.io will be able to further enable businesses of any size to make real-time revenue-growth-based decisions at scale.
Visit www.Xfactor.io
Jabra announced new AI-powered features for its PanaCast 50 and PanaCast 50 Room System at InfoComm 2023
“There are nine processors onboard the PanaCast 50,” says Jabra’s Chief Video Evangelist, Josh Blalock. “It allows us to iterate on that product over time.” That computing power has been driving a wave of announcements of onboard features that the PanaCast 50 can deliver, bringing together technologies that a client would have had to purchase separately. An intelligent Meeting Space feature, which people may understand as room boundary, works to include people who are in the meeting while excluding people who might be nearby but are not in the meeting. Intelligent speaker, a Microsoft connected technology, that identifies people, by name in meeting transcripts. Facial recognition, using AI, which drives notes and other information coming out of a meeting. And improved meeting equity with three video streams: the first stream is the current speaker, the second stream is for the previous speaker, and the third stream is the full panoramic room view of the meeting room or space.
In this podcast, Blalock lays out Jabra’s broad vision behind the parade of announcements so far this year. “Workers need devices that are not just built for being remote, but are built to be on the go,” says Blalock, noting that many of this year’s devices have specialized, small footprint and light, carrying cases, designed for users to be able to tuck a device into a case going in to a car or a subway, and then easily plug and play, from wherever they are. The quality gap remains for laptops, phones, and other devices, while the need to provide high quality and consistent meetings and sessions remains. “You want to be your best self wherever you are, and that’s what these devices do.”
Visit www.jabra.com
· Cloud Communications Alliance and Jabra Event in Copenhagen: A Day of Thought Leadership
· Content Guru Extends storm’s Sentiment Analysis Capabilities Through Jabra Engage AI Integration
· Jabra PanaCast video solution first to market with all-new Microsoft device ecosystem platform
· Jabra expands the Evolve2 range with the most portable and comfortable headsets built for ultra-flexible hybrid working
· Jabra Elite 4 – feature-packed entry earbuds for both work and play
· Jabra launches PanaCast 50 Video Bar System to facilitate next-level hybrid meeting experiences
· Jabra showcases true wireless expertise for consumers, enterprise and medical at CES 2023
Taxes on telecom services is one of the most complex inland revenue systems in the United States. 10,000 to 17,000 are the number jurisdictions that have taxing authority, that are imposing some form of tax on the services carriers sell. Brent Reeves of CereTax believes that this is one of the easiest ways to fall out of compliance given, not only the complexity, region to region (even across a single metro area), but with the way the entities can change rates and methods that the taxes are to be collected and paid. Issues here can create a roadblock to selling a company, going public or access to credit. Tax issues are not good things.
In this podcast, Reeves outlines how CereTax’s platform represents an excellent opportunity for the channel. “This is the third engine we built in this marketplace,” says Reeves. Reeves outlines how CereTax is easy to use, easy to migrate to and easy to navigate. The platform comes with decades of experience in the field. We learn how the system coordinates the carrier and the reseller in making sure that taxes are being collected properly and paid properly.
Visit www.ceretax.com
Trevor Francis
Having started 46 Labs servicing carrier communication problems,46 Labs soon realized that large enterprise had very similar problems. Trevor Francis, CEO of 46 Labs, discusses with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News how they were able to support both channels fixing anything that would break in communications.
It was not long before 46 Labs was able to assemble a complete platform called Peeredge. Trevor provides two examples of how their technology is integrated into a carrier’s network and how they integrate their technology into enterprise as well.
Carriers and enterprises find Drag and Drop automation, push-button technology, global infrastructure, Peeredge and working with major organizations around the world to establish voice connectivity are standout features of 46 Labs.
Trevor will also discuss the reason that telecom companies use SaaS and the cyber security risks associated with SaaS technology.
This is good technology and it will help those carriers and enterprise that are short staffed, short on internal technical capabilities and may also need a network overhaul.
46 Labs is the world’s connectivity orchestration company. IT leaders harness their trusted Peeredge™ platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that powers their success - all while orchestrating connectivity sustainably and securely.
46 Labs Orchestrates the World’s Connectivity™. Digital leaders harness their automation platform and team of experts to orchestrate the foundational elements that power their global success. They enable their clients to ease their operational burdens and expand their reach across any connectivity medium.
For more information, go to: www.46labs.com or call +1 (888) 646-5227
As seen at CiscoLive, SmarTrak informs Cisco partners on what they need to work on next, make better use of the Cisco data you already get but may find difficult to manage and use.
The new reality of the recurring revenue model are the multiple contracts, subscriptions, and other renewals, that must be renewed. Cisco partners might be confronted with a spreadsheet of multiple rows and columns of services to renew, change, or replace, without a sense of where to begin, what to focus on. All of this occurs a t a point of revenue vulnerability. The customer might reduce services, not understand the value of some subscriptions, and possibly defect altogether. SmartTrack helps Cisco Partners and their customers, transforming Cisco data into actionable insights. In this podcast we learn how SmarTrak, a next generation SaaS application, helps partners succeed with the Cisco data they get on client renewal.
Helps prevent lost renewals, lost rebates, customer defections.
“We take that information and distill it down to, here’s the contracts you have, here’s the customers you have… and be able to interact with the end customer to say, ‘We need to renew, replace, retire, or do a tech refresh, on these individual items and get contracts renewed’,” says Ted Lee, CEO of SmarTrak. “This is a significant time sync and any of these lost renewals, or lost tech refresh opportunities, is real lost revenue.” SmarTrak organizes this critical renewal process, helps protect recurring revenue and helps partners make sure that the right mix of Cisco and Cisco backed services are being delivered as customer needs and Cisco’s technologies, advance.
Visit https://smartrak.io/
CiscoLive News
Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder of Keeper Security, continues his talk with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication in Part 2 where Darren continues his discussion about Privileged Access Solutions (PAM). He describes how traditional PAM solutions are falling short, and what IT pros need to do when it comes to Privileged Access Management. Darren also describes how Keeper Security excels at PAM.
Darren Guccione
Darren provides advice to organizations struggling with identity and access security. He finishes with future goals and what the company is currently focused on for release soon.
If you are concerned about security, lock down the corporate and enterprise passwords. By doing this alone, 80% of the threats will be neutralized.
Keeper Security is one powerful platform that protects every user on every device. Deploys in just minutes.
Protecting millions of people and thousands of companies globally as the trusted and proven cybersecurity leader. An easy-to-use platform that unifies critical components of Identity and Access Management and enables zero-trust transformation.
Visibility, security and control - Keeper’s platform gives administrators the power to fine tune their organization’s access levels to critical data and credentials across individuals and teams. Keeper uses role-based access control (RBAC) to support least-privileged access and tracks all user activity from every location and on every device.
For more information, go to: https://www.keepersecurity.com
For an individual, passwords become a nuisance when too many are involved. For a business, it becomes an incredibly large security risk if not managed properly and could have serious financial and operational consequences.
Darren Guccione
Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder of Keeper Security, talks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about who are Keeper’s typical customers, and what are their customer’s main challenges when it comes to password security. Additionally, Keeper’s password manager significantly differentiates Keeper Security from other solutions in the password management space.
Darren also discusses why a zero-trust security framework is essential and why zero knowledge encryption is critical.
Keeper Security’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions are critical to the enterprise in today’s evolving threat landscape.
Keeper Security is transforming cybersecurity for people and organizations around the world. Keeper’s affordable and easy-to-use solutions are built on a foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security to protect every user on every device.
Their next-generation privileged access management solution deploys in minutes and seamlessly integrates with any tech stack to prevent breaches, reduce help desk costs and ensure compliance. Trusted by millions of individuals and thousands of organizations, Keeper is the leader for best-in-class password management, secrets management, privileged access, secure remote access and encrypted messaging. Keeper is backed by Insight Partners, a leading, global venture capital and private equity firm.
For more information, go to: https://www.keepersecurity.com
Learn Build Succeed
SkySwitch sells a white label service that enables the channel to sell just the right set of solutions to the customer is a big part of the approach. In this podcast, William Brister, Director Onboarding and Product Billing Services discusses how the goal is to make people independent. “We want our partners to be independent,” says Brister. Understanding the motivations of their channel partners is the basic building block of the program. Brister says that SkySwitch knows that people want to build a successful family-owned business or to create some other similar going concern that has equity value in the long run and can provide a good living over the medium term. People are seeking a partner that respects that goal of independence, and that obtainment of that goal begins with onboarding.
Learn Build Succeed
Many partners are surprised at the independence level being offered. Partners can build their own catalog of services. A companies onboard, they encounter a good deal of personal tough care and training, the care and training are all designed to prepare the partners to roll on their own, with all the support they need, but with a level of training where they can make successful sales right from the start. We learn about the company’s “Learn Build Succeed” succeed approach.
“We love to see our partners succeeding all the way to retirement or sale.”
Visit www.skyswitch.com
Updating the last century’s last mile
“It has to start at the edge and then work towards the core,” says 46 Labs CEO, Trevor Francis. But the edge is large, and migration can be costly. At a moment when we are discussing the possibilities of AI, a 5G enabled hybrid workforce and CPaaS, telecoms and enterprises can’t ignore a giant legacy infrastructure investment, the enormous copper legacy networks. In this podcast, Francis outlines the problems carriers and enterprises are facing this modernization process. We take on compliance issues, with an eye to the still existing regulatory framework that exists. Francis tells us about approaches that begin in the core. “It’s a little bit of pull and a little bit of push,” says Francis of the step by step, phase by phase process. “The last mile has to be replaced,” Francis outlines, but we learn that there are so many systems that any migration impacts, that organizations must look at each step. We learn how 46 Labs can help in this by offering ways to avoid having a complete rip and replace.
46 Labs can solve for outdated network issues in real time without having to overhaul the entire system. While replacing the network is the ideal choice, those who cannot make the massive change must turn to software providers who can monitor and update network technology that poses a risk to users.
“You peel away the layers of the onion a little bit,” says Joe Ward of IKIN. People, especially channel partner and MSP people, here the word hologram and they may think or wonder, how would I sell that? In this podcast, Ward, peels back those layers to give us a look at a very practical and attractive solution sale, that can help clients deepen engagement and boost productivity. We learn how IKIN solutions enhance AR/VR/XR applications.
“We can scan a turbine engine on a jet for the military and look at the minute cracks over time,” says Ward. “It’s not just the hologram but it’s the software behind it.” IKIN is a platform as a service, making it a very practical open door to the channels to leverage IKIN’s open architecture to create unique options for clients. We learn about current channel opportunities and ways for the channel to offer unique solutions to their clients. Ward feels that the type of data and information these solutions provide, create a sticky service that channels can sell, where customers are not likely to find anything similar.
https://ikininc.com/
“Know thyself,” says Walt Czerminski, CEO at Cytellix. “Because if you don’t’, the priorities you’re going to make will be misinformed. In this third part of a four-part series, we zero in on figuring out where we are in cybersecurity, as an organization, and if we have arrived at some point of security. As we learn in this podcast, the assessment of where an organization ranks in terms of prevention and preparedness, is like a snapshot of a ship on a stormy sea. The threats some with every wave below and the raging storm above. Walt has been using the model of herd animals and the danger of being in the back of the heard, or straggling, behind. Bad actors are looking for the more vulnerable. We learn about compliance, and we learn about being proactive beyond compliance. A big part of the picture is having a GRC framework that allows a company to assess where they are and to measure other dynamics.
“On the important things we do is we make it easy,” says Walt, noting that his company helps pull together things in a wholistic approach. Understanding that this is a not a “three month march”, we learn how Cytellix helps clients have effective ongoing process.
Cytellix is a first-of-its kind patented SaaS platform that brings together cybersecurity, compliance, and risk management under one fully integrated umbrella. Cytellix helps companies better understand their “real security posture” and provides a new way to manage and deploy cybersecurity capabilities, risk awareness, and compliance with a plan tailored to specific situations and needs.
Visit www.cytellix.com
Smart credentials help hospitals, clinics, and clinicians
With rapid advances in medical care techniques, technologies, and standards, keeping on top of the credentials, training and history of the professional care team, and health care professionals maintaining a standardized, organized portfolio of their own backgrounds, can be a challenge. In this podcast, Paul Bergeron, MD, MBA, the Chief Physician Executive at DoorSpace gives us a look at a company tackling these issues. The factors in motion include a clinician’s educational background, documentation of ongoing education and training, licensing, and other recorded issues and events that may come up. A hospital or a private practice needs to know where their team is on all these thing, and individual practitioners need to know if they are current. This smart credentials system has many benefits. Recruiters in the medical field will especially benefit from what DoorSpace offers. Bergeron believes that DoorSpace is a great opportunity for the channel partner and MSP communities.
About DoorSpace
DoorSpace is delivering the next generation of healthcare professional development software through their innovative, people-centric, cloud-based solution that helps healthcare professionals get back to what’s important: helping their patients and themselves. Based in Houston, Texas, DoorSpace is transforming the way healthcare organizations retain and develop clinical talent by bringing personnel, administration monitoring, and organization systems together in a user-friendly platform that streamlines healthcare processes. DoorSpace is making work better for the people who make a difference.
AI to the rescue
Unruly airline passenger incidents soared by 47% in 2022! Increased demand and the ongoing pilot shortage is putting airlines in the hot seat to deliver on customer service in post-COVID seasonal travel conditions. In fact, new data from the J.D. Power 2023 North America Airline Satisfaction Study shows airlines have their work cut out for them. For the second year in a row, customer satisfaction for airlines has declined by double digits! According to Quiq CEO and founder Mike Myer, AI has arrived just in time to help.
In this podcast, Myer describes how the traditional contact center, the mobile consumer at the airport and the noisy environment of that airport, might mean that a traditional contact center is a poor match to the challenge of customers. In addition, the airline industry has unpredictability. Several cancelled or delayed flights can create a surge that impacts hundred or thousands of passengers.
“Suddenly we have technology that did not exist before,” says Myer. Join us as we discuss a practical AI application that can be deployed today and has even more promise in the months and years to come.
Visit www.quiq.com
Connectbase on the move in the global cloud connectivity market
The connectivity market hinges on understanding how to match up which provider(s) service a location, with which products and services. This applies to the largest tier 1 operators to the small rural broadband providers - and everyone in between. Connectbase, further strengthened by the acquisition of LastMileXchange, brings intelligence and automation to network buyers and sellers across the globe. In this podcast, Ben Edmond, Founder and CEO, discusses recent acquisitions and changes at Connectbase.
“We’ve wanted to be a global company the day I founded Connectbase,” says Edmond. “This gives us an entrance into the European market, which is very attractive.” The acquisitions bring skill, experience and resources that enhance opportunities for operators, partnering with Connectbase. With all the complexity of multiple states across the US and multiple nations in the EU, these moves bring simplification for people looking to match up place, location, need and resources. The new appointments bring in additional leadership and vision, as the company continues to invest in automation, and improved execution.
We also learn about new products that enable people to do in minutes what used to take weeks or projects and studies, shaving off time and cost. This will help rural organizations find resources, quickly and efficiently.
Connectbase is “the industry cloud for connectivity”. Connectbase is a partner to the industry, enabling next generation buying and selling of connectivity, including automated quoting, and providing deep, trusted insights. Connectbase’s industry-leading platform, The Connected World, serves almost 300 providers globally, profiling 2.4 billion locations across more than 150 countries. The Connectbase team has built a connected ecosystem transforming network buying and selling processes. The company offers demos of the products and services we learn about in the podcast.
Connectbase appointments and acquisitions Visit Connectbase at www.connectbase.com and follow on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/connectbase-us/.
Going Beyond Mobile UCaaS is an opportunity for the channel, a path for the enterprise
“UCaaS alone, however, is not enough, as hybrid work requires an integrated approach that goes beyond collaboration to also support the employee experience, customer satisfaction and digital transformation initiatives,” writes Jon Arnold an independent technology analyst consultancy. “Add to that a workforce that is increasingly mobile-centric, and business decision-makers must recognize that not all UCaaS offerings are created equal.” In this podcast Jon Arnold is joined by Enreach COO, Matti Heikkonen, as discuss a new whitepaper, commissioned by Enreach, and authored by Arnold, entitled: Converged Contact, Going Beyond Mobile UCaaS to Give Businesses a Competitive Edge.
Growth and new culture of mobility
We discuss the state of mobility in the European market, and we learn about how this market is not only large and growing, but that it’s a market that consists of many service providers, operating in multiple national and regional markets, confronting complexities that are not as harmonized as many North Americans might imagine. Arnold discusses culture, in terms of market to market, nation to nation, and in terms of different companies and industries. “Mobility is becoming the defacto way we do things, and with that comes a common set of behaviors and expectations,” adds Arnold Heikkonen adds that he sees the European market as having largely accepted some level of mobility, with most companies embracing one or more days as remote. With mobility becoming a standard, Heikkonen sees meeting the needs of that new mobile work culture, as a source of growth.
Arnold identifies Enreach’s approach to delivering native voice, “…which assures the best king of quality and the richer feature sets.” Enreach’s integrated approach, a position that Arnold sees as going beyond UCaaS, helps company’s do a more complete job of digital transformation, and enables partners to go to market with a bigger vision to offer their customers.
Channel Partner
Heikkonen thinks that channel partners can see growth on the new mobility market, especially if they work with clients at a high level, by looking at business impacts and opportunities for an organization that come with those changes.
News on Enreach Visit https://enreach.com/en Read the whitepaper
Work-from-anywhere products, simple channel onboarding process
“It’s not just about ‘I need to be connected’, but beyond that its business continuity,” says, Kathleen Clarke, Partner Recruitment Executive at Inseego. “How can we plug into things? SD-WAN. Going to the edge with the network providers,” adds Clarke. In this podcast, Clarke discusses the signature partner program Clarke has been developing, leveraging Inseego’s relationships and offerings, into a simplified way for partners to grow their businesses by simply selling products and services that line up with very current demands of a hybrid workforce. We learn about how Inseego is helping partners win in fast growing verticals with offerings that very closely match business needs, and with an approach that each partner can carve out their own identity, suited for their respective markets. As we enter the second half of 2023, Clarke offers a roadmap for partners to achieve growth, and to achieve growth in whatever economic environment emerges. Inseego is a leading business and enterprise wireless broadband & IoT solutions provider.
The way to gear up for this war is basic hygiene
“There’s a digital war that’s taking place,” says Walt Czerminski, CEO at Cytellix, “… and it escalates every year. And the number of successful exploits is growing.” According to Czerminski, the way to gear up for this war is basic hygiene, which he feels is like basic training for combat. In this podcast, we continue our series on cybersecurity, and what can be done to prevent and prepare for attacks. We discuss first step that any household or organization can do such as better password management, two factor authentication, password rotation and other habits. This is part of a larger framework. We also discuss achieving maturity, or compliance.
“Checking the box isn’t really the best place to be,” adds Czerminski. We learn that there are a set of choices to achieve maturity, within the larger context of creating readiness. Part of that picture includes preparation for what happens on the day after a security fail, which includes frequent backups, where we literally count the days of business loss. Stress testing is also discussed, which we learn is like war games, playing out scenarios that develop “muscle memory” and to recover better and faster. “Cyber actors are always looking for the easy button… they’ll look for the weaker parts of the supply chain.” The Cytellix approach to helping companies figure out and harden these weak spots, is outlined.
Cytellix is a first-of-its kind patented SaaS platform that brings together cybersecurity, compliance, and risk management under one fully integrated umbrella. Cytellix helps companies better understand their “real security posture” and provides a new way to manage and deploy cybersecurity capabilities, risk awareness, and compliance with a plan tailored to specific situations and needs.
Part 1: Cybersecurity’s weakest link: people. Cytellix Cybersecurity Podcast Series, Part 1 Visit https://www.cytellix.com/
Simple steps, big results, says TCN leader
Empowering agents to deliver CX may well being with agent training, and that training needs to include four basic ingredients. According to McKay Bird, Marketing Manager at TCN, the big picture begins with the agents feeling valued, and that means training and education that creates a feeling of belonging. In this podcast we learn that efficiency on a budget begins with company culture, and that culture must be inclusive. Inclusion means sharing information. McKay thinks that you begin with getting the agent to understand the product. The agent needs to understand the culture of the company that created the product, creates a backdrop and context for the offering. In turn, the agent needs to understand the customers with an eye to ultimately anticipating need and showing empathy.
A critical fourth step is knowing when, as agent, you’re out of your depth and need to ask for help. If agents feel secure and valued, and if they’ve learned that other parts of product, company culture and an understanding of the customers, agents will know when to ask for help. Putting all this together creates efficiency that can be achieved while on a budget.
McKay also offers a well—rounded approach to using KPIs as a tool, but not as a sole focus, knowing that some people can be fine agents while not necessarily achieving a narrow metric. “You have to find a balance,” offers McKay.
For more information, visit https://www.tcn.com/ and follow on Twitter @tcn.
Recently, GXC, a leading provider of private cellular network solutions, announced it had signed reseller agreements with three leading Value-Added Resellers (VARs), substantially expanding the company’s go-to-market footprint. The new partners, Coranet, Pierson Wireless, and Raymond West are set to offer GXC’s Onyx private cellular solution to enterprise customers throughout the United States. In this podcast, GXC CRO Mike Henderson, walks us through how these acquisitions represent both wins and new opportunities for the channel. Henderson outlines the details and connects how GXC’s partners are already making gains, including notable companies, in high growth markets. “I joined the company because of the technology,” says Henderson. GXC is the only vendor to provide a private cellular mesh solution to businesses. Henderson also notes that GXC offers partner the ability to brand many of these advanced offerings as their own.
To learn more about GXC and its groundbreaking 5G cellular mesh architecture for enterprises, please visit www.gxc.io.
“A lot of these solutions work even better, when you have an MSP or a channel partner involved,” says Mike Nowak, Chief revenue Officer of BCM One. With the shadow of the pandemic lifting, and with it, some of the more rushed decisions made on the fly, Nowak believes that there’s a big opportunity to have new conversations about the longer term, between channel and MSP partners and their enterprise customers.
In this podcast, Nowak discusses how recent BCM One acquisitions, such as Pure IP, provides MSPs and channel partners, who have teamed up with BCM One, to have fresh conversations with existing customers and to build growth with new customers, as larger enterprises are now in a longer planning and implementation cycle. Pure IP, for example, comes with many of the things that a large entperise needs as they work PSTN replacement. Nowak discusses Pire IP in the context of a larger BCM One story of a company that hands the partner community the tools they need to meet the entperise with their current needs and their need to plan migration and growth, well into the future. “We take away risk from of making those decisions,” notes Nowak.
Visit www.bcmone.com
If you have not started down the 5G path, it will get progressively more difficult as newer technology and implementations are continually being launched. Andrew De La Torre, Group Vice President of Technology, Oracle Communications speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, about those who are hesitant to embrace 5G and what opportunities they are at risk of missing.
Andrew De La Torre
5G and IoT are often discussed together as a foundation for enabling the next generation of technology – listen in to Andrew as he describes how 5G is enabling new IoT use cases to come to market.
Andrew will also highlight what we can expect to see with the adoption of 5G and IoT in the next five years.
Personalize experiences and grow revenue from 5G services.
Launch new services faster with KPI metrics-driven offer design: Use predictive performance analytics to create new, revise existing, and retire old offers with a centralized design experience. Launch new products and offers to market quickly with an easy-to-use, intuitive design interface built specifically for business users.
Acquire new customers and make them loyal: Increase your subscriber base by sending personalized offers based on customer segmentation, behavior, and usage.
Deliver a personalized and consistent buying experience: Make it easy for customers to complete purchases on the channel of their choice with options to change channels anytime while preserving full context.
Resolve issues faster to increase customer satisfaction and reduce customer churn: Deliver full self-service customer care across billing, orders, offers, and subscriptions via omnichannel interactions. Create positive customer engagements, reduce cost of service, and reduce customer churn.
For more information, go to: https://www.oracle.com/communications
Cisco sees channel partner sales growth through meeting emerging needs of customers in hybrid, mobile and CX, EX focused era, Cisco Live 2023 Podcast
Kristyn Hogan
“By 2025, 75% of all desks won’t have a phone on them,” says Kristyn Hogan, Vice President, Global Collaboration Partner Sales at Cisco. While Cisco continues to deliver phones and end points for their many utilizations, Cisco is partnering with AT&T to add to the channel’s mobility story and meet enterprise demand. Hogan thinks that if you match up emerging customer needs, along with wider portfolio offerings, channels can grow sales. In this podcast, Hogan looks at three tectonic shifts in the needs of the enterprise as the places where channels can match needs: reimagining work, reimagining the workplace, and maximizing CX.
We learn how the newly announced WebEx Go with AT&T, places all the thing enterprises are asking for their team members, right into the phone in their pocket. The new service will allow people to do all their calling from one device, not two, and use their native dialer to do business calls. Hogan discusses "Catch Me Up", which will allow users to quickly catch up on missed interactions, including meetings, calling, chats and more, by using Generative AI and a larger migration of customers to cloud, “… in lock step with our channel partners”. Hogan walks us through new Cisco offerings creating video immersive experiences, a part of reimaging the office.
Visit www.cisco,com
John Finch
Of major importance to Dialpad is the breaking of the $200 million dollar revenue milestone. A lot of credit can be given to Ai technology. For the last five years or more, Dialpad has been focusing on Ai at the core of their product offering. John Finch, Senior Vice President of Marketing with Dialpad discussed the Ai and its impact on the Dialpad product.
To demonstrate the importance of Ai to the company, they are in the midst of releasing 12 new Ai enhanced products at the rate of one product a month. Clearly an aggressive pace which is reflective of the organization and their goals.
Listen in to hear about their Ai products, why they are unique, what lessons Dialpad has learned, and what are the key benefits to their customers and their enhanced experience.
THEIR MISSION: They’re on a mission to completely transform how the world works together.
What they're building: Dialpad designs groundbreaking, truly unified products—all powered by the most advanced communications Ai in the world. They make it easy for teams big and small to call, message, meet, and support their customers in one beautiful workspace.
They’re connecting teams across the planet Dialpad for Good has championed over 650 businesses through the Dialpad for Startups, Tech for Black Founders, and Nonprofit programs. They’re dedicated to transforming the way everyone can work together.
For more information, go to: https://www.dialpad.com
Rich Lily
When they bring on a new customer, they will assess their security network and the security applications being used to make sure that they integrate properly. Then they will design a new security solution around the useful components already being utilized.
Rich Lilly, Director, Security discusses the security options and some of the latest trends including:
Zero Trust Microsoft Security Solutions Staff shortages – they can fill the gap. AI – leverage it in the company for efficiency.
Listen in as Rich discuss Zero Trust deployment, how to deal with Shadow IT, and how organizations can protect themselves from ransomware attacks.
A Relentless Pursuit of Our Clients' Best Interests Their approach sets them apart from other providers. Their team of experts will work with you to identify the cybersecurity and IT solutions that serve your needs and budget. Their advanced expertise and insatiable desire to deliver measurable results leads to fast execution and immediate time-to-value so you can focus on running your winning business.
Bringing Technology and Cybersecurity to the Forefront of Business Problem Solving Today’s business challenges can’t be solved by point products, but rather through integrated, holistic solutions. That’s why they’ve gone the extra mile to ensure they provide the highest standards of service backed by the industry’s leading technology.
For more information, go to: www.netrixglobal.com
Oracle is not just a database company; they are a major player in communications and in the middle of the 5G build out as well as being ranked one of the top 50 companies by Linkedin.
Andrew De La Torre, Group Vice President of Technology, Oracle Communications speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication about 5G and the role Oracle has in supporting organizations to achieve return on investment, enable new business models, and identify new revenue sources. Oracle Communications is uniquely positioned to help CSPs power and monetize 5G.
Listen is as Andrew describes the most significant difference between Oracle and other hyperscalers by focusing on those parts that were an integral part to how customers can create, develop, and expose services in the network space.
Unlock 5G core network insights: Make more strategic decisions using relevant, trusted historical data and unbiased predications about the network leveraging AI and ML.
Build an autonomous 5G core: Leverage analytics and automation for a superior service and network experience. Configure, test, and deploy 5G core network functions automatically into the production environment.
Create a secure 5G signaling and routing framework: Manage your network at scale by providing routing control, resiliency, security, and observability to the 5G core network.
Create and deploy policies service and work: Build tailored 5G network policies, improve your 5G quality of service, and introduce and monetize new services.
Deploy 5G converged charging at scale: Charge for 5G services in real time with cloud native online and offline charging. Meet the needs of any service, segment, or payment model.
For more information, go to: https://www.oracle.com/communications
Pioneering cloud communications company rolls out innovations to help channel partners and service providers to add value
“We’re very much locked into the service provider community, says Mike Wilkinson, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Akixi. In this podcast, we learn that Akixi attracted a round of significant investment that has been used to roll out new products and has had the effect of evolving the company’s focus. Historically facing the reseller community, the firm has been working to match service provider needs. Business insights and intelligence hub are two major parts of this story, joining Akixi’s call reporting family of solutions. We also learn about a special CCA event Mike will be speaking at on June 7.
Watch a short reel https://www.akixi.com/
People at the top get hooked in more easily, Bad actors look for back of the herd vulnerability.
“It is people and cyberattack actors recognize that,” says Walt Czerminski, CEO at Cytellix. “It’s the person that’s going to click on a phishing exploit and grant a cyberattack actor access into the organization. That’s the biggest risk.”
In this first podcast of a podcast series on cybersecurity, we examine the largest challenge: the people in any organization. From the CEO, a law firm’s most senior partner, the senior scholar at a university or mayor of a city, on the way down the organizational chart to a part time hire, or even a temp from a contractor, people matter in terms of thinking about risk. They needn’t want to cause any harm. “People at the top get hooked in, more easily,” says Czerminski.
Processes, behaviors, and more are among many points of weakness. Czerminski tells us that this is a vulnerability that happens the most. Email links are among the problems. Social engineering can include calls, and text. “For $500 and a handshake agreement that the actor won’t do anything for a few days, credentials are sold.”
We walk through the threat landscape, explore in-house remedies, and discuss the Cytellix approach. Czerminski relates his direct experiences, working for two notable financial institutions, on their security needs, about the need for framework. “You don’t want to be the last gazelle in the herd.”
Cytellix is a first-of-its kind patented SaaS platform that brings together cybersecurity, compliance, and risk management under one fully integrated umbrella. Cytellix helps companies better understand their "real security posture" and provides a new way to manage and deploy cybersecurity capabilities, risk awareness, and compliance with a plan tailored to specific situations and needs.
Visit https://www.cytellix.com/
Quark.ai Generative AI solution can add value to solutions required by some of the world’s most recognized brands
“The world runs on SAP,” says Prosenjit Sen, CEO of Quark.ai. In this podcast, focusing on practical uses for generative AI, Sen is joined by Rob Levi of EPI-USE, a Gold SAP Partner. “One of the things an enterprise user of SAP deals with is an enormous value of documentation… you’re looking at an ocean of documents” adds Sen. “Using search if you have 100s of thousands or millions of documents, is like finding a needle in a haystack.” EPI-USE is a South African company. They are part of GroupElephant.com which employees 3,500 people worldwide. Mark A. Daley, a technology leader, also joins us to offer industry perspective.
“We have over 1,300 clients globally,” says Levi, who adds that in addition to the weight of client documentation, EPI-USE has its own documents, that are critical to deliver expected results. Levi goes on to outline his company’s needs and the needs of their customers. “We give you a human like answer in English,” says Sen, “…and not only that, for that answer we will give you the evidence.” Questions come back with answers where the answer is not only provided but source materials are noted. Quark.ai speaks English and can footnote. The answers to questions, are instant.
Daley notes that one of the advantages of this approach is that with time and staff turnover, the body of corporate knowledge and experiences, as reflected in the documents, are not lost with staff departures or that tribal knowledge drain. If that information is in the documentation, Quark.ai provides instant access, in any file type with the resource documented without hallucinations.
EPI-USE is a South African company that is part of GroupElephant.com which employs 3,500 people worldwide. EPI-USE channels one percent (1%) of revenues to their not-for-profit-zone. EPI-USE is a leading global SAP ERP integrator and although most of us use the term ERP for Enterprise Resource Planning, EPI-USE has a duel meaning for which they champion: ERP also means: Elephants, Rhinos & People, as they focus on helping people and communities to avoid poaching endangered wildlife, as part of the workday at the organization.
- Visit quark.ai
- Visit https://www.groupelephant.com/
- Visit https://www.epiuse.com/
- Visit https://www.erp.ngo/
- Visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/markadaley1/
Selling the benefits of AI
“The whole vision here is to do client to cloud AI operations,” says Jeff Aaron, VP at Juniper Networks. In this video, we follow along with our last discussion with Jeff when we spoke about SD-Branch and the benefits it can provide. In this episode we’ll be shifting gears to a topic that’s making a lot of headlines, and more specifically for this conversation, in the networking space: Artificial Intelligence.
In this podcast we explore how AI can impact a solution provider's business. Jeff discusses how Junior is using AI to not only fix problems that come up, but using AI to anticipate issues and remedy them before they occur. We also learn how Juniper is using AI to open new horizons for their clients. “We want to bring everything together so you can have all of your intelligence together for better interactivity between the solutions,” says Aaron.
The Gap was able to eliminate 80% of their truck rolls to store, meaning a huge saving in time, labor, and disruption, not to mention the collateral improvements in customer services that might be achieved when a giant multi-site organization is spending less time in repair mode. Dartmouth College is also mentioned as am organization that used Juniper’s AI solutions to deliver a great experience for their students. Aaron notes that people have an opportunity here to sell the benefits of AI.
Visit www.juniper.net
Sacramento, CA – May 31, 2023 – 2Ring, a leading provider of contact center solutions, will be presenting their innovative real-time reporting solution, Dashboards & Wallboards, at the upcoming summer trade shows, Cisco Live! (June 4th-8th) and Customer Contact Week (CCW) (June 21st-22nd), both in Las Vegas.
We invite you to listen to the latest Telecom Reseller podcast and find out how 2Ring is revolutionizing the contact center space. “2Ring delivers easy-to-use proactive real-time reporting solutions for multiple contact center platforms. Our solution is also well suited for contact centers who have hybrid staff, working from home and from the office, allowing supervisors and management to always stay in the know. Tracking metrics and agent performance goals is intuitive, and with 2Ring Dashboards & Wallboards you can gain business insights immediately”, says Ossamah Shabbir, Pre-Sales Director at 2Ring.
2Ring Dashboards & Wallboards offers their real-time reporting and alerting solution for contact centers operating on multiple platforms, including Cisco, Five9, Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud CX, and Webex Contact Center. The solution consolidates data, empowering organizations to optimize operations, monitor agent performance, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
With Dashboards & Wallboards, contact center supervisors and managers gain real-time visibility into key performance metrics, agent activity, and customer interactions. This enables proactive decision-making and drives enhanced performance.
2Ring is excited to engage with industry professionals and showcase the capabilities of Dashboards & Wallboards at Cisco Live! and Customer Contact Week. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience the future of real-time reporting for contact centers. Also, if you’ll be attending Cisco Live!, make sure to watch 2Ring’s presentation in the Collaboration Village, on Monday, June 5th at 3:00pm Pacific Time. See you there!
About 2Ring:
2Ring is a leading provider of contact center solutions, specializing in innovative tools and technologies that optimize performance and deliver outstanding customer experiences. Dashboards & Wallboards by 2Ring caters to contact centers operating on multiple platforms, providing real-time reporting and monitoring capabilities. www.2Ring.com
Read the 2Ring press release here: https://wp.me/p2Q636-H3m
With Customer experience now ranked as important as a product or service in a recent Salesforce survey, yet 80% of corporations believe they deliver a superior customer experience and only 8% of customers agree.
This disconnect has given rise to one of the fastest growing technologies in that of Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS). Those leading this charge are looking beyond the CCaaS boundaries, the so called front-office.
One of the most important CX measures is that of First Contact Resolution (FCR), where customer service agents adequately address a customer’s needs the first time they call or contact.
Connecting the back-office (UCaaS) and front-office (CCaaS) is now the focus in delivering the highest FCR resulting in excellent CX.
In this podcast these trends are discussed with Jason Byrne, Crexendo’s SVP of Marketing and Doug Green, TR Publisher.
Visit www.crexendo.com
Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a change in the way businesses are communicating. We are moving toward a unified system of communication. People and businesses no longer want the friction of switching between different technologies, but they still want the flexibility to communicate freely with an omni-channel approach. This is where the changing faces of UCaaS come into play. In this podcast we’d like to dive deep into the latest trends and advancements in UCaaS, discussing the shift towards cloud-based solutions, the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the emergence of cutting-edge features such as team collaboration tools and video conferencing. Join us as we unravel the exciting possibilities and explore how UCaaS continues to shape the future of modern communication.
More at https://www.iotum.com/.
Stop chasing after patches
“Our goal is to make you, the user, stop chasing after patches, says Amit Serper is the Director of Security Research at Sternum IoT. In this podcast Amit walks us through the security challenge and then presents his company’s proactive approach. “Deploy it once, and you forget about patching,” adds Amit. “We’re going to catch and kill it before it happens.”
Amit is a cybersecurity expert, and the discoverer of the "vaccine" for NotPetya. With a background in leading cybersecurity research teams at renowned companies like Akamai Technologies and Guardicore, Amit is now spearheading Sternum IoT's mission to revolutionize IoT defense. His extensive experience in the private sector is complemented by his previous roles in Israeli intelligence, where he undertook diverse security projects. Amit advocates for a proactive approach to cybersecurity, emphasizing the importance of runtime protection over traditional patching methods.
Visit https://sternumiot.com/
FlySense 286 Product Suite includes 4G/LTE, LoRaWAN, and YoLink capabilities to address worldwide connectivity and security needs
Recently, Soter Technologies, a leading provider of innovative environmental sensor and software technologies, today released its FlySense 286 product suite incorporating expanded wireless network connectivity options. Addressing the needs of schools and enterprises around the world, FlySense is the first vape and bullying sensor in the market with embedded global cellular (4G/LTE), LoRaWAN, or YoLink support.
In this podcast, Derek Peterson, chief executive officer of Soter, discusses how FlySense 286 not only delivers needed detection of vaping in places and spaces where vaping is strictly prohibited, Soter’s innovations sets the product independent of the organization’s network. Many organizations follow cybersecurity best practices or mandates to minimize the variety of devices attached to a network that also carries proprietary or private information such as email, browsing, cloud connections, and server access. Operating FlySense devices over wide area networks such as cellular or LoRaWAN, and alternative local networks using YoLink, provides this physical separation without raising concerns about any cybersecurity risks.
“We’re excited about our product roadmap,” adds Peterson, pointing out several verticals including education (school campus and facility), food service (including making detecting employee vaping), hospitality and more. We learn that selling and installation are “easy peasy”, and that the product line is makes for a ready sell for channel partners.
Visit Soter Technologies
“You’re going to be met with resistance,” says Mike Otting, SVP of Platform and Wholesale at First Orion. With caller-ID spoofing and other scams on the rise, 86% of consumers agree that businesses should take measures to ensure their calls are properly labeled. This signals a huge demand and growth opportunities for the telecoms sector. In this second of a two-part series, First Orion’s Mike Otting discusses how branded calling impacts consumers, and in turn, impacts agents. Agents working calls that are going out unbranded, are first encountering emotional barriers that consumers are placing around themselves. People will be guarded on a call where the origin of the call is not known. We learn how that can be improved with branded calling. First Orion is a global telecommunications solutions provider that is transforming the phone call experience for businesses, carriers and consumers through its industry-leading branded communication and protection solutions.
Visit www.firstorion.com
Organizations invest millions on developing a brand and a brand experience, and yet can end up disappointing consumers on something as simple as offering branding on their calls. With caller-ID spoofing and other scams on the rise, 86% of consumers agree that businesses should take measures to ensure their calls are properly labeled. This signals a huge demand and growth opportunities for the telecoms sector. In this podcast, Mike Otting, SVP of Platform and Wholesale at First Orion, we learn about how there’s a mismatch between consumers who are expecting to easily identify calls from the brands they trust, and do business with, and the gap of too many of those same companies failing to brand their calls. With a sea of robocalls to deal with, that can take aways from all the other efforts to deliver great CX. First Orion is a global telecommunications solutions provider that is transforming the phone call experience for businesses, carriers and consumers through its industry-leading branded communication and protection solutions. Mike discusses this easily applied solution for enteprises and solid channel opportunity.
Visit www.firstorion.com
“You go and print a business card,” says Fabian Bernhard, Founder and CEO Veeting. “Imagine on your business card there’s the logo of the copy/printer (company). Not your logo. You wouldn’t accept it. My name card needs to have my logo on it,” adds Bernhard. Your invoices have your logo. Your emails have your logo. “Why do we have a third-party logo in our conference rooms? “
In this podcast Bernhard, we note the oddity of this situation, especially now when virtual meetings have become the critical place for internal team building and external meetings with customers and partners. Bernhard walks us through Veeting Blocks and Veeting Corporate, two unique solutions in the ever-growing video conferencing market. Veeting Blocks comes in — it allows internal teams and external software companies to create tailor made collaboration solutions that go beyond simple video calls.
Visit www.veeting.com
“A large chunk of the problems faced in the field today, existed twenty years back,” Prateek Chakravarty, CEO of Zinier. Zinier is a provider of intelligent field service automation solutions that recently announced that it is incorporating ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art large language model (LLM), into its field service solution. This integration will enable Zinier’s field workers to access a comprehensive knowledge base in real-time, empowering them to solve technical issues with greater ease and efficiency.
In this podcast, Chakravarty ties together his company’s work at the leading edge of field service automation, to the realities in the field and to the many people involved. Chakravarty describes the company’s focus as making sure frontline workers have access to technology, get to be involved in the digital revolution. Chakravarty discusses “visibility across the chain” on how to make frontline workers more visible. In this short but wide-ranging discussion we encounter things we often don’t see when talking about infrastructure, such as equity, safety, empowerment, and more. Chakravarty describes how Zinier helps infrastructure companies make this journey, helping them to see what might be hard to see, and to plan what may have been left out of planning.
Visit www.zinier.com
Chris Kruell, Head of Marketing discusses CDSG with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication. With over 30 years of experience in this area, they are looked on as experts in the field. Originally started because of an Army request for ruggedized media drives for use in systems, storage, and transport.
Their Citadel SSDs are easily integrated with off the shelf laptops. They have also been servicing the film industry for the last 15 years with drives that can be used to transport the newly released films around the world.
Chris KruellListen in to hear how the industry has evolved and how you may be able to take advantage of their technology in your channel with your customers.
Data security begins with CDSG
They enable their partners to help their customers and clients secure their data. For over 30 years, they’ve helped deliver reliable data storage and forensics tools to the security-conscious in government, military, enterprise, and more.
Partner Support
The CDSG Partner Program consists of three membership tiers that feature rewards that grow along with your CDSG products business. Gain benefits and rewards as you develop sales expertise, engage in joint business planning and proactively market CDSG products solutions.
For more information, go to: https://cdsg.com/
Windstream provides services for over 45,000 enterprises at over 180,000 of their critical locations. They provide them with Cloud Connectivity, Unified Communications and a portfolio packed with additional services and technology.
Austin HerringtonLaunching Talkdesk as a CCaaS is a big plus for Windstream Enterprise. Austin Herrington speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, about their current priorities in today’s market. Austin also talks about the new customer support solution – Talkdesk. Austin gets into the decision process and what the relationship will mean to their customers. He even gets into AI and how it is relevant to Call Centers and how it will improve their customer relations.
Listen in to this podcast and find out more of the details about Talkdesk, what it brings to Call Centers and why it is ultimately better for your customers.
CCaaS = Fast deployment + fast onboarding + fast time to value
Transform interactions with a contact center service that enables customers to connect with your agents on their terms—all while empowering agents to work from anywhere.
- Improve agent productivity and contact center effectiveness with advanced self-service and AI-infused solutions
- Reduce operational expenses through automation
- Drive continuous improvement of the customer journey with actionable insights
- Ensure conversation clarity through crystal clear calls
- Protect customer data to the highest security standards
Third-party integrations + leading apps
Supercharge your workflows and customer experience with an innovative ecosystem of open APIs and 70+ pre-built and industry-specific integrations, such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zendesk and ServiceNow.
Deliver a consistent customer experience worldwideCCaaS, powered by Talkdesk, supports 31+ local languages and accents via AI and automation. Plus, over 7 languages are supported natively in the Agent Workspace with the ability to quickly add a new language.
For more information, go to: https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/ or 877-606-9551
How to manage Teams, Cisco, Avaya, Zoom, together, Toolkits for the “do it yourself” IT management team an option
“People are making their own choices and we’re responding to them,” says Kurumi’s CEO, Micah Singer. “We love complex requirements and then trying to get to the bottom of these large type enterprise problems.” In this podcast, Singer discusses the real-world challenges of most large enterprises today. Organizations choose best of breed solutions across a spectrum of utilizations. Companies also maintain network equipment, in place and in use from brands such as Avaya and Cisco. Meanwhile the same enterprise might be running Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Singer discusses how at a larger enterprise, the IT managers might be piecing it all together on their own. Others, via merger and acquisition, might be challenged to put together systems and platforms no one ever imagined or planned to work together. Singer discusses how Kurmi meets each individual end user at the point of operation they have chosen, simplifying, and reducing administration cost, while offering managers who want to build more of their own solutions, a path for that approach as well.
Kurmi Software develops award-winning software solutions that automate, simplify, and reduce the administration cost and provisioning time of Unified Communications and Contact Center platforms (telephony, videoconferencing, email and messaging, plus other collaboration applications). Kurmi offers a powerful, user-centric software suite for simple, customizable, and ultra-scalable management of the market’s leading Unified Communications platforms (Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom, and others).
Visit https://www.kurmi-software.com/en/
Nicole Bucala, Vice President, and General Manager of Comcast Technology Solutions’ Cybersecurity Division, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, about using the DataBee with Snowflake and how easy it is to operate.
Learn how DataBee is helping organizations resolve some of the biggest data security issues and specifically around data silos cyber vulnerabilities. DataBee also makes it faster and easier for large organizations to combat threats.
Nicole will review some of DataBee’s unique characteristics and how they may help organizations traverse the changing technology, security and compliance game for large enterprises.
Nicole BucalaListen in as Nicole reviews the inner workings of DataBee technology and how it can help organizations use internal data that is now being ignored or not to its full potential.
Comcast Technology Solutions brings proven Comcast technology to the world, enabling partners to think big, go beyond, and lead the way in security, media, advertising, communications, technology and more.
Get security and compliance answers faster while controlling costs.
For the first time ever, customers are now able to purchase some of the best of Comcast’s own in-house security technologies. These solutions are proven-at-scale to defend critical infrastructure and effectively reduce cost.
For mor information, go to: https://www.comcasttechnologysolutions.com/cybersecurity-suite
Years of internal development produced a modular data management solution now available to enterprises to help resolve data security issues. Nicole Bucala, Vice President, and General Manager of Comcast’s Cybersecurity Division, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about issues plaguing organization such as data silos, cyber vulnerabilities and how Comcast has partnered with Snowflake to create the largest single source of truth in data for the security community.
DataBee is the solution that launched April 18th and will help organizations resolve data security issues as the threat landscape continues to grow.
Listen in to Nicole provide enthusiastic discussion of Comcast Technology Solutions and the impact they can have on enterprise organizations in the following industries:
Nicole Bucala* Advertisers * Communications Providers * Content & Streaming Providers * Cybersecurity * MVPDS & Operators * Technology Providers
Comcast: Relentless research and development are poured into products with the requisite scale, reliability, and forward-thinking innovations for success through this decade and into the next.
Technology: They got their start improving value on both sides of every screen by removing cost and complexity from advertising, media management, and delivery. As the world has evolved, so have they, with AI/ML workflows, new ways to connect people to their homes, and data security that’s a holistic part of it all.
Solutions: Winning solutions are a product of passion and collaboration. They’re one of the largest media companies in the world and the 4th largest advertiser in the U.S. They partner with over 800 companies worldwide to transform the way people connect.
For more information, go to: https://www.comcasttechnologysolutions.com/about-us
When is an emoji not just an emoji? When it is cited in a legal case alleging an organization breached U.S. securities laws.Emojis are now legal communication. That’s the big headline in this podcast with Susannah Hammond of Theta Lake. Hammond, who has extensive experience as a senior regulatory intelligence expert with Thompson Reuters, and who has been a compliance officer with a major financial organization. Hammond connects the dots between the way organizations are increasingly using emojis in their text communications with customers, how such communications now have the legal weight of words, and how all that means that AI powered systems are needed record such traffic.Emojis are an inherent part of modern communications, but they must, in a business context, be treated with the same care as every other form of communication or messaging. Theta Lake empowers organizations to expand their use of unified communications platforms (such as Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, Zoom and WebEx by Cisco) while reducing the risk of potential compliance gaps. Critically Theta Lake enables the full context capture, preservation and retrieval of voice, video and chat - including specifically emojis!Theta Lake’s regulatory and data science teams are happy to discuss any issues in greater detail. You can find regulatory perspectives from Theta Lake here or you can join a weekly 30-minute demo webinar here.
Viirtue attracting investment capital, churning out new services, charges up channel portfolios.“That ViiBE Platform is absolutely going to change this industry,” says Eric Brooker, Chief Revenue and Chief Marketing Officer of Viirtue. Brooker describes ViiBE as “the Airbnb for the MSPs”, a unique resource where partners can access Viirtue and a “myriad” of Viirtue’s curated suppliers. Brooker is convinced ViiBE is a tectonic shift for the MSP community.In this podcast, Viirtue’s CEO, Dan Rosenrauch joins Brooker in exploring Viirtue’s innovations and the way the company seeks to punch up the offering channel partners are taking to market. “For the last several years we’ve obsessively listened to our partner feedback and let them guide our product development,” says Rosenrauch, adding that the company’s product roadmap is drawn by partner needs, partner feedback and partner experiences. The firm’s ability to attract capital may well reflect its focus on being channel driven. Brooker, who is relatively new to the firm, observes that the company’s customer first focus reflects an inner corporate culture that values team members and listens to team member voices. In this podcast we learn about product rollouts occurring in Q2, the roll of inbound investments to enable the firm to meet the channel’s needs, and how the firm’s performance is already a contrast to many firms in the spaces.Visit www.viirtue.com/viibe
Using Quark.ai, a CX Leader can ask a question to get instant answers in well-formed EnglishCustomer experience (CX) constitutes all the interactions customers have with your company at all stages of the customer journey, even if it doesn't result in a purchase. It focuses on the relationship between a business and its customers. For CX, think of a system that brings together all customer related data, from customer interactions across all channels, customer products, support tickets and more. TR's Douglas Green joins Quark.ai's Prosenjit Sen to discuss how AI can used, today, to deliver next level customer experiences.In this podcast, we learn that the Quark.ai delivers greatly improved CX. According to Prosenjit, Quark.ai can take a query, interpret it to understand what the CX leader or customer is asking, then pick up sections from your reference documents that can answer the question, and finally give it to GPT (Microsoft Azure Generative AI) to generate a well-formed answer in English. This makes your job as a CX Leader easy, and helps you keep customers happy and loyal. Using Quark.ai, a CX Leader can ask a question to get instant answers in well-formed English. Accurate information, properly conveyed, and understood, helps better serve the customer and leads towards better customer experiences. “Its about having happy and loyal customers,” says Prosenjit, “… and we can help you do that.”Visit www.quark.ai
At Enterprise Connect, Cresta, a leading provider of generative AI for intelligent contact centers, announced the introduction of several new solutions and enhancements to its Cresta Real Time Intelligence Platform, a comprehensive portfolio of AI-powered products and solutions that seamlessly work together to help organizations grow revenues and retain customers. Ion this podcast we join CEO, Ping Wu as we discuss this announcement. “There’s a lot off opportunity in the contact center to turn some of the service conversations into revenue generating conversations,” says Wu. In this podcast we discuss how the contact center might be, for many companies, an underutilized revenue generating organization. Wu discusses how Cresta opens those opportunities to create revenue with the customers a company already has, and with the contact center team and infrastructure, a company already maintains. “AI is really in the DNA of the company from day one,” says Wu, discussing how Crest uses AI technology to unlock the potential of the contact center.Visit www.cresta.com
Aaron Alter, CEO and co-founder of Telgorithm, the automated A2P text messaging API provider, gives a transparent breakdown on the industry changes in A2P 10DLC and the importance of managing throughput, also known as rate limiting. In this podcast, Alter walks us through the basics of industry changes in A2P 10DLC and how Telgorithm offers a unique and needed solution.Telgorithm is the only messaging API provider to offer rate limiting with its mission-critical tech called Smart Queueing. This unique feature automatically tracks your approved throughput limits received through TCR registration while auto managing your traffic going to the end user’s carriers and how many messages are being sent to each at a given time. The result of Smart Queueing is that your A2P messages are sent at maximum rates across all your Brands and Campaigns and will never exceed their approved throughput limits, so you will never experience dropped or blocked messages giving you 100% deliverability. Additionally, without Smart Queueing you cannot leverage your approved 10DLC rate limit potential or support Sole Proprietors.Resources: A2P 10DLC Guide (great resource for readers/listeners on all things 10DLC). Blogs How Telgorithm Streamlines TCR 10DLC Registration Avoid A2P 10DLC Registration and Vetting Delays with Telgorithm Food for Thought: What Are You Paying for When You Register with The Campaign Registry? Smart Queueing and Why it’s a Necessity for A2P Messaging YouTube Videos: A2P 10DLC Messaging: TCR Registration & Campaign Vetting Q&A Navigating A2P 10DLC Registration & Vetting with Aaron Alter Discussing A2P 10DLC (Local Numbers) Registration with The Campaign Registry
“Get on the Teams wagon”Oak Innovation have announced a new partnership with Netherlands-based company, ROGER365.io, to bring a Microsoft certified omnichannel and compliant contact center solution to Teams users this spring. The integration of ClarifyGo call recording with the ROGER365.io contact center offers customers the world’s first voice integrated native CCaaS for Teams. In this podcast, Fabien van 't Woudt, Business Development Manager, ROGER365 and Chloe Emm, Director, OAK INNOVATION walks us through the integration. With this integration, channel partner companies can “get on the Teams wagon”, says Emm, who notes that people in the channel have wanted a way to go to market with Teams ready solutions. van 't Woudt notes how the integration creates more continuity of experience. “It makes selling the solution so much nicer,” says Emm. Visit ROGER365.io Visit https://www.oakinnovate.com/
Iterate.ai rejuvenates older applications and creates new applications with the strength of AI technology – Interplay, a drag-and-drop, low-code AI environment where innovation apps can be rapidly developed and commercialized through modularized, pre-built components — then pushed into production environments.
Brian SathiannathanWith the accelerated enterprise expansion of AI, there also comes the challenges of ensuring the ethical and responsible use of the technology. Brian Sathiannathan, Co-Founder of iterate.ai discusses the various responsibilities of enterprise and other AI developers. What can they do to ensure AI algorithms are free of bias and discrimination. He provides steps companies can take to ensure the security of their AI systems during a time of increasing cyber threats.
Listen in to this insightful conversation that deals with the ethical side of this advanced and accelerating technology and some of the main challenges companies will face with the implantation and deployment throughout their channels.
Mission: To be the simplest, safest, and speediest way to innovate with AI and emerging technologies.
They are AI and Edge experts: AI is their sweet spot. They run complex AI in any environment, even on 1,000s of Edge computers. Their AI powers cameras worldwide, in places like remote gas stations and schools. Their engineers (PhDs and MSs in Swarm Computing, AI, IoT, Big Data, Math, and Physics) provide thought leadership. That establishes a competitive advantage for their clients. They don’t offer lip service on AI; they do AI. That’s why companies like Google and Nvidia have formally partnered with Iterate and their award winning low-code platform.
For more information, go to: https://www.iterate.ai/
netnumber Global Data Services’ NumeriCheck Solution Offers Solutions
With consumers around the world continuing to face an onslaught of fraudulent communications, it’s not surprising that stopping illegal text messages has moved to the forefront of regulatory concern. Under the FCC’s recent crackdown, a new Report and Order now requires U.S. wireless carriers to implement heightened verification processes for text messaging while STIR/SHAKEN requirements are already pressuring providers to increase anti-fraud voice call measures. At the same time, as security concerns grow across the global communications ecosystem, members of the telecom community must now ensure that they are optimizing their fraud prevention solutions for both messaging and voice origination and termination.
In this podcast, Catalin Badea, Senior Director of Product Management at netnumber Global Data Services, outlines an innovative solution that can help providers meet these challenges – NumeriCheck, the company’s comprehensive number verification and validation solution. NumeriCheck leverages real-time phone number intelligence data to reliably and accurately validate phone numbers to screen for potential fraud and help providers meet stringent new regulatory policies to mitigate the most sophisticated of fraud schemes.
- More netnumber news
- Visit https://netnumber.com/
Earlier this month, Peerless Network, an Infobip company, began offering Talkdesk CX Cloud, Genesys AppFoundry, and BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) to enterprises across the U.S. With Peerless’ SIP Trunking services, customers can enjoy the benefits of a cloud-native contact center solution. These benefits include flexibility, cost effectiveness, including helping to preserve PBX investments as cloud transition occurs and control, allowing migration to occur at your one place. In this podcast, Jim Brewer, EVP of Products and Technology walks us through these recent announcements. The Peerless BYOC solution combines SIP Trunking and direct access to their fully IP-based network resulting in more efficient and reliable communications along with significant cost savings.
Visit Peerless Network www.peerlessnetwork.com and Infobip.
Airtame is a leading all-in-one platform for screens in business and education, challenging the norms in the AV industry with a hardware-enabled SaaS platform.
“It should be about the meeting, or about the class,” says Jonas Gyalokay, Co-Founder & Board Member of Airtame. In this podcast, we are introduced to and learn about Airtame, a leading all-in-one platform for screens in business and education, challenging the norms in the AV industry with a hardware-enabled SaaS platform. “It should be super easy for any user to come into a room and present their screen within seconds.” Airtame enables users to present to any screen, in any space, from any device with support for all major computer and mobile operating systems. With Airtame, one can start both Teams and Zoom calls with just a click. And it provides powerful wireless digital signage.
With a focus on empowering people to collaborate in new ways, Airtame makes meeting rooms more inclusive, and classrooms and common spaces more dynamic through intuitive hybrid conferencing, screen sharing, and digital signage. Airtame is used by more than 10,000 organizations worldwide to make over 110,000 rooms and spaces more engaging and is trusted by people to facilitate over 1.5 million meetings and classes each month. Founded in 2013, Airtame has grown to a company of over 80 people with offices in New York, Copenhagen, and Budapest.
1 in 5 days of work are lost
“User expectations have just accelerated,” says John Ruthven, CEO of IR. “We just expect it to work. I expect that I can just jump on a conference call with a hundred of my colleagues, and we’ll have a great experience.” In this podcast, we discuss the expectations gap and the productivity gap that flows from those expectations, and the reality of how routine business events unfold, in a way that does not match up. The fumbling around adds up. The minutes lost while people struggle to get audio, video, and other things to work and work together, adds up to a whopping productivity loss of one in five days. In our discussion, we also learn that this also means worker dissatisfaction, and the knock-on impact of flat customer experiences. IR also helps companies with getting paid. Frustrated customers who struggle, with the offered technology, to make a payment, can also become a customer who’s not satisfied generally. Ruthven discusses how IR is taking on these challenges and offering working solutions.
Visit www.ir.com
Channel partners, MSPs and other companies looking for growth and opportunity at this week’s Channel Partners will find Viirtue offering a new approach that will enable MSPs to leverage Viirtue’s Viibe in a new way. Viibe is Viirtue’s streamlined quote-to-cash software automates the quote to cash process ultimately scaling a business by eliminating hours of administrative work while providing best-in-class user experiences to a company’s clients.
In this podcast, we meet Eric Brooker, Chief Revenue and Chief Marketing Officer of Viirtue. Eric discusses his new work and leadership at Viirtue, and how the company’s momentum is a major story for the MSPs, and others looking to build revenue. Eric drills down on the Viirtue quote to cash tool, the new Viirtue marketplace, and Viirtue’s onboarding experience. We learn that, in a market now defined by hesitancy, Viirtue has just received $10.8 million, a sign that investors see Viirtue as a company that’s creating new ways for MSPs to grow.
- Visit viirtue.com
- Visit Booth 1807 @Channel Partners 2023 (Special Cruise Drawing)
Sangoma Suite
“They don’t want to buy five separate things,” says Jim Machi, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Sangoma. This week, Sangoma rolled out its Sangoma Suite, which combines Sangoma’s industry-leading UCaaS solutions, collaboration, video meetings and integrations into a comprehensive platform while providing deep discounts for bundling Sangoma’s contact center, phones, SD-WAN, and cloud security solutions. According to Machi, the bundling makes it simple and less complex for Sangoma’s SMB customers and for Sangoma’s channel partners, who sell to those same SMBs. In this podcast, Machi tells us about the suite and how Sangoma is delivering enterprise grade UCaaS to smaller organizations.
Visit www.sangoma.com
As contact centers become more digital and virtual, artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a larger role in workforce management (WFM), transforming how businesses interact with customers and manage their operations. The transformation goes beyond implementing AI-powered tools; it encompasses a broader shift in organizational culture, processes, and mindset.
According to Michelle Randall, Chief Marketing Officer of Playvox (www.playvox.com), an AI-centric WFM enables more flexibility and personalization, which helps foster loyalty and enhance brand reputation. In this podcast we learn about how AI can be used to make the work experience of the agent, to improve productivity and to improve customer experiences.
Visit www.playvox.com
The result of their distributed architecture was recently enhanced with their first 5G implementation. The edge capabilities of Zenoh allows them to take advantage of IoT, edge computing and mobility.
Angelo Corsaro, CEO/CTO of Zetta Scale explains to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, Zetta Scale is now enabling drones to have robot formation or to swarm using peer to peer communications over a mesh network. The low latency and local data storage make a huge difference especially in robotics. Zetta Scale has a growing automotive following as well.
Angelo CorsaroIn addition to the edge distribution characteristics, Zetta Scale uses Rust programming language providing faster memory access and enhanced memory security.
Listen in and learn how ZettaScale uses the Zenoh operating system to enable architects and entrepreneurs alike to take advantage of the 5G edge for IoT, Mobility and edge computing.
Zetta Scale’s mission is to bring to every connected human and machine the unconstrained freedom to communicate, compute and store — anywhere, at any scale, efficiently and securely. The company develops open-source communication middleware that underpins next-generation robotics, transportation, and mission critical applications. As devices in the physical world become connected, instrumented, and interdependent, ZettaScale enables device creators to easily achieve robust, secure, and scalable communication.
Zetta Scale was spun out from ADLINK Technology Inc. in 2022, with a strategic investment from TTTech Auto. ZettaScale has offices in the U.K., France and The Netherlands.
For more information, go to: https://www.zettascale.tech/ or https://www.zenoh.io
It is becoming clearer with time, technology is suffering from the internet’s age. New devices and concepts are continually stressing the current architecture.
To its credit, Zetta Scale while developing within the internet constraints, they have been able to create a distributed architecture with the goal of being environmentally friendly. With the Zenoh protocol, they have effectively made the edge a location for local data storage. In the process, they have provided for:
- Data storage reduction
- Energy savings
Angelo Corsaro, CEO/CTO of ZettaScale explains to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how they mathematically use time and volume of data to establish their architecture on the fly. Instead of connecting directly to the centrally located database, they provide the results locally creating a Distributed Query Network which reduces energy consumption and latency. While the results may not be significant initially, over time the affects are very significant.
The Cloud-to-Device Continuum Platform: A Cloud-to-Device PaaS that can run on any combination of public and private infrastructure spanning from a datacenter to a micro-controller. It supports completely decentralized communication, geo-distributed storages and queries, as well as geo-distributed computations.
Zenoh supports communication over any topology. You can leverage peer-to-peer when possible, routed communication to scale across the Internet, and client broker to integrate extremely constrained devices.
For more information, go to: https://www.zettascale.tech/ or https://zenoh.io/community/
API attacks are on the rise and Noname Security is now there to help eliminate API problems and vulnerabilities. Michele Shear, Director of Channels and Filip Verloy, Field CTO speak with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News to discuss their technology and their commitment to the channel.
Filip VerloyFirst, Filip provides a solid overview of the company’s technology and then Michele discusses their channel-led channel-first company philosophy. Noname Security woks with their partners to both educate and enable them to show the Noname strategic value to their current and prospective customers.
Listen in to Michele and Filip as they discuss the many features of the technology and then provide insight into how those features will enable companies to stay ahead of the API attackers.
About: Noname data classification capabilities provide visibility into the types of data that traverse your APIs. Quickly identify how many APIs can access credit card data, phone numbers, SSNs, and other sensitive data. Research from IBM X-Force indicates that two-thirds of API security incidents are due to misconfigured APIs. By gaining a complete view of your APIs, infrastructure, and vulnerabilities, you can act first and stay ahead of attackers. API inventory is more than just the number. Gain visibility into which gateway the API passes through, when the API was last updated, the data type being accessed, and the number of users accessing the API.
For more information, go to: https://nonamesecurity.com/ or call 1-312-375-4716
Understanding the importance of the Campaign Register, 10dlc regulation compliance
“SMS is the most important form of communication mankind has ever known,” says Tommy Sheahan, CEO & Co-Founder of Red Oxygen. According to Sheahan, texting is the first form of communication to have ever made it possible to send a single message to over seven billion individual phones serving seven billion individuals, and to have it seen within fifteen minutes. Even previous forms of mass communication, such as radio and television, can’t match that level of mass deliver to billions of individuals. Sheahan, who has been a leader, innovator and founding business owner in the SMS field for twenty years, takes us back to the dawn of texting, how texting became standardized and how texting became the crown jewel of communication, essentially nudging aside voice and other forms of communication.
Red Oxygen is the MSP uniquely suited to handle billing and compliance along with providing excellent SMS service. We learn about the campaign registry and about the way Red Oxygen helps customers get 10dlc compliance. Sheahan discusses a set of services Red Oxygen offers, while pointing out how even the smallest businesses are at once empowered by SMS but are vulnerable to no knowing how to navigate the SMS regulatory landscape where steep fines and other severe sanctions, can occur. “Your traffic can get blocked by the carrier,” Sheahan caution noting, fees and fines can escalate. “You need a plan of action.”
Visit https://redoxygen.com/
Live from NAB Chris Lennon or Ross Video and Prosenjit Sen of Quark.ai discuss how Generative AI is likely to impact the media technology space. “I think it’s hard to overstate the importance of AI,” says Lennon, describing the moment as an inflection point and the times filled with opportunity. Lennon sees enormous upside with the revolution with improved accuracy and information. In this podcast Sen and Lennon discuss the value of generative AI for broadcasting, and other industries. Critically, Sen discusses the problem of the Generative AI GAP and a very important approach to making sure that this gap is closed. “Garbage in, garbage out,” Sen reminds listeners. It’s all about the shortlist. You need a pre-built system, no custom training.
Quark.ai is an autonomous support platform that solves this problem with automation. It connects the customer issues with the solution, fast. With Quark.ai, technical support, field support or sales support professionals eliminate hours of searching and reading documents, and instead can deliver immediate answers. Leveraging the latest Deep Learning, NLP and Computer Vision technologies, Quark.ai interprets the customers issues/questions to provide real-time answers, dramatically shrinking the time-to-resolution gap, and ensuring customer delight.
Visit www.quark.ai
“It just makes your resources more productive,” says Steve Runion, Vice President of Sales at TeamCentral. In this podcast, Runion discusses how data can be synchronized with an iPaaS solution and how this saves money, creates efficiencies, and even helps facilitate dynamic changes in places such as the telco and retail spaces. Runion walks us through how iPaaS automates ticketing, eliminates human error, slims down time and resources dedicates to error prone older methods of data management. We learn about improved operational efficiency and improved accuracy. “With iPaaS you can achieve those goals rather seamlessly,” adds Runion noting how iPaaS creates operational efficiency for the service providers. Runion noted that iPaaS solves many challenges the SPs, in a sense, have learned to live with, but may not know that there’s an alternative that saves money and frees up resources for other uses.
Visit www.teamcentral.ai
$8 fee per phone might be redundant for some users, now can be saved
“We marry both those worlds,” says Eric Hernaez, CEO of TeamMate Technology. Whether it is a PBX, UCaaS or CCaaS, TeamMate allows Service Providers and enterprises to integrate the PBX that they are already using with Teams, which the organization is likely already using for collaboration. In this podcast, Hernaez outlines an imminent announcement where TeamMate customers will be able to save on an $8 per phone fee, paid to Microsoft, where the existing phone service or system is already delivering a set of services. Usman Zahoor, VP Business Development at TeamMate, PBX, SMS and SIP Connector for Teams discusses how this, and the larger story of their integrating technology, is a great on-ramp for channel partners to win with Microsoft Teams. The company offers a free trail online where partners and enterprises can check out the technology in real time, and to begin a conversation about next steps. The company offers a partner program and a fast onboarding to selling process.
Visit www.teammatetechnology.com
DTEN was a major focus for many attendees of this year’s Enterprise Connect 2023. The company sells a family of all-in-one video conference solutions. On its own, that offering would be more central than ever to enterprise needs, as organizations continue to invest in hybrid workforce models. In this podcast, Nia Celestin, Head of Marketing, discusses how the company’s AI-powered All-In-One DTEN D7X is on the cusp of certification. According to Celestin, this is a big story for both enterprises and their channel partner vendors. DTEN is often used with Zoom. Microsoft Teams is becoming ubiquitous in the enterprise world, so integration with Teams is a very big story. Advanced audio, easy deployment, easy to use and with touch technology, enabling white boarding and document annotation, are a part of the story. We also learn about a desktop solution, for Teams users, under development. We also learn about new products that address challenges people have had with things such as camera angle, for video conferencing.
- Learn more news https://telecomreseller.com/?s=dten
- Partners https://www.dten.com/partners/
- Learn more https://www.dten.com/
“Alianza has basically removed all the complexity of enabling our service providers to deliver PSTN and PBX capabilities into Teams,” says Dag Peak, Chief Product Officer for Alianza. In this podcast, Dag discusses how the Alianza approach is different and the critical role of automation within the Alianza process. Alianza solves a lot of issues, provides functionality, and gives SPs an accelerated time to revenue with Teams customers. We also hear the case when the Alianza approach is better than simply buying a plan from Microsoft.
Visit www.alianza.com
Part 1 of 8: What is GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and how can it be optimized for Customer Support?
Everyone is talking abut AI and AI GPT. In this podcast series, we will be breaking down eight big questions.
- What is GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers)?
- What is the difference between ChatGPT vs GPT API?
- The Knowledge Gap with Generative AI that enterprises need to know (include How GPT works)
- Are the answers generated by your GPT application traceable?
- How to achieve 95% accuracy with Generative AI answers?
- Is your enterprise data secure with GPT?
- Does Generative AI work for non-English languages?
- Is ChatGPT a viable solution for enterprises?
In this podcast, Prosenjit Sen, Co-founder & CEO, Quark.ai discusses: What is GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and how can it be optimized for Customer Support? Prodenjit defines GPT, defines ChatGPT and then answers the big application question: can this really be applied by any enterprise easily to derive business value?
- Read our TR blog article on AI
- Visit www.Quark.ai
“Nearly nobody will answer a call from an “unknown caller”,” says Michael Coleman SVP, Enterprise Sales and Channel Chief, FirstOrion. Abusive use of cell phones by bad actors has drastically reduced the effectiveness of making outbound calls to customer cell phones. Large organizations with multiple outbound numbers, get stuck with “called unknown”, undermining large investments in contact centers, and much smaller but just as critical outbound calls from repair, delivery, and other typical outreach calls. In this podcast, Coleman discusses branded communication, including their Inform, Engage and other services, plus the technologies that enable them. The results enable a company to clearly identify itself to cell phone users, avoiding the cost and consequences of missed calls.
Visit www.firstorion.com
To collectively thrive and give customers what they really want, we need great partnerships. This is the message from Iain Sinnott, Head of International Carrier Sales at Enreach for Service Providers. In this podcast, Iain discusses the importance of looking at the bigger picture and not a siloed view about what business customers require. In this context, Iain also talks about Enreach for Service Providers’ new partnership with Belgian-based Netaxis, whose API integration layer complements Enreach UP. It achieves this by converging multiple apps and systems into one simplified environment across various sources, including cloud UC platforms, BSS/OSS, and applications.
Visit https://enreach.com/en
“This is the classic win, win,” says Dr. Mike Flaxman of HEAVY.AI who notes doing things like sending out a signal that’s not being used is an example of how a telco can burn power, that can be curbed without impacting customer outcomes. In this podcast, Flaxman discusses the challenges telcos face balancing consistent quality coverage to their consumers with the energy consumption demand from antennas and network with the impact of carbon emissions from these if not done strategically. As businesses are looking to reduce their carbon footprint, strategies like Dr. Flaxman discusses will continue to remain at the forefront of business initiatives.
HEAVY.AI provides advanced analytics that empower businesses and the government to visualize high-value opportunities and risks hidden in their big location and time data. HEAVY.AI supports high-impact decisions in previously unimaginable timelines by harnessing the massive parallelism of modern GPU and CPU hardware. The analytics technology unifies today’s exploding data volumes from multiple sources for a better immersive, real-time, interactive visual experience. It is available in the cloud and on premises. HEAVY.AI originated from research at Harvard and MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and is funded by GV, In-Q-Tel, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Vanedge Capital and Verizon Ventures. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at HEAVY.AI.
Crestron Announces AirMedia Connect Adaptor with One-Touch Wireless Collaboration for Microsoft Teams
It’s the now familiar and shared experience of our times: the meeting room fumble. People assemble, and it’s time to make things and services that were not exactly born to work together, to work together. The AirMedia Connect Adaptor works with various platforms for added flexibility, but the Microsoft Teams software variation adds even more convenience for organizations that have chosen a standard meeting platform. With the press of a button, users can instantly join virtual meeting participants using their device of choice while taking advantage of the high-quality audio and video in-room peripherals. When used for wireless presentation, the AirMedia Connect Adaptor allows for content transmission in up to 4K/30p, so users never have to worry that their image or video quality will suffer. Even more, all content transmitted utilizes encryption, so guests won’t have to worry about using new networks, and hosts won’t have to worry about unwanted intrusions. In this podcast, Sam Kennedy Senior Director, Product Marketing at Crestron walks us through the product and the announcement. The product is shipping and is available from Crestron dealers.
- Read the press release
- Visit crestron.com
Why Brands Must Nurture Relationships with Customers Through Reliable Technological Connectivity
Economist Joseph Schumpeter once observed that mass production means production for the masses. Picture a huge number of undifferentiated commodities, all produced with maximum quantity in mind. Accordingly, the economic culture that grew up around the first draft of consumer culture was just as impersonal: generic pitches to generic audiences buying generic products. In this podcast Evgeniya Pikina of Mitto urges organizations of every size to rethink their approach and rethink their methods. Brands that humanize themselves and engage customers with personalized, reliable, secure, and consistent two-way technological communications will come out on top. Even as some people might be seeing AI as a tool that drains the human touch from things, Pikina discusses how there’s a dynamic between human connection and the actual technology behind modern digital connection.
“Storytelling is the oldest form of human connection,” says Pikina, adding, “We are naturally wired to connect with stories.” We learn how thoughtful deployment of the right technologies can combine the gains offered by digitization with a level of personalization that creates brand experiences, even to the level of feeling that a brand reflects one’s values. We learn how Mitto is helping their clients thread this needle.
Visit www.mitto.ch
Michelle Ritz, Product Marketing Manager, North America at Jabra discusses with TR’s Doug Green, a set of products, featured at this year’s Enterprise Connect. Ritz walks us through the products with one big theme: that Jabra can take care of the different environments, settings, verticals and special challenges that enterprises face as they turn to what they require in contemporary end points in a hybrid work environment.
Speak2 75
Jabra Speak2 75 is equipped with a custom-designed Microphone Quality Indicator that shows users if their voice is being picked up. The device is Bluetooth enabled, for mobility. With four microphones, and advanced noise cancelling technologies, the Speak 2 75 was used for this podcast in a noisy show hallway, with very good results. For Apple users, the unit comes with a built-in dongle, meaning enterprise buyers can know that the unit will be compatible across the organization. Speak2 75 is Teams ready and works with legacy and cloud platforms.
Jabra Evolve2 65 Headsets: fold-and-go design
Reflecting the challenges of hybrid work environments and the need today to often carry a device from one place to another, Michelle discusses the fold-and-go design of the Jabra Evolve2 65. “People are taking calls form different places, so they need something that’s easy to pack, that’s also comfortable,” adds Michelle, noting that the device uses light materials and is designed not to put pressure on a person’s ears. “And the best part is we’re not sacrificing features,” such as advanced noise cancellation.
Learn More:
- Jabra expands the Evolve2
- Jabra PanaCast first to market with Microsoft device ecosystem platform
- Jabra Elite 4 – feature-packed entry earbuds
- Jabra announces the next-gen professional speakerphones for hybrid life
- Visit Jabra at www.jabra.com
“This show was once called VoiceConn,” says Jon Arnold, an independent research analyst providing thought leadership and go-to-market counsel with a focus on the business-level impact of disruptive communications technologies. Today, voice is an application, among many applications in a cloud-based solution. Reflecting on Enterprise Connect 2023, Arnold describes this year’s show as being all about AI. According to Arnold, AI is racing ahead with things such as conversational AI, technologies that can offer a hint of emotion and can understand intent. “This is the year of AI,” pronounces Arnold. Arnold was an active participant and speaker at this year’s conference.
Learn more about J Arnold & Associates
Monetizing the Consumption Economy
Your legacy billing system and plan might be leaving billable services behind. As an operator, this means that revenue you have already earned for services already delivered, are being left unbilled. In this podcast, OneBill’s J.K. Chelladurai discusses eight practical steps to monetize the consumption economy. The legacy economy consisted of selling a product for a fixed amount, and the customer then using that product, as little or as much as they could. Cloud economics enables the seller to offer a subscription service, but the use is often unlimited. A consumption model permits the buyer to customize their purchases to what they need and then to pay only for what was used. For operators this means a metered service and capturing revenue that might have literally not even been noticed. We learn about the steps to get there. OneBill’s approach and about a White Paper that can enable people to understand billing as an opportunity, verses an administrative task.
- Read the White Paper
- Learn about the White Paper
- Visit OneBill www.onebillsoftware.com
“This is the first time we’ve been at this show as the combined company,” says Jennifer Adams, Product Lifecycle Marketing at HP. We hear about how this year’s booth presentation, which featured products from across the HP family, reflects an ongoing commitment to the Poly brand and to HP’s commitment to having products that meet people’s need in many different use cases.
Poly, now part of HP has announced a series of new product and partner updates at Enterprise Connect focused on improving the hybrid collaboration experience, including:
- Poly Google Meet News: The Poly Studio X family of video bars are the first and only Android-based video appliances now certified for Google Meet.
- Poly Microsoft Teams News & Poly Video OS version 4.0: The Poly Studio X70 video bar is the first and only large room solution now certified for Microsoft Teams. Poly Video OS 4.0 is now available on Studio X and G7500, designed to deliver the highest quality software and video experiences.
- Rove 20 wireless DECT IP phone and B1 base station: Poly announces an entry-level single cell DECT handset equipped with up to 35-hour battery life designed for shift-based workers.
- NuCurrent partner announcement: Poly and NuCurrent team-up to deliver future-ready tools designed for hybrid work with enhanced Qi charging capabilities.
Jennifer discusses featured products and enterprise interests.
Visit www.poly.com
Recognized CPaaS Leader Vonage Continues to Build CPaaS Drive Choices, Options
“It only takes one or two bad experiences,” says John Antanaitis, CMO, Marketing Executive at Vonage. According to Antanaitis, losing customer good will, or even possibly loosing customer business can happen just that fast. To meet that exacting challenge Vonage is rolling out very sophisticated products that allow for customization and development, without sacrificing a robust platform. In this podcast Antanaitis discusses the Vonage AI Acceleration Suite’s components: AI Studio, Proactive Connect, Meeting API and Verify API.
- Vonage actively presented and participated in the show, including these presentations and panels.
- Visit vonage.com
BlueJeans by Verizon reaches out to enterprise users at Enterprise Connect
Recorded at Enterprise Connect, we catch up with Zach Bosin, Vice President of Product Marketing and Communications of BlueJeans by Verizon. In this podcast, Bosin discusses three big stories for the enterprise community: interoperability with Microsoft Teams, news on BlueJeans Events, and a developer platform that will allow people to take the service even further. Bosin also mentions that the organization has rolled out a freemium service called BlueJeans Basic, which does not impose time limits. We also learn how BlueJeans has positioned itself to work well in an environment where enterprises might have several conferencing platforms that they regularly choose from.
Visit https://www.bluejeans.com/
Anand Buch, invited by David Wang in the founding of NetSapiens in 2002, is among those ‘present at the creation’ of the cloud communications market. Today, what was invented by NetSapiens, sits at the heart of Crexendo, where Buch serves as Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder. “There’s a ton of rapid acceleration going on,” observes Buch as Enterprise Connect was clearly looking to AI as the next chapter in the story of how people and organizations communicate. In this podcast, Buch tells us how Crexendo, providing communications, collaboration and contact center solutions for providers, remains focused on delivering CX. “Customer experience is the key,” says Buch. Crexendo has recently passed the three million user milestone and is growing faster than the market.
Visit www.crexendo.com
Next generation of CCaaS and DCS tools
“What makes LinkLive different is that we own all our own architecture,” says Pat Reetz, CEP Product Maker, Chief Product Officer at LinkLive. “We focus on healthcare and banking.”
LinkLive makes and secures intelligent customer connections to help organizations drive exceptional customer experience and automate interactions. The company develops electronic messaging application services, including a best-in-class Contact Center as Service (CCaaS), using its unique SAFEc architecture to create the first all-in-one cloud-based engagement platform that provides secure, compliant communications for all mediums: voice, texting, video conferencing, co-browse, mail, file share, appointment scheduling, and a digital office in one pane of glass. In this podcast we learn how LinkLive brings together technologies in highly regulated industries. We also hear about how LinkLive has deployed conversational AI.
Visit https://linklive.ai/
Compliance for UC for just about any UC platform, keeps an eye on whiteboards as well
“A lot of people don’t know what we do, and when we show them a demo, they’re amazed,” says Dan Nadir, Chief Product Officer. Theta Lake provides security and compliance for modern collaboration platforms using integrations for Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, Slack, Zoom and more. Patented machine learning and NLP power Theta Lake to detect risks in voice, video and chat. We learn how the company also uses AI-assisted technology as well. The company was recognized this year for best of show. We also learn about integration with Mural, enabling Theta Lake to help make sure that whiteboards are in compliance.
Visit https://thetalake.com/
Many readers and industry professionals may know Steve Forcum from his long tenure at Avaya. Today, we learn about how Steve has joined SIPPIO, a notable startup that won a place among five other companies as a finalist in the Enterprise Connect Showcase. “Voice needs to be a feature…,” Steve says, noting how the challenge before many people he knows, and many IT professionals at enterprises, is to make voice a ready feature of app among many others, across their platforms. “We enable simplicity.” Steve tells us that SIPPIO simplifies that process. As someone who has a very direct feel for the process that got users to this point, Steve sees SIPPIO as a way forward for many of those same customers.
Visit www.sippio.io
Sinch has announced a new private label offering for partners and service providers to provide Microsoft Teams voice calling. This offering is available through Sinch’s new program called Operator Connect for Partners, designed for communication service providers, managed service providers, and value-added resellers. In this podcast Sinch CIO, Brett Scorza, discusses Sinch, Sinch solutions for the enterprise and their new offering. Brett points out how the Sinch announcement opens the door for Sinch partners by being able to offer voice services for customer using Microsoft Teams.
Visit https://www.sinch.com/
“I doesn’t seem possible,” says Phil Moen, President and CEO at Unimax Systems, as he describes the reaction enterprise end users have about that complex, time consuming, migration processes, might be automated. Moen tells us that enterprise attendees at this week’s EC23 came to visit the Unimax booth to find out how Unimax is offering a way, so that when changes occur, those changes are picked up automatically. Unimax provides administrative management software that layers on top all the UC platforms, so according to Moen, this form of applied automation, comes naturally.
Unimax provides a UC Management Software Suite with tools for automation (i.e. automated provisioning/de-provisioning), help desk agent moves, adds, changes, and deletes (MACDs), phone number management, employee self-service MACDs, advanced MACD administration, reporting, system migrations (between Microsoft Teams/Skype for Business, Avaya/Nortel, Cisco, etc.) and more for single and multi-vendor UC and telecom environments.
Visit https://unimax.com/
“We’re seeing an explosion in the use of Teams Rooms,” says Rob Doucette, VP of Product at Martello Technologies. Recorded at Enterprise Connect 2023, in this podcast we learn about the latest release of Vantage DX. This latest release introduces new capabilities for monitoring Microsoft Teams Rooms. Doucette also discusses an upcoming webinar, Microsoft Teams Rooms: Why Your Next Big Move with Teams Will Require Monitoring.
Visit https://martellotech.com/
CallTower extends reach into APAC and EMEA
“I am very excited to announce that we have now officially signed up with Zoom phone,” says William Rubio, CRO of CallTower. In this podcast, recorded at the close of the Enterprise Connect conference, Rubio discusses how CallTower Operator Connect will become available for Zoom, and how these solutions will become available in the APAC and EMEA regions. “It’s definitely transformational,” adds Rubio, discussing how AI is creating widespread change and how CallTower is offering timely solutions for the many enterprise users that are in the midst of migration and technology evolution.
Visit www.calltower.com
Part 2 of 2
Brand protection. Brand integrity. Managing how a brand appears to customers who receive inbound calls is very critical to an organization’s ability to communicate and to the integrity of the brand itself. In this podcast, Anis Jaffer, Chief Product Officer of Numeracle explains what “entity identity” is, and the process that Numeracle uses as it takes steps to provide clarity to people who are receiving calls from brands they use and trust.
Visit www.numeracle.com
Part 1 of 2
“Caller ID has been a bit of an evolution,” says Alex Carter of Numeracle. Over time, and with the rise of mobility, many recipients of calls have lost the advantages that caller ID once promised: knowing who’s calling. Carter discusses how Numeracle is restoring confidence and offering a path for enterprises to strengthen their outbound calling effectiveness, not to mention, enhancing their brand, brand reputation and customer experiences.
Visit www.numeracle.com
“We are the only call recording company that can record on all Cisco platforms, “says Robert Dudas, Senior Account Executive at CallCabinet. In this podcast, recorded on opening day of the Enterprise Connect 2023 Conference, Dudas outlines how CallCabinet can meet the needs of every Cisco user, whatever platform, cloud or prem, or both, that are in use. He also explains how CallCabinet keeps users in compliance, accommodating the challenges of a hybrid workforce. Dudas explains that their extensive support of Cisco platforms will make migration simpler for Cisco users.
Visit www.callcabinet.com
“It’s really around accelerating transformation,” says Greg Zweig, Director of Solutions Marketing at Ribbon Communications. Accelerating transformation is the message this year for Ribbon at Enterprise Connect 2023. At Ribbon, Zweig focuses on enabling secure Unified Communications for both cloud and premises. In this podcast, Zweig invites EC23 attendees to come visit the Ribbon booth (#427) where people will find Ribbon’s ideas, products and services that can enable transformation including cloud migration and much more.
Visit https://ribboncommunications.com/
Given the excitement created by ChatGPT, you must be thinking how Generative AI can benefit your enterprise.
ChatGPT uses GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) from OpenAI to provide you with a powerful conversational tool that can answer your questions in human-like English. While ChatGPT has been trained with a ginormous public dataset, it has no knowledge of your reference data for Customer Support. What you need is a Generative AI platform that is purpose- built for Enterprise Customer Support.
Generative AI Technology
Generative AI is part of Deep Learning technology involving large neural networks, called large Transformers, where the neural network is able to generate information such as summary from a text, answer to a question from a document or generate an image from a description. GPT is the Generative AI technology from OpenAI. Other companies such as Google and Anthropic also have very large Generative AI models such as PaLM and Claudia.
While Generative AI has been around for a while, in the last 4 years due to advancement in hardware such as GPUs and TPUs, it is now possible to generate the summary or answer to a question with very high accuracy, since you can have a neural network now with billions and billions of nodes. For example, the GPT 3.5 model from OpenAI is trained on about 45 Terabytes of textual data and has 175 billion parameters to perform natural language tasks rivaling human performance.
How can Generative AI be used for Customer Support?
GPT technology (and other Generative AI technologies) can take a question and a document (plain text document) to generate an answer in natural English, if the question can be answered by the content of the document. Otherwise, it returns “no answer”. This can be used to provided sophisticated self-service for customers, along with solutions to boost the productivity of your support staff.
Gaps in Generative AI for the Enterprise
Consider a high tech or industrial enterprise with complex products. The Reference Documentation probably includes 1000s to millions of documents — in PDF, HTML, Microsoft Word/ Powerpoint/ Excel, Google Docs/ Slides/ Sheets, Relational Database Tables, and XML documents. You probably have a lot of images, videos, and even drawings. Some of these documents can be 100s or even 1000s of pages, present in silos (web, Sharepoint, Google, Confluence, Salesforce, ServiceNow and more). Not only that, often times the solution to a support query is scattered across multiple documents.
Given your reference data, in order to use Generative AI like GPT (or ChatGPT) to generate an answer for a support issue, you need to first generate a Shortlist of possible 10 – 20 Answer Segments (sections of reference documents which may have the answer) . Without this Shortlist, no Generative AI platform will have any knowledge of your business and thus, will not be able to generate any answer.
Generating the Shortlist in real-time for a given support ticket or issue is complex, particularly given that you need high accuracy at a low cost to make it a viable solution.
Quark.ai, a Generative AI platform for Customer Support
Quark.ai’s Autonomous Support Platform is a Turnkey Pre-trained Generative AI solution for bringing efficiency to Customer Support through automation. The platform is purpose- built for Customer Support, and therefore pre-trained with an extensive dataset for this space, enabling Quark.ai to onboard a customer rapidly in weeks.
To start with, we ingest all your reference data – structured data in relational databases, XML or CSV, unstructured data in PDF, HTML, Word, PPT, Google docs and more, and data from real-time applications like SAP.
Next, when a Support Query is input into this platform, Quark.ai processes it as follows –
- It interprets the Support Query, which could be a support ticket, keywords or a natural language sentence, to determine the issue being discussed.
- Then, it goes through the reference data to prepare a short list of Answer Segments. An Answer Segment is a specific section in a document that may have the answer to the query.
- The Support Query along with these Answer Segments are then passed to the Generative AI module, which uses this information to prepare a well formed English Answer, along with Evidences (references to the relevant Answer Segments).
If none of the Answer Segments contains the actual answer to the Support Query, the Generative AI model returns “no answer” which could be an indication to you of important missing documentation in your reference data.
The platform is pre-trained for Customer Support, so you can setup a self-service chatbot or voicebot to deflect customers in a matter of weeks. Additionally, provide this tool to Support Engineers (Tech Support and Field Support) to skyrocket their productivity.
The accuracy of the Quark Generative AI system is > 93%, therefore you can consider using it for even automating support tickets (in Salesforce or ServiceNow).
Automation Throughout the Support Lifecycle
Use Quark Generative AI to power all your support needs – Sales Support, Post- sales Support as well as Managed Services Support (eg., SAP).
Sales Support
Provide your direct and channel sales staff, distributors, resellers and other partners with instant answers on the job – on product specs, features, compatibility of products, compliance, pricing, inventory, and more. Give them a chatbot or voicebot capable of having an extensive human-like conversations, and provide the necessary help to close sales.
Technical and Field Support
Provide Tech Support staff with a productivity tool that automatically generates answers to a support ticket, along with the relevant evidence material. Provide Field Support with powerful chatbot based self-service so installation, configuration, licensing information etc. can be directly taken care of by customers themselves.
Summary
We are entering an exciting era where technologies like Generative AI will have a profound impact on Customer Support. Given the increasing costs of hiring, training and retention of staff versus the rising product complexity, use Generative AI to bring drastic efficiency to your support, resulting in happy customers forever.
Author:
Prosenjit Sen
Founder & CEO
Quark.ai
Email: Prosenjitsen10@quark.ai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prsen/
Website: www.quark.ai
Bio:
Prosenjit Sen is a serial entrepreneur. He is currently the CEO of Quark.ai, an Autonomous Support platform that uses Generative ai for bringing automation to sales support and field support. He was previously employee # 5 and part of the founding team of Informatica, the worldwide leaders in data integration technology. He is also a Mentor for the Alchemist Accelerator, and the Bay Area IIT Startups Accelerator.
The co-author of “RFID for Energy & Utility Industries”, a bestselling book published by PennWell Publishers, Mr. Sen holds a BS in Electronics Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. A jazz, cooking, and hiking enthusiast, he lives in Silicon Valley with his wife and two daughters.
Collaboration Reinvented, Recognized
“Sippio does one thing, and we do one thing well,” says Dawn-Marie Elder, COO and General Manager of SIPPIO. “Enabling voice capabilities for Microsoft Teams and Zoom.” SIPPIO helps customers make and receive calls in the Microsoft Teams and Zoom apps. Their turnkey solution eliminates the effort and investment usually needed to set up and maintain a voice service so that users can make and receive calls, share files, chat, and join video conferences in their collaboration platform. Users can self-provision and manage their voice service through the SIPPIO app, while admins can set up new users, numbers, profiles, routing priorities, and call groups without needing to use PowerShell code. In this short podcast, Elder discusses how SIPPIO’s solutions achieved recognition in this week’s Innovation Showcase at Enterprise Connect 2023.
Visit https://www.sippio.io/
by Gary Audin
Microsoft Teams is commonly and frequently deployed for Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) applications. You also know that the Teams cloud based service will be integrating with multiple vendors and providers to implement an end-to-end collaboration experience.
The reality is that UC&C technologies and network accesses are composed of multiple vendors and services. This makes it difficult to monitor and maintain a high quality session environment. The negative experiences quickly become costly when workers can’t effectively collaborate with their co-workers, customers, and partners.
This 7 minute EDUbrief, “Delivering UX for Multi-vendor UC Microsoft Teams” with Gary Audin and sponsored by Vyopta, explores the problems when managing UC&C sessions using Teams. This educational EDUbrief covers what Teams does and does not perform in its management portfolio especially the management of other vendors’ products and services. It shows that leveraging insights about your technology, spaces, and users ensures exceptional collaboration experiences.
Vyopta, the sponsor of this EDUbrief, is a leader in digital collaboration user experience management and has helped 40 million people collaborate better. Its Technology and Workspace Insights have helped identify and address over 9 million issues. Hundreds of organizations worldwide spanning 20+ industries use Vyopta to monitor 6 million endpoints and over 20 billion meeting minutes a year.
Is the industry voice in step with what customers actually want? That is the question posed by Iain Sinnott, Head of International Carrier Sales at Enreach for Service Providers. In this podcast, Iain reflects on observations from recent industry events — such as Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress and London’s Cloud Comms Summit — as well as conversations with service providers. Topics covered in this podcast include the current industry’s focus on ‘mobile-first’ and how, for the Nordics, that is a history lesson: ground already well-trodden. Iain also talks about the increasing divergence of what corporations and SMEs want, and how the industry needs to react. Finally, Iain explains how Enreach is working with SMEs, including its emphasis on white label options and service providers retaining the customer relationship and visibility.
Visit https://enreach.com/en
If you want to really know what is going on in telecommunications, ask the companies that are installing and removing equipment on the towers. Brant Carter, Director of Industry Products with Sitetracker, brings Don Witt of The Channel News, a TR publication, up to speed on Tower deployments.
Brant CarterIt is a complete process and Sitetracker has the personnel and software to manage it from onsite delivery, installation, management, maintenance and beyond – globally for both the wireless and wireline sectors. Sitetracker excels with volume projects that can be replicated in multiple locations creating consistency in execution.
Sitetracker;s digital transformation is being driven by productivity improvements needed by organizations. It is accomplished by connecting multiple departments including planning, engineering, construction and operations teams. They all use a common data source which helps eliminate mistakes, reduces cost and time per project.
Listen in as Brant demonstrates how Sitetracker can streamline the Tower operation process!
About: A global software company committed to helping organizations build, deploy, and maintain the next generation of critical infrastructure faster and more profitably.
Accelerate the transition to a fully connected and sustainable future.
Sitetracker helps companies accelerate growth by empowering teams to operate more efficiently. Their unmatched usability and intelligent forecasting capabilities help you manage numerous projects and assets with precision.
For more information, go to: https://www.sitetracker.com/
Family owned, family run supplier combines personal touch with global reach
“Basically, anyone who needs entperise parts,” says Major Jan of iTEKDATA (ITD), a global company that supplies the IT market with products originally manufactured by HP, Dell, Cisco, and IBM. “We should be on speed dial for a lot of companies,” adds Major. In this podcast Major tells us about his company’s ability to ship needed parts and equipment, often very quickly, to companies in the market and to enterprises, when needed. With locations in the US, Canada and the UK, the company is in a great position to ship needed parts, in many cases, with next day delivery. The company maintains inventory and is a go-to resource for many firms. Major relates his almost thirty-year journey in the market, and his connections to the ASCDI in the past, and today as an active ASCDI member.
Visit https://itekdata.com/
StrongLink, a provider of autonomous large-scale data management and archive solutions, has released enhanced cloud storage support with specific functionality that allows organizations to gain more value and flexibility from cloud storage. In this podcast, Mike Mitsch, Technology Sales, Marketing and Alliance Leadership at StrongLink, walks us through a short slide deck where we learn about StrongLink’s ability to manage data across any storage and StrongLink’s ability to apply advanced on-prem storage operations to Cloud Storage providers. Mike discusses S3 IBR an Immutable Feature that allows StrongLink to protect against data deletion by safeguarding data written to S3 Cloud Storage providers.
Mike also offers an interesting overview of data, data management and data management in the era of edge data with the explosion of data being generated by innumerable devices consumers and businesses use on the edge. Cloud storage vendors now number 350 companies, but many of these offer approaches that might be limiting by so called “lock in strategies”. Mike discusses the market picture and then offers insight and a path forward, for the TR partner, MSP, carrier and large enterprise communities.
Visit https://stronglink.com/
Combining notifications, conversations, engagements results in more sales, better CX
“We’re really trying to have that hybrid experience, come online,” says Sean Whitley, VP of Sales at Mitto, describing how conversational commerce creates a dynamic human element to the customer experience when shopping. In this podcast we learn about new channels for ecommerce growth, namely social media, and chat apps, and how brands can use conversational commerce to deliver unique experiences and drive conversions. “You want the same experience with your brand,” adds Whitley, noting how conversational commerce not only helps in a retail process but also in creating a consistent brand experience. We learn how these technologies not only deliver great CX, but they also result in more sales. The use of notification tactics can, for example, reach back out to consumers to look at abandoned shopping carts, where research shows how consumers returning to their abandoned carts, often, make a purchase. We learn how Mitto uses powerful AI tools to help brands connect with their customers. Conversational commerce aims to bring the previously personal element of shopping to the digital realm with the help of new communication channels – such as SMS, WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. These are great channels for customer support and marketing, but now they’re also great for conversions. A customer engaging with either a live agent, AI bot, or hybrid of both can have questions answered in a two-way setting and eventually purchase directly within the dialogue.
Visit www.mitto.ch
“We do all of it,” says ICAS President Matthew Bonfitto. “It’s important because it give the client one point of contact, instead of discussing with many different vendors. We can take care of a project from start to finish. It’s very seamless, and there’s continuity, which is very important.” In this podcast, Bonfitto, takes us on a journey of over fifty years, establishing a cable assembly house in 1979 to working on IoT projects today. Even as we migrate to a cloud technology world, network infrastructure remains central to the functioning of major enterprise. American Express, New York City Schools, Morgan Stanley the MTA, and New York State Courts are among the many private sector, public sector, and NGO entities that ICAS serves. “It doesn’t matter what size, we get the job done,” says Bonfitto, adding that ICAS views every job and every customer as important. “We make sure everything is up and running, you call ICAS, and we take care of it.”
Visit https://www.icascorp.com/
Connected Nation IXP is a partnership between Newby Ventures and Connected Nation. They have been helping establish Internet Exchanges with federal government grants that are available.
Don Witt of The Channel Daily News speaks with Hunter Newby owner of Newby Ventures and co-founder of Connected Nation IXP about his internet traffic research where they were able to identify 14 states without any IXP and another 8 states with just 1 IXP. The states with only one IXP location were not heavily populated with fiber or carriers, so their effectiveness in providing optimum internet performance results as an IXP is questionable.
Hunter NewbyThe Connected Nation IXP goal is to not only bring the IXP, but higher bandwidth and in most cases significantly reduced latency. This will enhance the viability of the region, city, university to industry, students and a growing population.
Listen in as Hunter demonstrates his 25 years of knowledge in building and owning this technology all around the country. If you are interested in getting one of these IXPs established near you, contact Hunter or the Connected Nation IXP.
The future of the internet will require network interconnection, cloud on-ramps, and content to be located closer to end-users. IXPs improve regional internet performance by reducing latency and keeping internet traffic local that needs to stay local, while making cloud services and content faster and more reliable. IXPs also lower costs for everyone by creating a marketplace that fosters competition among middle-mile and wholesale (IP transit) providers. States that do not have an IXP strategy are simply falling behind.
For more information, go to: https://www.newby-ventures.com/research/ or https://connectednation.org/ixp/
Making Money with CCaaS
MeiLee Langley“CCaaS has lot of technologies you can monetize,” says MeiLee Langley, Senior Director, Global Channel Marketing of LiveVox. In this podcast we learn that CCaaS is no longer at a price point where it’s cost prohibitive to mid-market and even SMB customers. Mid-Market has become a CCaaS sweet spot, as many enterprises prefer to piecemeal together a best of breed solution, SMB and mid-market customers prefer seamless all-in-one solutions. CCaaS is accessible to the partner company that sells to SMB’s and the technology is now well scaled to the SMB. At the same time, the advantages of cloud-based services have made enterprise grade CCaaS technologies something the SMBs can use and afford. Langley discusses the basics of getting started and gives a picture of how this opportunity fits well with UCaaS and even legacy practices the channel partner has in operation. Langley also argues that getting CCaaS onto the portfolio is an urgent thing to do as these technologies will be marketed by someone else, especially as the silos disappear between competing vendors for other technology sectors. She offers practical advice on how to get underway and resources to get underway.
Visit https://livevox.com/
How to talk about AI, ChatGPT, CX to HR, CX teams, non technology business managers and senior management: White Paper for AI-CX in the Enterprise
“These are the ones that touch the customers,” says Mark Daley, a noted industry consultant and leader in the communication technology space. AI is a vast place. AI is often not understood, misunderstood, or mislabeled. Here is a disruptive technology that won’t just change things in the legacy technology closet, or even the cloud. AI will potentially change the way people work and live, change the functions of jobs up and down organizations of every size, and may give rise to whole new industries. Meanwhile technology leadership, in many organizations, often have a hard time articulating what they know to their non-technology colleagues, particularly in most companies where technology is used as a tool, and is not the purpose, of the firm.
In this podcast, Daley outlines his breakthrough research and method of organizing AI into a systematic approach that people can understand. He walks us through his multi page, free to anyone, white paper. The centerpiece of the work is his one page, one frame, one slide summary of the players in the market and the space they occupy.
“This is for the business audience,” says Daley, explaining the challenges many IT professionals face as they navigate a whole new world of AI technologies, often with a senior corporate leadership whose focus might be things like running an airline, a cannery, a mine, or a city government. Daley also focuses on where AI touches the customer, how AI might be used to deliver CX, and to understand where the companies in the field can be placed among eight different areas.
- Download a PDF of the white paper
- Get a Enterprise CX AI Cover PDF
- Link up with Mark on LinkedIn
Nicolas BrunelThe Great Copper switch-off
“The key element is communication,” says Nicolas Brunel Executive Vice President of the Communications Business Division, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and author of a paper entitled “The Future of Telephony”. In this podcast, Brunel walks us through his paper and discusses his finding on one of the greatest shifts in the world of communications in 150 years: the Great Copper switch-off. In his paper, Brunel writes, “The move to IP and SIP will be forced, and there will be a whole new world of 5G, 6G and cloud with users multi-tasking on a range of devices, using any media from almost any location. As well as the move to hybrid working, which has accelerated enormously during and since the pandemic, cloud, high-speed internet and 5G mobile broadband will open up new ways of working, driving new business models. The future is a blended intelligent conversation which can change and morph on the move, as the user needs. A combination of AI feeds from global databases, and personal and public IoT devices will provide a whole new world of applications. But the gold standard will be a cloud-based Unified Communications platform that permits desk and mobile numbers to be available on any device, along with instant messaging, telepresence, screen sharing and file sharing with the possibility of advanced workflow automation and notifications for industry-specific applications.” Join us in this podcast as a we take in the sunset of a long standing technology and embrace a new family of technologies, many already here, many more to be refined and developed, that will bring people and organizations together in new ways.
Visit https://www.al-enterprise.com/en
CI powers up AI to overcome language barriers
Recently CI announced an integration to Googles over 131 languages. The feature, Global Language Assist, further enhances ALL callers’ experiences, in their own primary language. In this podcast, Chris Herring, Executive Vice President and co-founder of CI gives us a glimpse of where this is all going. CI is best known for its eONE Conversational AI IVR called The Virtual Concierge. Computer Instruments (CI) has been on the leading edge of CTI and IVR solution development for almost one half a century. Today however, elevating the caller’s experience and automating routine and repetitive tasks has always been the impetus behind creating CI’s portfolio of applications. Among the most sought-after of these are inbound self-service, automated outbound notification and survey delivery and lastly custom applications. Infusing AI into CI’s portfolio was the natural next step toward enriching the caller experience.
Visit https://instruments.com/
AI becomes real, reachable, and democratic.
“AI is now out of the laboratory and into the hands of the public,” says Stijn Nijhuis, CEO of Enreach. Every now and then, we pass through a time when one can sense an era ending and an era beginning. Authors, writers, and futurists have been describing the ‘digital society since the appearance of the first non-defense purposed computers began to appear over sixty years ago to preforms functions such as billing, airline reservations and other big data functions. But 2023 seems to offer a change as significant at the appearance of the first laptop, or smartphone: AI for everyone. According to Nijhuis, AI’s arrival in the hands of the public, also means that AI’s gifts and challenges, AI’s strengths, and area for improvement, are on full display. And just like those other moments of change, it’s a good idea to be open to what will come and partner with companies that have already been working on the details.
In this podcast we learn how Enreach has been preparing itself and their customers for this moment. “We have made that technology very affordable and very accessible to the SMB,” adds Nijhuis. We learn how even the smallest organizations will be able to make big gains with what’s being called a democratization of technology, meaning AI solutions that not only scale for operation but also scale on cost. We also hear how the concurrent macro-economic challenges of the times and micro economic challenges of the small firm to find staff, and to control costs, make accessible AI a way to improve sales, customer experiences, agent and employee experiences and in turn, build scalable businesses that can be remain efficient, when and where growth occurs.
Enreach’s Conversational AI technology has just earned an award … for more info, please see the press release and the award download page: https://enreach.com/en/company/frost-award-2023.
More at www.enreach.com.
Spirent recently released its fourth annual 5G Outlook Report, based on analysis and takeaways from over 800 new global 5G engagements in 2022. The report provides insights from across the 5G ecosystem on the current status of 5G, revealing trends, technology advancements and revenue-generating use cases. In this podcast Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy, Spirent and Doug Green of Telecom Reseller discuss the report.
Read the report: https://www.spirent.com/assets/the-spirent-2023-5g-report
“If they make the cherry on top, it’s great,” observes Timothy Truelove of Wildix, noting how some companies throw in a “free” phone, but, pile in high list prices on supposedly ‘free’ gear by folding it into other recurring charges. In this podcast, Truelove outlines how Wildix maintains a very transparent relationship with their partners, who in turn can manage their customer relationships in a straightforward and effective way. At the heart of this approach is enabling the dealers to keep it simple and effective with their customers. We discuss conversion of customers from CapEx to OpEx to create returning revenue, nurturing clients through vertical products, like x-hoppers and x-bees, the movement from PBX to Customer Communication Platforms like x-bees and/or the coming launch of WMS 7 in 2023. As some of the legacy companies in the market pass through restructuring and other major changes, Truelove sees Wildix as a place where partners can offer their customers a modern, high margin path to migration with stability. Truelove urges partners to look to the future and see that every contract signed can mean income now and equity later.
Visit www.wildix.com
“How can we keep pace?,” asks Josh Wheeler, Strategic Director, Customer Service and Experience Portfolio, Reuters Events. Wheeler argues that customers compare their experiences, not only with direct competitors but with all the companies they do business with, from airlines to insurance companies. The benchmark is set across a huge number of interactions, where those who are not looking at the whole horizon will fall behind. With that in mind, Wheeler tells us about four keys to service and experience and how these four keys will be among the things explored at the upcoming Customer Service & Experience West 2023 to be held in San Diego, May 10-11, 2023. In this podcast, Wheeler discusses the four keys: mature your data-driven strategy, redefine the agent experience, scale support with innovative technology and enshrine CX at the heart of the business. The event promises to bring new ideas and perspective to professionals charged with delivering CX. We learn the that the conference will look directly at where and how to automate, and to deliver a successful digital transformation.
https://events.reutersevents.com/customer-service/customer-service-san-diego
Agent. Private labeling. Build and buy a platform. According to Chief Revenue Officer, White Label Communications, LLC, Jim DeBald, these are the three models that a channel partner can pursue in the UCaaS market. In this second part of a two-part podcast series, we look at the case for white labeling. DeBald takes us on a journey that looks at margin, cost, revenue, and scale of responsibility that comes with each model. The dynamic that DeBald illustrated is that the carrier, that you might resell, can change. Change of ownership, merger, new leadership, and more, can all mean that old bets are off. A critical part of that is understanding who really owns the relationship with the customer. In this podcast we hear about how a channel partner, who might have wanted a stronger tie to the customer, can be reduced to a commission agent status, where carrier’s, “moves, adds and changes”, can later sweep away that connection. “I recommend that at the very least, provide level one support,” says DeBald, as a way of having some control over the relationship. We learn that stepping into a white label level, balances the benefits of owning that relationship, and the equity that comes with that ownership, while not having to go the expense of duplicating carrier level services.
Visit https://www.whitelabelcomm.com/
“We wanted to create a frictionless buying experience,” says Viirtue’s Dan Rosenrauch. Recorded at the ITEXPO Conference, Dan discusses the company’s mobile first approach to design. Since customers are using their phones first, Viirtue designs first for mobile, enabling customers, and partners, to work with Viirtue on the platform they prefer and with the best possible experiences. Reflecting on the company’s recent successes, Dan also reports on the company’s new financial partner to fund Viirtue’s vision of growth and development. Viirtue has also announced a Zoom integration. Dan participated in the Building a Scalable MSP Model panel, moderated by TR’s Doug Green.
Visit www.viirtue.com
Moolah Wireless is targeting the internet’s edge to provide bandwidth and services to people and organizations that need better service and internet access.
Vernell A. Woods III, CEO of Moolah Wireless, speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication and outlines their channel approach.
Vernell A. Woods IIIFor rural areas, Moolah Wireless provides a free pad for them to use. They also use Moolah Mobiles advertising application that pays them for watching ads. It is a way of getting the technology to the locations and people that need it without their investment requirement. This program is aided by the federal government.
During COVID, they also focused on K-12 and colleges. These were the most impacted during the pandemic and most underserved.
Listen in as Vernell discusses the company’s programs that he obviously loves. He has a real passion for serving rural people and enabling them to achieve higher goals.
About: The Moolah Mobile CommunityAt Moolah Mobile they believe that diversity, inclusion and uniqueness are all traits that are essential in creating a strong community. This along with good leadership will result in well-connected teams capable of executing on the highest level. They put their customers first and aim to ensure that each experience is an amazing one for all their customers.
The Merger Between Mobile Devices, Ads and Wallets
Moolah Mobile is changing the mobile landscape by allowing both telcos and users to capitalize on global shift in digital ads while participating in the mobile wallet boom fueling the crypto world.
For more information, go to: https://moolahmobile.com/
According to Jim DeBald, Chief Revenue Officer at White Label Communications, LLC, far too many MSPs offering UCaaS become vendor-locked because they have not planned how to effectively implement basic yet important techniques for deploying UCaaS at the operational and technological levels. Now, more than ever, generating monthly recurring revenue that the MSP “owns” is critical. DeBald thinks that UCaaS is central to building that recurring business revenue. However, in this podcast, DeBald outlines that MSPs struggle with creating a culture where UCaaS is understood as the key place to drive sales through the whole solutions stack. We learn how apparent opportunities and urgent customer needs, such as security, are being left behind or undersold. “It’s hit and miss on the sales side,” add DeBald. We learn how a commission, training, educating, and visioning are all a part of getting people to understand and work the opportunities that are hiding in plain sight for many MSPs. “It’s tying it all together.”
Visit https://www.whitelabelcomm.com/
Laurent Missa, operations support expert at BICS, and Renata Silva of Infovista, join Doug Green of Telecom Reseller to discuss how BICS is collaborating with the whole telco ecosystem to evolve its intelligent communications software. BICS, the leading international communications enabler, has partnered with Infovista, the global leader in network lifecycle automation, to boost its suite of advanced analytics solutions for its telco and enterprise customers. No telco or enterprise can operate as an island today. Only by sharing unique innovations will telcos reduce tech complexity, improve efficiency, and give customers a better experience. The partnership is yet another example in a long list of developments in which BICS has broken down the silos.
Visit www.bics.com and www.infovista.com
“Never has there been a better time to make old work with new”
“I am always interested in something that’s new that can retrofit something that’s legacy,” says Ejaye McComb, Global Director of Technology of SpeechLogix. In this podcast, we talk to SpeechLogix about their XLogix platform and how this platform was “designed from the ground up” to be an all-in-one solution for operators, including the challenges of legacy migration. McComb joins Haitham El-Hanafi, Head of Sales at SpeechLogix on how their company looks forward by not forgetting the huge number of legacy devices and functions that the customers still operate. El-Hanafi tells us that their solution can be deployed quickly and whether that deployment is in response to an unplanned situation or a planned change, SpeechLogix offers operators a path to generate revenue while helping customers with business continuity and migration from legacy platforms. “Never has there been a better time to make old work with new,” adds McComb.
Visit www.speechlogix.com
SMS has excellent response rate.
“It gives you everything you need within the traditional telecom industry,” says Glen Stansbury of Infobip. Discussing Infobip’s acquisition of Peerless, Glen gives us a big picture of an integrated company that delivers solutions across the telecom spectrum, from carrier capacities, Teams, and SMS, MMS, OTT as well as video, voice and IVR. The company also has a global verse a national footprint. “It is a more efficient way to engage,” adds Stansbury, noting that AI has been deployed to offer quick responsiveness and more choice. “The days of pure voice are gone,” says Stansbury, making the case for MSPs to partner with a company offering the communications mediums, they want and use. The company’s strong CPaaS background means more innovative possibilities.
Visit www.infobip.com
Enreach well matched for the times
“I think everyone is prepared for anything,” says Stijn Nijhuis, CEO of Enreach. As we near the end of the first quarter of 2023, Nijhuis offers a pensive but optimistic outlook for people in the UC community as people work to manage their company’s and IT teams through a period of change, disruption, challenge but also opportunity. With a focus on Europe, Nijhuis reflects on the rapid shift in Europe’s largest economy from a pre-pandemic dominance of on-prem approaches to an apparent switch to cloud. “We are seeing the beginning of the end of the on-prem market, in Germany”. Meanwhile, “mobile first”, the mobile app, and the softphone have moved from being a nice add on to a central function and use. Along with mobility and cloud, we see the adoption of people seeking a more streamlined set of vendors, more bundled services and, of course, the widening acceptance of hybrid work.
Converged Contact Solutions
In this podcast, we learn how Enreach is well positioned to match the times. Nijhuis drills down into the details of helping take the old call center, contact center model into a robust and secure contact center that enabled agents to work from anywhere, to allow firms of many sizes to take advantage of automation technologies, and making the most of migration to Microsoft Teams and mobility. Looking out over the horizon, we learn about a democratization of technology, and get a glimpse at an economy where small firms can harness enterprise grade solutions, automations, and choices. “We really adapt a level of change at Enreach, not just at the level of our product, but at the level of our organization,” says Nijhuis, reflecting on adopting tools that transform internal governance, decision making and company culture.
Visit www.enreach.com
Today we sit down with Tina Hanley, a fraud consultant with TransUnion, to discuss the tightrope that enterprises must walk for effective authentication measures with a friction-right customer experience and how TransUnion’s TruValidate solutions can help. While authentication solutions are imperative to counteract the rise in sophisticated fraud attacks, excessive false positives can cause businesses to lose $118 billion annually – a figure 75% higher than actual fraud costs. Tina shares insights into TruValidate’s Device-Based Authentication technology, explaining that providing a friction-right experience “becomes a balancing act to show customers that their information is safe and can’t be picked off easily, but not too much that they become frustrated by a time consuming and inconvenient authentication process.” Offering a seamless and invisible experience for customers by recognizing their device as another layer of risk-based authentication, Device-Based Authentication decreases the need for multiple levels of authentication, reducing redundant hoops for both customers and agents to jump through.
To learn more about how TruValidate’s identity, device and behavioral insights help organizations to mitigate fraud risk, visit: https://www.transunion.com/solution/truvalidate.
Time to rethink security and use the internet the way it was intended, as a transport of data. No one should see or have access to your data the way corporate monopolies do today.
Colin CostableKevin NickelsKevin Nickels and Colin Constable, both co-founders, describe to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how mobile and IoT devices alike are locked down securely before any internet activity takes place. The endpoints create their own public and private keys stored on the same device. No central key depository for unscrupulous players to hack. Remember everything is encrypted anyway. Lots of luck bad guys!
Then, you establish a connection to the desired person or device you want to communicate with on the other end. Once established, you can communicate with everything 256-encrypted. If you go through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), everything is double encrypted where the other end is the only person or device that has the key to decrypt the data.
We are living in a new era that demands a new internet for the protection of the individual, corporate organizations and governmental data. No one should have the right to the data and abuse internet users the way corporate, government organizations and internet hackers currently operate.
Listen in to this insightful discussion on the origins of the company and a mostly 5,000-foot level overview of the technology. If you like it, you may want to visit http://www.Republic.com/atsign and be part of a crowd funding campaign.
About: Hello! We’re Atsign.
We are a team of Internet optimists committed to making the Internet a more human place, where privacy is a fundamental right and everyone owns their data. In a world where now even our things are generating large amounts of data, we created the free, open-source atPlatform allowing developers to easily create privacy-first apps that protect people, and their things, on the Internet. Welcome! And thanks for helping us #FliptheInternet
To find out more, go to: https://republic.com/atsign or https://atsign.com/
“Were not a competitor, we’re a collaborator,” says David Gardner of Advantage. In this podcast, Gardner discusses his company’s special global MSP model. “We are a secret competitive weapon for an MSP.” Recorded at MSP Expo at ITEXPO, Gardner discusses how his company’s life cycle approach to the delivery of solutions can translate into a big ‘advantage’ for MSPs seeking to differentiate themselves in a very competitive market.
Visit www.advantagecg.com
The first global MSP
“We manage the lifecycle of the enterprise telecommunications effort for an entire: Design, Procure, Implement, Validate.” This according to David Gardner is how Advantage is different. In this podcast, recorded at ITEXPO, Gardner describes Advantage, by describing this life cycle process. We learn how Advantage works to put together global solutions for the enterprise customer in a way that is different than many in the MSP market. We hear about a streamlined process and how Gardner believes his company is disruptive. Scaling and maintaining quality remains a big focus.
Visit www.advantagecg.com
According to Jamaal Savwoir, VP of Partner Experience, Intelisys a ScanSource Company, a hybrid distribution strategy, enables partners and VARs to “be the hero” for their customers. In this podcast we learn about the hybrid distribution model and why it’s one of several differentiators for Intelisys. We learn how Intelisys offer partners a variety of ways to sell to customers, to scale and build sticky solutions that lower churn and improve recurring revenue. We discuss how the company views partner experience as integral to the success of Intelisys, as Jamaal’s title indicates.
Visit www.intelisys.com
Recorded at last week’s MSP Expo, this was a podcast with an attendee, who travelled to the conference to learn more for his MSP, EB Solution. Johnny Bogard, as IT Solutions Manager for an active MSP, discusses the needs of his company. In this podcast, recorded on day two of the MSP Expo, Bogard urges TR publisher and panel moderator, Doug Green, to encourage vendors and presenters to connect the sales dots more directly. Bogard was nearby when Green recorded some other show podcasts and decided he wanted his voice to be heard, and Green thought that was a good idea.
While appreciating the information and learning offered, we hear a 2024 idea: Bogard tells us that he needs to hear more ways to sell to his customers, the money products he sees on display and the services he hears about in the panels and presentations. Bogard looks forward to the 2024 MSP Expo event.
Learn about EB Solution https://ebsolution.ca/
Learn about the 2024 MSP Expo https://www.mspexpo.com/east/
Software platform that frees companies to build their own digital marketplaces.
“The customer wants to buy the outcome, and wants to trust the supply chain,” says Jess Warrington, General Manager for North America at CloudBlue. “We’re the software platform that’s going to orchestrate the most complex part of it.” Recorded just before the recent ITEXPO, and MSP Expo conference, Warrington discusses how Ingram Micro’s CloudBlue is a software platform enabling MSPs, CSPs, tech vendors and distributors to build and operate their own digital marketplace. We learn how the organization enables MSPs to offer customers more subscription, more pay for user verse pay to own, options. Warrington tells us how his company’s platform reduces the user-facing complexity of offering those choices. XaaS is explained along with the big opportunity that offers the MSPs. Among many options, CloudBlue streamlines the ability of MSPs to add name brand options to their portfolio.
Learn more at www.cloudblue.com.
While bringing many benefits and opening possibilities for new service models, the Open RAN environment also creates a new set of challenges for service providers and equipment manufacturers. A new breed of testing is required to ensure interoperability of a complex, always changing, multi-vendor setup; meet strict carrier-grade performance requirements for field-readiness, and support the goals of more cost effective, price competitive business models. In this podcast, Doug Green speaks with James Kimery, VP of Product Management of Spirent Communications Lifecycle Service Assurance business, to discuss these challenges in detail and understand Spirent’s approach to help the ecosystem gain confidence when deploying new O-RAN technology.
For more information, visit https://www.spirent.com/solutions/open-ran-testing
Scalable solution, scalable opportunity
Recently, Crexendo announced that their cloud communication platform now supports over three million end users globally. In this podcast Doug Gaylor, President and COO, and Jon D. Brinton, Chief Revenue Officer, discuss the company’s growth, particularly after acquiring NetSapiens. By counting sessions instead of seats, offering rich features and removing virtually all infrastructure barriers, Crexendo’s partners have room to grow and grow with their customers. Partners can also choose between levels of engagement from agent, to white label, and on to a level where they can leverage Crexendo’s resources to host their own solution as an infrastructure partner. “It’s a scalable opportunity,” says Gaylor. Looking forward, Brinton and Gaylor reflect on market turmoil and make the case that their team can offer a robust partnership, with growth and financial stability.
Visit www.crexendo.com
Chief Marketing Officer at TelcoBridges and TR blogger, Alan Percy, joins Doug Green in a podcast recorded at ITEXPO. Percy discusses two sessions on STIR/SHAKEN: Living with STIR/SHAKEN, and the impact of STIR/SHAKEN on the enterprise. Percy also participated as judge in the CPaaSAA Showcase, where four CPaaS solutions were compared. Alan also participated in a marketing, in an all-star panel, including many industry leaders in the field of content. Meanwhile, the company featured their network transformation solutions, helping companies leave behind legacy gear, along with some new solutions for evolving rural carriers. Look for video sessions to be lined here on TR and at https://telcobridges.com/.
Haitham El-Hanafi Head of Sales from SpeechLogix, is one of the four contestants participating in the CPaaS Showcase Challenge at ITEXPO on February 14th at ITEXPO. Haitham is joined by Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA who will be both hosting and judging the event. SpeechLogix shared that they have been nominated as a best platform for 2023 services providers at Enterprise Connect. Haitham will be presenting his award-winning platform as part of his omnichannel demo that he is hoping will carry the day and win the challenge. In this podcast, we learn about this offering and how it adds yet another way to leverage CPaaS for new product offerings.
Visit www.speechlogix.com
There has been a great deal of attention given to 5G and the speeds that will be obtained at the edge. As a result, the Internet infrastructure will have to support a great deal of additional data. Will the internet become a congested nightmare?
Dr. Michael LebbyDr. Michael Lebby and Lightwave Logic have a solution. After years of research and development, their proprietary electro-optic polymer technology can integrate with fiber cable and increase data transfer by 3 times the current speeds at reduced power consumption.
In addition to the speed, the recent acquisition of Chromosol enhances the polymer itself by weather proofing them substantially reducing the total solution cost.
Dr. Lebby provides a very easy to understand description of the technology and the markets that could take advantage of their product. Check it out – this will have a significant impact on the internet moving forward.
About: P2IC™ (Polymer Photonic Integrated Circuits) are ideally positioned to be one of these new technologies. Lightwave Logic’s devices are made using conventional wafer-scale processing such as used for microelectronics and therefore similarly capable of being integrated. In addition, the polymer microfabrication processes are compatible with other materials platforms such as Silicon Photonics and Indium Phosphide which are now starting to become more integrated. In particular, the Silicon Photonics ecosystem has recently accepted that its roadmap will include adding more and more materials, each for their specific benefits. EO polymers’ speed and voltage advantages are attractive additions to this ecosystem.
For more information, go to: https://www.lightwavelogic.com/ or call (720) 340-4949
Ease of use touted
iotum, a pioneer in video and audio solutions, is dedicated to creating innovative products and services that improve remote communication. Its platform is designed to seamlessly integrate with existing systems, allowing you to connect with your audience in real time on any device, from any location worldwide. iotum provides a white-labeled UCaaS solution, including meetings, webinars, chat, and more, which can be easily accessed through user-friendly SDKs, APIs, and Webhooks as a CPaaS offering.
Visit
- iotum
- CPaaSAA
- ITEXPO
“Now more than ever, workers are being distributed by a return to office, a lack of return to office, and you’re seeing more min-branches show up, and even homes,” says Jeff Aaron, VP at Juniper Networks. The edge has become exponentially larger, and so has the edge security challenge. In this podcast, Aaron makes the case that Juniper’s SD-Branch is a product whose time has come. Industry experts have been talking about the promise for a handful of years now. The promise of a centrally orchestrated network model whereas much security and network operations could be automated as possible has continued, but it’s been a slow build. That said, the combination of a slowing economy, under-resourced IT departments, an expanding network environment and increased bandwidth needs is seemingly becoming the perfect storm needed to drive SD-Branch adoption forward in the coming year. In this interview, Aaron discusses why the timing couldn’t be better for companies to embrace SD-Branch, share what the key elements are to look for in a solution, and offer advice on how to get started. Aaron also describes a significant partner and MSP opportunity. “Branches are more important than ever,” says Aaron, adding the convergence cloud, cloud mounted solutions and AI, all make this time “more interesting” and more vital for approaches such as Juniper Networks’ SD-Branch.
Visit www.juniper.net
There are all kinds of channel tools which include lists, customer profiles, research based, and many more. None – asses the organizations existing best partners (10 – 20 or more) as in-depth, based on the AI capabilities that are built into PartnerOptimizer.
Dina Moskowitz, CEO and founder of PartnerOptimizer explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News how they then apply the base channel profile characteristics to the rest of their channel. This will identify current partners to invest more time and money developing and those that may need to be sidelined.
Dina MoskowitzThe next step would be to run the profile against their 500,000 plus channel partner list and identify the size of their Total Addressable Market (TAM). Marketing can then determine how to approach the TAM. PartnerOptimizer plays a critical role at this level as well.
Listen in to Dina discuss the technology, the process and the results that are literally at your fingertips. Some of the comments by current users are amazing. There is no other tool like it, ergo, the best in the world. For channel marketeers, it will be time well spent.
About: They exist to help channel teams discover new partners faster, give them partner insights to be more strategic, and save them tons of time and resources.
PartnerOptimizer is the first-to-market AI-powered platform for the B2B technology channel that enables users to quickly identify new best-fit channel partners to recruit and activate and/or recognize undervalued partners to better engage within their partner ecosystem.
PartnerOptimizer is trusted by global companies in the cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, communications, business productivity, IoT, networking, IT services, marketing technology, and business intelligence industries, and has received industry recognition from Forrester and Gartner.
For more information, go to: https://partneroptimizer.com/
“You see it in the news every day,” says Travis Volk, Vice President of Global Service Providers, Radware. In recent years, cyber-attacks have soared against the telecom industry. Outages, intrusions, and malicious attacks from independent and state-sanctioned actors have highlighted how vulnerable the telecom infrastructure can be. Because the telecom industry controls much of the nation’s critical infrastructure, a successful attack can have a significant and extensive impact. With the scale, complexity, and frequency of attacks on the rise, carriers will need to raise their game in response. During this podcast, Volk discusses the current risks and potential future threats in the telecom industry and explain what carriers can do to safeguard their critical infrastructure. “The main misconception, that most operators have for themselves, is that conventional tools give them the visibility and control over these modern events.” We learn that this mismatch of traditional tools and today’s attacks, leaves operators very vulnerable to attacks with real economic damage, both in terms of actual disruption, and with lost customers, brand damage and so on. Volk walks us through the scale of the issue and then makes the case for an updated, multifaceted approach to fighting and winning this daily battle.
Visit www.radware.com
Many companies plan to require employees to return to the office in some capacity this year, and two thirds already require some in-office time. According to Vyopta, a leader in digital collaboration and experience optimization, there’s renewed interest among customers to understand how workspaces are being used to collaborate among people in the office and elsewhere — at home, a coffee shop, a hotel room. In this podcast, Mike Tolliver, Director of Product Management at Vyopta, will provide an overview of Space Insights, and how IT, facilities, and real estate teams can track collaboration technology and room utilization to reduce inefficient room usage, and optimize real estate and technology spend. Companies are often empowering employees to choose when and how often they come into the office, and to encourage them to be purposeful about the best environment for the type of work they need to accomplish. Some may come to the office to meet with others and collaborate, others may be looking for a quiet space to focus on higher-level thinking and writing. In order for office space to efficiently support this new paradigm, organizations need data to help guide real estate decisions.
Visit www.vyopta.com
“All these platforms, in one way or another, employers need them, for their employees to actually do their work on a day-to-day basis,” says William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer at CallTower. In this podcast, Rubio outlines what he describes as the CallTower advantage, a way in which CallTower holds a unique position in the marketplace, weaving together different incumbent systems, apps, platforms, and equipment, into a seamless experience for the employee and a much more unified communications regime for IT managements, and an organizations technology partner, to help manage. Rubio discusses at length a special graphic representation for how these brands work together and how CallTower brings many things, not necessarily originally designed to work with the multi-vendor environment, together into something that’s reliable, robust, and accessible for non-technology workers to use. Rubio discusses how CallTower delivers a true turn-key solution for just about any already existing, and in use, applications and platforms, noting that their approach can help firms who have reasons to continue to use legacy platforms, among many scenarios.
Visit www.calltower.com
“I really can have this experience of a lot of different solutions, from a size perspective, or a use perspective, all under one brand, all under one solutions set, and it really gives a great customer experience in the process,” says Steven Fair, Senior Director, Global Voice & Service Provider Platform Sales at Poly HP. Fair joins Clint Edwards, VP SP and Voice Solutions Engineering and Alliance at Poly HP in this podcast about Poly HP’s offerings and how those offering reflect the idea of offering a comprehensive line up of products that match customer needs, in many environments, many use cases and, today, in the different situations that the customer might find themselves in, over the course of just one working day. “You need technology,” adds Edwards, “… to equalize the conference experience,” reflecting on the common happening of team members attending meetings both virtually and in person. We learn how Poly HP is delivering a set of products that all work together seamlessly with each other, and remain agnostic to available platform or other branded technology physically present or running as an app. We learn more about how the Poly Edge E phone family fits into this larger picture, and about the just announced poly Voyager Free 60 UC Series. The new earbuds combine Poly noise cancellation, advanced microphone and microphone management, and other branded Plantronics, Poly and HP technologies, in a device intended for use over many hours, in different environments.
Poly HP was a major participant and sponsor of the recent Cloud Communications Alliance, Cloud Connections 2023 in Fort Lauderdale, where Steven Fair headlined the Winning in the Hybrid Workplace keynote address.
Visit Poly HP
The need for Cyber Security personnel around the world has never been greater. In fact, the need continues to grow with the advancement of the technology and, the COVID-19 unveiling of all the security holes in the internet infrastructure.
If you need a cyber security project to get completed and you need people or an organization to make it happen, then do not make things complicated. Go to an organization that certifies Cyber Security experts. Tom Brennan, USA Chairman of CREST speaks with Don Witt of the channel Daily News, a TR publication about CREST’s start in 2006 and growth through to the present with a goal of creating a critical national infrastructure.
Tom BrennanListen in and you will learn about CREST, Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and OVS (OWASP Verification Standard).
When a company joins CREST, they not only have a huge library of information and certifications that can be achieved, but they also receive leads in specific countries or from around the world.
About: CREST is an international nonprofit membership body that works with governments, regulators, buyers, and suppliers at home and abroad to develop and support internationally recognized initiatives. By representing, supporting, and certifying/accrediting cybersecurity firms and professionals, CREST increases professionalism in the security industry and helps protect the sensitive data of millions of people around the world.
For more information, go to: https://www.crest-approved.org/
Earlier this week Mitel announced it has entered exclusive negotiations with Atos to acquire Unify, the UC business of the Atos group. The combined company is poised to create a global unified communications (UC) leader and grow Mitel’s business in multiple geographies, segments and solutions. In this podcast interview Graham Bevington, Chief Sales Officer at Mitel, discusses the details around the acquisition, its impact on channel partners and how it will help the company deliver more choice and flexibility in business communications.
Visit www.mitel.com
The great CPaaS bakeoff, cookoff, showcase is done. Recently, the leadership of the cloud communications community converged on Fort Lauderdale, where the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance hosted a special CPaaS Showcase as a part of the CCA Cloud Connections 2023 event. The overall winner of the event was BroadSource. Their secure financial transaction solution won $15,000 and a free membership in the CCA, valued at $10,000. In this podcast, Kevin Nethercott (and his signature special CPaaS jacket, worn for the whole special CPaaS Podcast Series), sits down with Doug Green to review the event and discuss what’s next for the Acceleration Alliance and CPaaS itself. At the same time, Kevin reveals just how close the contest was, as the four contesting companies offered not only different approaches to CPaaS but wholly different use cases.
BroadSource won the overall contest and went home with two more wins, getting the nod as the “people’s choice” and catching the commercial viability win, since their use case, the secure collection of, money with a customer credit card, would be such a common and widespread application. BroadSource was also recognized for ease of use.
Meanwhile, Radisys racked up a big score for innovation, after doing a live demonstration of what Nethercott described as “an elegant API” that enabled direct translation between Mandarin and English in what could be a contact center agent to customer use case. Braidio came in with yet a different approach, offering large enterprise like messaging and engagement tools that could be made available to smaller firms. Vonage came in with a solution that was somewhat like Radisys but offered critical sentiment analysis and got the nod for integration as their solution was seen as working smoothly with platforms such as Salesforce.
“They all did an excellent job,” said Kevin, noting that all four solutions were not only demonstrated as fully operational but are ready to go, available for commercial deployment, today.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit BroadSource
- Visit Vonage
- Visit Radisys
- Visit Braidio
- Watch the Podcast Series
Fighting robocalls occurs at many levels
“First and foremost, know your customer,” says Jim Brewer, Executive Vice President, Products and Technology of Peerless. In this podcast, Brewer, and Tony Hiller, Executive Vice President, Operations and Engineering discuss their approach to fighting robocalls. We learn that Peerless combines a mixture of technology and very proactive, personalized approaches to the fight. We learn that the company strives to make sure first bad actors don’t try to slip over the fence, to become or posture, as a customer. Next Peerless uses its understanding of their customers, combined with various tactics, to find bad actors to efficiently limit cases and impacts. Brewer notes that STIR/SHAKEN is a valuable tool, which Peerless combines with several other tactics, including internal and third-party analytics. Hiller provides front line descriptions of how Peerless has helped customers that have been impacted. “It’s a huge issue and its extremely complex to solve,” adds Hiller. Hiller notes that Peerless has implemented a multi-stage mitigation strategy within the Peerless network, a major undertaking that does not have to be duplicated. “We’ve done that, and our customers, as a result, don’t have to.”
Visit www.peerlessnetwork.com and www.infobip.com
As education districts struggle to get their arms around campus safety, one company has come out with an AI application that is designed to help administration, faculty, and anyone else involved in student safety, have a better understanding of emotions and sentiments occurring in real time on their site. In this podcast, Derek Peterson, CEO of Soter Technologies walks us through JunoAI and how its deployed, applied, and managed. We learn about JunoAI’s attention to issues of privacy and the needs of each student. The technology is designed to help the team of people, on a campus, to better know where to be present, and to better anticipate where offering a hug, or emotional support might be needed. The product works with existing surveillance systems and is agnostic to platform. As MSPs and Channel Partners look for timely items to add to their solutions portfolio, Soter looks to take AI a logical addition for companies already offering security solutions along with their larger communications offerings.
Visit https://www.sotertechnologies.com/
Cloud Connections 2023
Hervé Ayissi, Customer Success Specialist and Inside sales, SBC and Support Services Executive, meets up with TR’s Doug Green in this podcast, recorded at the first ever Cloud Connections conference. Ayissi offers a brief update on the TelcoBridges line of products that the firm offers the communications service providers market, VoIP gateways, signaling gateways, transferring gateways, SBCs (session border controllers), class for products, serving the carrier community. Ayissi lays out the case for TelcoBridges competitive market position and presence of both equipment and cloud-based solutions. We discuss the company’s continued growth in the US and other major markets, while we also learn about the firm’s window to the rapid growth markets in emerging economies in Africa. Ayissi tells us that some training offerings will be available to people attending the upcoming ITEXPO show.
Learn more at www.telcobridges.com
Simwood is one of Britain’s largest carriers, a company with twenty-five years of experience and growth, not to mention a major US presence. That US presence includes a portfolio of household name level customers, some of which touch many US financial account holders. Seeking to become more visible, the company exhibited at this year’s Cloud Connections 2023 show, hosted by the CCA. “It’s a soft launch for us,” says Frazer Barnett, Head of Sales at Simwood. In this brief podcast, Barnett previews the company’s plans for the coming year and gives an overview on the case for firms to consider partnering with Simwood as they take on the US market.
Visit www.simwood.com
Cloud Connections 2023
“Branded calling is really what everyone has dreamed about,” says Jim Dalton, CEO of TransNexus. In this podcast Dalton discusses how branded calling might begin the process of restoring faith among consumers in the authenticity of the calls they receive from the enterprises that consumers are doing business with. Dalton sees branded calling as an opportunity for the CSP and as a priority for the enterprise, as both work together to enable the enterprise to be able to deliver calls where the consumer is confident that the call is from a trusted source. “Now they will have a real solution,” adds Dalton.
Visit https://transnexus.com/
Cloud Connections 2023
We live in an age of mass migration of devices, networks, and whole organizations. One big challenge is making sure that the devices your organization would wish to retain, maintain all their original, intended functionality. In this podcast, Mark Lindsey, SMTS and VP Engineering at ECG, walks us through his recent blog, Cloud Voice Migration, Overcoming Common Challenges. Lindsey lines up the challenges and then gives us some ideas on how to tackle them one by one. Recorded live at the recent Cloud Connections 2023 event, Lindsey discusses how these strategies are a critical part of making sure that when clients move to the cloud or make further migrations, all the many employee and customer facing devices, also make the move.
Visit www.ecg.co
Catching up with Harry Brelsford
Uncertain times call for new thinking. MSP Rescue, fashioned after the popular “Bar Rescue” cable TV show, is a one-day gathering of like-minded channel partners, Managed Services Providers (MSPs), IT Pros and telecom professionals to talk about 2023. From strategy to actionable behaviors, you can engage in how to make 2023 surprisingly strong. In this podcast we learn about this one-day event that focuses on success factors ranging from uncovering internal operational efficiencies to hedging your services, solutions and client offerings that include counter-cyclical elements. The Chicago event will be a part of a larger MSP Rescue Roadshow. This first MSP Rescue will occur in Chicago, on February 17.
https://msprescue.pro/
One of the fastest growing solutions for network security is Zero Trust. Tal Zamir, CTO at Perception Point, provides analytical insight of customer’s 2022 implementations to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, revealing future trends.
First, understanding what Zero Trust is and what enterprise and businesses need to do to respond to the post pandemic network requirements is essential to understand the future waiting for Zero Trust in 2023.
Knowing that more and more companies will be revising their corporate network border/perimeter strategy to include micro-networks, remote workers, and the cloud, what is the process to implement Zero Trust properly? When implemented, end to end security monitoring, prevention, remediation/incident response will still be required.
Prevention as a Service Providers. Digital Transformation Enablers.
Perception Point is a Prevention-as-a-Service company, built to enable digital transformation. Trusted by global enterprises, their Gartner-recognized, revolutionary platform offers a 360-degree protection against any type of content-based attacks, across all collaboration channels, in one simple solution. Built by and for IT and security experts, their service is incredibly easy to deploy, maintain and update according to the newest attack techniques.
Tal ZamirTheir Know how
They are a team of cyber-intelligence professionals and business leaders with offices in the US and Israel. They are passionate about cybersecurity, business operations, and the connection between the two.
They enjoy ruining the attackers’ day, every day.
For more information, go to: https://perception-point.io/
Fight is a top company priority
“We were one of the first to engage STIR/SHAKEN,” says John Barnicle, Peerless President & CEO of Peerless Network. Barnicle adds that the issue of fighting robocalling is on the top of his list as the head of Peerless. Even as Barnicle notes the rise of messaging as a key communication tool, preserving voice calling as a major communication resource, involves finding the right mix of dialing up, and dialing down countermeasures that enable legitimate traffic and block bad actors. “It is a constant battle and we do continue to invest heavily in it,” adds Barnicle. In this first of a two-part podcast series, Barnicle gives us an overview of the mitigation effort. Part 2 deals with a closer look at the technical efforts that are underway.
Visit www.peerlessnetwork.com and www.infobip.com
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
Sanjay Srinivasan“Our mission is to accelerate the world’s ability to connect,” says Sanjay Srinivasan, Chief Architect, GM, SVP, Business Services of Vonage. According to Srinivasan, CPaaS is critical innovation and innovation is critical to meeting Vonage’s mission of accelerating the way the world connects. In this podcast Srinivasan discusses Vonage’s approach to CPaaS. “Customer journeys and customer service journeys are a dynamic thing and cannot be pre-planned,” adds Srinivasan. “That is it the key thesis we will demonstrate around, being able to be agile and dynamic as you construct this journeys.”
Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA, who will be hosting, and among a team of judges at the showcase, discusses how he is hoping to see approaches that he’s looking for solutions that use CPaaS to deliver innovative CX, but offer the simplicity of being able to run in the background, noting that the final customer is not concerned with CPaaS but with experience levels of service based on what CPaaS actually delivers. In this discussion of CPaaS with Vonage, the customer result is a central theme.
Kevin NethercottThis is the final installment of a seven-part podcast series about the CPaaS Showcase. In this series we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit Vonage
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
Meet Haydn Faltyn, CEO of BroadSource
“We want to bring what we call, secure payments, as a differentiated product offering, to the CCA,” says Haydn Faltyn, CEO of BroadSource. In this sixth part of our podcast series on the CPaaS Showcase at Cloud Connections 2023, Faltyn is joined by Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA who will be both hosting and judging the event. Previous episodes of this series include Clark Peterson and Evan Kirstel, who will also be hosting and judging the showcase. “We know that security is a huge issue,” says Nethercott, who is happy to see the CSPs being offered a secure payments financial solution.
BroadSource is among the small group of companies that were present at the creation of the CCA and at the dawn of cloud communications. In this podcast, Faltyn links decades of service to the cloud communications community and innovations to the CSPs to BroadSource’s ideas on CPaaS and creating very practical, applicable products that the CSPs can deploy to create new experiences for customers.
In this podcast series and at the CPaaS Showcase we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit BroadSource
On today’s episode, we are joined by Tim Truelove, the Country Manager of Wildix in the Americas. We dive into what Wildix is, and how it’s helping partners optimize their business communications through unified communication solutions saving hours of overtime, money, and improving productivity.
Tim also comments on their recent awards and recognitions such as being positioned by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for UCaaS for the second year in a row, and their solution, X-Hoppers, awarded ‘Best Emerging Technology Breakthrough’ in the 2022 Vision Spotlight Awards.
Tim discusses the 2023 UC&C Summit taking place on January 17th for current and potential partners. This live streaming will touch base on overcoming the scarcity of new business opportunities and protecting the business by moving to a sustainable, channel-led only solution.
Make sure you register to this year’s Summit at: https://www.wildix.com/ to find out more about their solutions and business opportunities!
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
“People should not have to be telecom engineers,” says Adnan Saleem, CTO, Software and Cloud Solutions at Radisys Corporation. In this podcast, Saleem lays out the Radisys approach to CPaaS, which he will be presenting at the upcoming CPaaS Showcase at Cloud Connections 2023. Saleem is joined by Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA who will be both hosting and judging the event. Previous episodes of this series include Clark Peterson and Evan Kirstel, who will also be hosting and judging the showcase.
Saleem outlines what he describes as the fundamental principles of CPaaS architecture and links them to the idea of delivering real world breakthrough solutions with much on the underlying complexity drained from process by CPaaS. Saleem tells us that CPaaS holds the promise opening the doors to many new ideas and people. One of the things that we will see from Radisys are approaches that will enable people without deep and direct telecom experience to begin to design and invent new solutions and introduce new ideas.
Kevin NethercottIn this podcast series and at the CPaaS Showcase we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit Radisys
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
Jordan Rupar“What I’d like to see is more customer engagement, maybe more vertically tailored type solutions,” says Jordan Rupar, Managing Director at Q Advisors. At the upcoming CPaaS Showcase at the CCA’s first ever Cloud Connections event, Rupar will be among a team of judges, assessing leading CPaaS solutions. In this segment of our podcast series on the event, Rupar notes that she will look for the basic building blocks of communications, enabling voice, SMS, security, and other things, for the CSPs. However, she is hoping to see things that might allow a customer to seamlessly use different ways to communicate, all in one interaction. “Can I start a conversation in voice, transition to SMS, an end up in WhatsApp?” For Rupar, enabling customers to communicate where they are or where they begin, is something that CPaaS can deliver.
“This isn’t a rip and replace,” Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA, who will be hosting and joining Rupar on the panel of judges, notes that CPaaS has a consumption model, where organizations can buy what they need. Nethercott sees that as making CPaaS an incremental opportunity, something that smaller firms can afford to begin working on, item by item. That scaling and incrementalism means the CPaaS can be an opportunity for the community to sell CPaaS based innovations to smaller firms.
Kevin NethercottThis is part four of our seven-part podcast series about the CPaaS Showcase. In this series we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit Q Advisors
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
Michael Tessler“There’s a lot of opportunity to bring what I call CX extensions to the UCaaS side of the house,” says Michael Tessler, Managing Partner at True North Advisory. Tessler will be among the team of judges that will be assessing leading CPaaS solutions, presented live at next week’s CPaaS Showcase. The Showcase will occur as a part of the Cloud Connections 2023 event in Fort Lauderdale. Tessler tells us that he’s looking for solutions that help CSPs help their business clients deliver innovative CX to their customers. Tessler offers a glimpse of his keynote address that will explore differentiation in a crowded market. CPaaS might be a part of the picture that is delivering the needed differentiation. In looking at the showcase contestants, Tessler will be looking for usability and commercial availability. Tessler co-founded and led BroadSoft as CEO from its early start-up.
In this podcast, Tessler is joined by Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA who will be both hosting and judging the event. “We’re in about a $15 billion market that’s expected to double,” says Nethercott. “I think we will be pleasantly surprised at what’s there for the small business,” Nethercott adds as he expects to see solutions that are ready to be deployed for organizations of many sizes. Nethercott stresses that the growth and opportunity for CPaaS is now in the SMB sector.
Kevin NethercottIn this podcast series and at the CPaaS Showcase we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit True North Advisory
by Gary Audin
You’re planning to move the contact center and unified communications operations to a cloud-based service, to reduce costs, outsource operations, and improve performance. However, cloud migration won’t solve your cost saving and efficiency goals on its own. A service management solution is an essential requirement for optimization. Here’s why.
Over 70% of organizations overlook the need to manage the performance of a cloud solution post-transition. People and applications that simply manage a break/fix do not have the trending and root-cause insight needed for today’s cloud users, or the reach necessary to support work from home employees.
Raymond Pearson, Senior Vice President of Operations at Virsae and Gary Audin recorded this EDUcast that explores how organizations can successfully migrate to the cloud for contact center and unified communications operation.
What you will learn in this EDUcast:
- Cloud Growth Trends
- Cloud Benefits to the Business
- Thinking in Advance
- Customer Needs, Demands, Opportunities
- What Matters in Performance Management
- Technology for the Business Experience
- Cloud Management
Businesses around the world use Virsae’s services to keep their communications systems performing at their best. Their cloud-native platform, Virsae Service Management (VSM), marries big data with AI-based analytics, automation, workflows, reporting, and notifications to keep the technology that underpins customer interactions running flawlessly. virsae.com
You can view other Virsae EDUcasts, podcasts, and blogs.
It all begins at the ending. As technology gear comes offline and heads to the shed for resale as used, refurbishment or ultimately, end of life disposition, having a firm hold on how a product leaves the last user’s hands and enters your company’s possession, being able to track that product from that point forward, is the foundation of a process. In this podcast we learn that doing that by spreadsheets or by other time worn methods of inventory management, are just not up to the task mandated. John Spagnuolo, President of IQ Reseller and Josh Heath, President of WipeOS explain how automation begins at that point of entry. Spagnuolo discusses how the process can even begin at a customer premise and can be applied to products being simply re-deployed, or to break/fix and so on.
We learn how customers can gain visibility into what they have, can secure those products with wipes that are properly documented and then understand the state of the gear and its readiness, or lack thereof, to go forward, be retained, moved, or disposed. We also learn that ITAD certification likely necessitates some level of automation. “The days of the excel file is about done,” says Spagnuolo, adding that excel remains a good tool, but even brokering today really requires a level of visibility and information. Heath notes that software and products such as WipeOS, reduce human error and lapses in employee training. The systems we hear discussed, help standardize and simplify asset management and asset provenance.
Visit https://www.iqreseller.com/ and https://wipeos.com/
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
Evan Kirstel“What’s most compelling are the real word stories about how CPaaS is being used,” says Evan Kirstel, a leading thought leader, writer, podcaster, and influencer, who’s B@B practice has paid a lot of attention to the communications sector of technology. In this podcast Evan Kirstel joins
Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaSAA as they discuss what they will be looking for as judges in the upcoming CPaaS Showcase to be held at the inaugural Cloud Connections event next week in Fort Lauderdale. The event is being hosted by the Cloud Communications Alliance. Kirstel describes CPaaS as a type of technology that can deliver the type of breakthrough solutions that AI is beginning to deliver across the technology field. We learn that the judges of the showcase are looking for real world applications.
“I think what you’re looking to do is to empower innovators and developers to build things we don’t have yet,” says Kirstel, noting how apps such as Uber brings together several different technologies such as location, payment, SMS and much more into a seamless customer experience. Kirstel notes that WebRTC began as a novel idea, while now it has become “baked-in”, a path we might see with CPaaS.
Kevin NethercottIn this podcast series and at the CPaaS Showcase we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
- Visit Evan Kirstel
Cloud Connections 2023 CPaaS Showcase
Clark PetersonMeet two of the judges, Clark Peterson and Kevin Nethercott
“CPaaS bypasses the traditional phone networks and legacy elements and allows people to communicate platform to platform,” says Clark Peterson, Chairman of the Cloud Communications Alliance. Peterson’s organization will be hosting their first ever Cloud Connections event next week in Fort Lauderdale. Cloud Connections 2023 will feature a CPaaS Showcase that Clark, and fellow cloud communications pioneer, Kevin Nethercott, will be hosting and playing the role of judge is a competitive showcase format, where Braidio, BroadSource, Radisys, and Vonage will all present their CPaaS ideas. Nethercott, who today is the managing partner at the CPaaSAA joins Clark in this first in a special podcast series that previews the event. “It’s really about the customer engagement and the customer engagement that CPaaS enables,” says Nethercott.
Kevin NethercottIn this podcast series and at the CPaaS Showcase we will not only learn about the importance of this technology but the larger transformative picture of how this technology is set to revolutionize the way people communicate by voice, by video and much more. In today’s podcast we learn from two leaders who “were there” on the migration from legacy TDM to VoIP, and from on prem to cloud, on how CPaaS might be an even larger era of change because, as both Clark and Nethercott point out, CPaaS connects people from where they are, from the platform they are already using. “I’m looking for solutions that are really useable,” notes Clark, commenting on how the showcase will aim to take the abstract into the practical.
- Visit Cloud Communications Alliance
- Visit Cloud Connections 2023
- Visit CPaaSAA
It is one thing to have an inhouse test facility to replicate hypothesized deployment conditions. It is quite another to have a complete city environment in which to deploy, operate, and monitor results in real time with real city activity and conditions. Brandon Branham, Assistant City Manager and CTO of City of Peachtree Corners speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News about their very unique operation started years ago by visionary city personnel.
Brandon BranhamPeachtree City, having just celebrated their 10th birthday, has more to celebrate. Their innovative approach to the expansion of the city ensures them that they will be at the forefront of technology allowing them to better service their city residents.
Curiosity lab provides their testing partners everything needed for onsite monitoring including Innovation Alley dedicated offices, their Innovation Center, which is the ecosystem hub of Curiosity Lab, their prototype design lab, classroom, and event space. Testing areas are available for sixteen different technologies.
Listen in, you will be impressed with all of the options available to those that need beta testing for their technology prior to end user deployment.
About: Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners is a publicly funded living lab designed to provide a real-world test environment to advance next-generation intelligent mobility and smart city technology. Peachtree Corners, Georgia is a vibrant suburb of Atlanta and is one of the first smart cities in the U.S. to be powered by city-owned connected infrastructure and 5G.
Located within a 500-acre technology park where 7500 people work and more than 1000 people live, Curiosity Lab provides unique infrastructure and a supportive government to facilitate innovation. Early-stage startups, universities, and established companies are all welcome to join our innovation ecosystem.
For more information, go to: https://www.curiositylabptc.com/ , https://peachtreecornersga.gov/ or call: 770-609-8818
Akixi sponsoring Cloud Connections 2023
“Service providers today are much more than just telephone companies,” says Brandon Hagood, Vice President of the Americas. “They’re providing broadband, managed services, SD-WAN, and other applications so they’re very busy doing things they weren’t traditionally doing.” In this podcast, Hagood discusses “Light up the base”, a campaign that makes it easier for service providers and resellers to trial and sell Akixi to their customers. Hagood calls it a turnkey, go to market sales program that’s fully project managed through Akixi, with a way to provide a proof of concept to their customer. That in turn simplifies the walk from trial to sale. The campaign does away with one-off fees – sites and offers self-provisioning. Meanwhile, Akixi can bring in real-time business insights that will be very valuable to the final customer. Here is a path to offer a differentiated product, without the friction of other go to market strategies.
Hagood will be participating as a speaker at the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA), Cloud Connections 2023, in January, in Fort Lauderdale. Mike Wilkinson, Akixi CPMO, will also be participating on a panel session discussing go to market strategies. Akixi is a gold sponsor of the event.
Visit
- akixi.com
- https://www.cloudcommunications.com/event/cloud-connections-2023/
Globalstar has a complete package for carriers and companies looking for Satellite solutions. David Haight, VP of IoT at Globalstar speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their stelar product portfolio.
David jumps right into a discussion of IoT technology and how their SMART data technology allows customer’s IoT edge devices to provide limited data based on the request reducing the huge data storge requirement down to 1% of many other solutions significantly reducing traffic and reducing cost. The SMART data is then used by network dashboards and other pertinent application.
David HaightListen in as David describes how the IoT technology will affect businesses and the end-user. He covers some really interesting topics which will help business and personal activities like SPOT which provide GPS locations of employees or civilian adventurers in remote areas if emergencies happen. Definitely worth listening to for new future options in your decision making.
Globalstar, Inc. is an American satellite communications company that operates a low Earth orbit satellite constellation for satellite phone and low-speed data communications. The Globalstar second-generation constellation consists of 24 low Earth orbiting satellites. One of the largest focuses for Globalstar’s IoT business is asset tracking. Globalstar devices connect to its satellite network and allow for connectivity in remote environments.
In June, Globalstar announced the release of Realm Enablement Suite – An all-new set of low-cost, high-performance edge devices. The low-code Realm Enablement Platform is the key to unlocking the unlimited capabilities of our rugged, reliable devices in the field. The platform provides access to the firmware and base applications that run the devices and an extensive library of applications that can be uploaded to them to interface with sensors measuring temperature, humidity, magnetic, angular position, motion, proximity, and other metrics.
For more information, go to: https://www.globalstar.com/en-us/
It was a real pleasure to speak with Marty Strong. As you listen, you will understand why. He is charismatic in discussion as he shares some military training with you that can be applied to business.Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, interviews Marty Strong who provides some insight into his newest book – Be Visionary – being released January 1st, 2023.Marty StrongDuring the interview, Marty discusses the three levels of management including Strategic, Operational, and Tactical level and how they provide for a solid leadership platform. They are all required and must be in play at the same time or your competitors will beat you. Leaders need to look at their history, current market, the economy, the evolving technology trends and more to assess how their company and product fit in today’s market. Then they need to develop programs for all three levels of management about what needs to change to be successful in the future market. Be Visionary!Listen in to this constructive discussion. When you buy his book, buy a yellow highlighter because you will want to reference key points he makes in the future.About: CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, retired SEAL officer, professional speaker, and author of Be Nimble - How the Navy SEAL Creative Mindset Wins on the Battlefield and in Business (martystrongbenimble.com). In 2004, he began to build a distinguished track record of successful progressive business leadership supporting U.S. Government agencies and private corporations. From 2016 to the present, he built, scaled, and led a rising healthcare star, Legacy Care. He’s a decorated combat veteran of the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams and the author of eight adventure novels (mlstrongauthor.com). He holds an undergraduate degree in Business Administration and a graduate degree in Management. He’s also a graduate of Villanova University’s Master Black Belt, Lean Six Sigma program. His second business leadership book, Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization, is set for release January 1, 2023.Be Visionary is available on Amazon and everywhere books are sold.For more information, please visit: www.martystrongbenimble.com | LinkedInwww.mlstrongauthor.com
A 30-year veteran organization in cyber security enhances products they are delivering to the MSP market from basic plans to advanced with XDR providing visibility into their entire network. This gives MSPs the ability to not only detect components but to also diagnose them forensically.
Cris MartinezCris Martinez, Director of MSP Channels at Eset speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News about how their XDR approach differs from others on the market. With their balance of researchers, machine learning and AI predictability, customers are covered on a normal usage basis but also on a protection and zero-base threat-base as well.
This technology is not only a requirement for the protection of the MSP customer but for the protection of the MSP as well. Listen in as Cris goes into more detail about their technology and how it can help keep the MSP network safe.
About: For more than 30 years, ESET® has been developing industry-leading IT security software and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, and consumers worldwide from increasingly sophisticated digital threats. From endpoint and mobile security to endpoint detection and response, as well as encryption and multifactor authentication, ESET’s high-performing, easy-to-use solutions unobtrusively protect and monitor 24/7, updating defenses in real time to keep users safe and businesses running without interruption. Evolving threats require an evolving IT security company that enables the safe use of technology. This is backed by ESET’s R&D centers worldwide, working in support of our shared future.
As they are a cybersecurity company, their values come naturally: integrity, reliability, passion, and courage. They believe in a positive digital future. This is reflected in how they do business and their commitment to managing their company in socially responsible and environmentally sustainable ways.
For more information, go to: https://www.eset.com/us/
Enterprises are “working in isolation and creating communication silos” shares Divya Ghai Wakankar, VP of enterprise business and marketing at BICS. Wakankar tells us that enterprises are working to address the challenges of a distributed workforce, mobility and more, especially customer related communications.
Over the last decade, businesses have fundamentally changed the way they engage and connect with their customers, and yet, enterprises worldwide are still struggling to connect the dots between their different communication channels.
What is the next frontier in business communication? In today’s podcast, Wakankar explains how to achieve ‘communication everywhere’ for businesses to improve customer support, maximize marketing campaign, and drive greater operational efficiencies.
Wakankar emphasizes the need for communications to be a fluid experience for the customer and tells us how CPaaS holds the promise of delivering just that. “CPaaS is basically centralizing all your communication experience throughout the customer journey, making sure it takes care of all touch points and allowing the customer to use their preferred mode of communications.”
Visit www.bics.com
Is there something beyond the ubiquitous customer survey, the survey offered after almost every customer journey to the contact center, looking for help? Recently CallMiner released a CX Landscape Report. In that report, we learn in this podcast, are insights that will allow people to scan a larger horizon and understand the larger picture of CX today. Eric Williamson, chief of marketing at CallMiner, walks us through the report. In 2023, customers will remain loyal and even increase their spending with the companies who continue to offer the products and services, as well as deliver the experiences, that many have come to expect during the pandemic. We learn what the opportunities are, but also the consequences of falling behind might be. Williamson discusses key takeaways from the report and offers some idea for people to act now on data that is available. We learn about insights form the report and how those insights could help guide an organization to improve CX.
Williamson argues that the survey, which is solicited data, needs to be augmented with unsolicited information. “There’s a direct linkage between employee experience and being able to deliver high quality customer experience,” Williamson notes, adding that agent satisfaction is basically an ingredient to CX.
Visit www.callminer.com
Last week, Alianza announced its R&D commitment of $200 million over the next five years to accelerate cloud communications growth for service providers and the company introduced a seasoned product team headed by Chief Product Officer Dag Peak. In this podcast we learn the big news: the softswitch era sunsets. Peak walks us through what comes next and how Alianza is helping its clients make the move and how the new $200 million investment is already loading up a string of new products and innovations which we will be watching over the course of the coming year, and over the next five years. The focus will be on furthering Alianza’s leadership position in innovative voice, video, messaging, mobile, and other cloud communications offerings that enable broadband operators to grow revenue while reducing costs and complexity.
Learn more about our solutions at alianza.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
“Immersive experiences cannot really happen without the cloud, just really because of the amount of computing power involved,” says Martin Taylor, Co-Founder & Deputy CEO, Content Guru. In this podcast, Taylor discusses how Content Guru is building out their immersive CX for their CCaaS platform.
Immersive CX is one of the most exciting technological advancements expected to grow in coming years as virtual spaces such as the Metaverse increase adoption. The opportunity for consumers to interact with brands within virtual worlds is huge and will drive a high level of personalisation. However, the backbone of the technology that will support this reality is still being developed in anticipation of adoption in the coming years. As we enter 2023, technology vendors and channel providers will continue to develop solutions and create a platform for next-generation solutions to thrive.
Visit www.contentguru.com/en-us
“If you don’t have happy employees on board…” says Jordi Torres Gómez, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Verbio, “… you’re draining the company. The labor shortage facing contact centers is not news.” According to Jordi, however, the repetitive tasks that agents face, only makes the problem worse. Voice AI can help. By doing the simplest tasks, Voice AI takes those repetitive tasks off the shoulders of the agents who are then free to focus their energy on higher functions and more complex problems. This leads to better agent experiences and to better customer experiences.
In this podcast we learn about the connection between Voice AI and cutting agent churn, and for that matter, customer churn too. Unlike chatbots, virtual voice assistants can understand, act and close the loop on a customer issue, such as them forgetting their password or handling payments. To maximize the customer experience, Voice AI can be used very effectively for large volume repetitive tasks and can help customers to self-serve 24/7, 365 days a year, removing long wait times. With customers demanding a better call center experience and the very current issue of recruiting and keeping quality agents, Voice AI can increase customer experience and reduce agent churn.
Verbio has been specializing in Voice AI for over 20 years, with many loyal telecommunications clients, providing both on-premise and cloud solutions. Verbio is known in the industry for their Voice AI solutions, which can be highly customized. All of their products are built in-house, and they offer incredible accuracy of over 90%. Of course, accuracy is so important in customer service, as how can you direct your customers to the right support if you can’t understand what your customer is saying? Also, there is nothing more frustrating for customers, if they are not understood by a human or a virtual voice assistant. Verbio are experts in many languages and particularly English, Spanish and Latin American languages, very helpful for the US market.
To find out more www.verbio.com or to get in touch please email marketing@verbio.com.
During the middle of 2022, the FCC stopped regulating copper phone lines. If you are a business, high-rise building with elevators or a manufacturing facility with safety phones, alarms, building entry and/or speaker systems check for those old analog lines. They may be turned off and leave you liable for any resulting incidents.
Raj ShahIf you are a carrier or reseller, AirDial is a solid product to add to your portfolio. Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, speaks with Raj Shah, Enterprise Sales Manager with Ooma about the transition from copper to digital service. Businesses may be paying significantly increased rates to carriers who are no longer supporting POTS lines.
Listen in to Raj as he walks you through the process and describes how Ooma can assess your phone bill and provide you a better alternative.
A “Migration to Digital” article is one of the articles that should be included in carrier & resellers company newsletters as well as their monthly bills to their users – especially to those that they know still have copper lines.
Ooma AirDial is the hassle-free, all-in-one POTS replacement solution.
Reduce complexity by addressing all your POTS replacement needs with one provider. Ooma AirDial runs on a dedicated wireless network and each unit can support up to four life system safety devices. Migration is easy; Ooma AirDial can be self-installed or set up by our technicians. Existing phone numbers can be ported.
Built with regulatory compliance in mind, Ooma AirDial provides the hardware, data, and phone service at one low monthly rate and supports alarm and fire panels, essential phone lines, building entry systems, and more. Enjoy the confidence of being on a reliable platform trusted by more than two million users.
For more information, go to: https://www.ooma.com/business/airdial-pots-line-replacement/ or https://www.ooma.com/
What have we learned, and where do we see the industry going in 2023? McKay Bird, marketing director for TCN, a global provider of a comprehensive, cloud-based call center platform, believes it will come down to changes in the way call centers interact with their agents, increased usage of call center technology and keeping up with the ever-changing compliance landscape. Below are the three main trends that McKay believes call centers will need to focus on heading into the new year:
- Call center agents will become even more of a valuable asset
- The adoption of self-service models will grow
- Updated and additional regulations around compliance will be present
In this podcast, McKay tells us that even as most people may not prefer increased adoption of self service, with 55% of consumers preferring chatbot interaction, 49% still want a live agent to work on the larger issues. Connecting consumers with agents and creating positive experiences for both agent and customer, will be the challenges of 2023. Brand loyalty is connected to agent performance, now perhaps, more than ever.
Visit www.tcn.com
“While many brands understand the value of an omnichannel messaging strategy, adopting one can be a big hurdle for them, and a headache for customer service teams,” said Jon Campbell, Director of Rich Messaging, Sinch. In this podcast, we’ll discuss how Sinch’s Conversation API was designed as a gateway to omnichannel customer engagement. Through a single API and one intuitive platform, brands can reach customers on their preferred channels — and even maintain a conversation while switching between channels. Campbell will also discuss two recent channel additions to the API: KakaoTalk, allowing brands to easily access and engage customers on the super-app used by 97% of the South Korean population, and LINE, a super-app key to reaching end users and customers in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. Listeners will learn how Sinch’s Conversation API impacts the customer experience, and help global brands strengthen customer relationships globally and now, in South Korea and throughout Asia.
Visit www.sinch.com
One size does not fit all: Why UcaaS is not the right approach for every business.
“It’s all about keeping all of those (Mitel) end users happy by being relative and innovative,” says Nick Riggott, Mitel’s UK Country Sales Director, “… but our entire model is about our partners.” In this podcast, Riggott describes a process that combines a focus on the needs of the customers while maintaining a strong channel community. Mitel is a name that almost everyone in telecom is familiar with, while the company’s products and services are installed or are being accessed, around the world. In contrast to some approaches, Mitel has carved out a diverse approach to economic and technological change. In this podcast we learn that Mitel’s one size does not fit all approach means that Mitel is supportive of channel partners whose customers are in the migration journey at their own speed and with their own unique needs. Riggott notes that the new demands of hybrid working might be best served by focusing on the outcomes of the solution. This leaves room for choice and allows the customer and their channel partner vendors, to choose just the right mix of products and services to deliver consistent worker, agent and customer experiences, security, mobility, and consistency. We learn that Mitel is committed to customers adopting Teams. “It’s not a one size fits all.”
Visit www.mitel.com
Viirtue Connect brings together Viirtue community of partners and vendors
Viirtue gathered their channel partner and vendor partner community in their first ever event, Connect, held December 6-7, in St. Petersburg, Florida. “We spent a lot of time on content,” says Dan Rosenrauch of Viirtue, noting that the event aimed at delivering both informational and education value for attendees. In this podcast we learn how the event not only served to help participants understand trends, confront issues and challenges, but also cemented the Viirtue community, creating new personal connections across platforms, products, and services. Dan tells us how Viirtue’s goal is to provide a frictionless buying experience for their partner’s end customer. “What Uber did for transportation and Airbnb did for hospitality were looking to do for our service partners.” In keeping with the goal, the company announced a launch date for their new mobile end user portal which seeks to deliver that type of experience in this market. Attendees were also given a glimpse of a new partnership with Zoom, the details of which will be discussed on our next podcast with Viirtue.
Visit www.viirtue.com
“I went from the product being a piece of software to the product being my employee base,” says newly appointed Televerde CEO, Chris McGugan. “And that is the beautiful thing about it.” In this podcast, readers and listeners may have known McGugan from previous high-ranking roles over at Avaya, a major contact center solution provider. Within the last month, McGugan has taken the key leadership post in a company that is on the other side of that technology world, in running an outbound customer outreach operation. Televerde develops leads and can also close sales on behalf of clients. One of the things that makes the company unique is the workforce. 70% of Televerde’s workforce is incarcerated. The company hires women who are incarcerated, offering people a fresh opportunity in sales. In this podcast we learn how Televerde stresses a development process in contrast to a washing out process in some other sales organizations. The firm delivers a ready workforce that has been previously overlooked, and we learn that employees can matriculate to jobs in the firms that have worked for, under contract for Televerde.
Visit https://televerde.com/
Building Own Social Media Community at CCA Event
“I’m seeing a tremendous appetite for digital content,” says Evan Kirstel. In this podcast, Kirstel, a very prominent social media influencer and observer of the telecommunications industry discusses social media in what he describes as “building a community of interest” around products, services, and brands. In an era where people are increasingly disdaining traditional sales approaches, Kirstel argues that companies should take a fresh approach to customer outreach. Kirstel offers a blend of approaches that combine the personal in person touch with the power of social media. Going to a customer and just simply learning about their business, hearing about their challenges, but refraining from selling them on such a visit, is part of the picture. But then Kirstel says, “… shine a spotlight on it.” Share the experience on social media. These are steps towards a different sales posture where one is a citing more like a trusted advisor, a technology partner than a vendor trying to push products. Such a visit might not only strengthen a relationship with a specific customer but become more visible in an entire local sector. “Do you know who’s who in your community,” challenges Kirstel, offering the insight that businesses need social media visibility, and targeted social media visibility.
Cloud Connections 2023: Building Own Social Media Community
In this podcast, we hear about the forthcoming Cloud Connections 2023 Conference coming up in January 2023 in Fort Lauderdale. “This is the place to be,” noting how cloud has shoved aside many competing technology platforms and that the Cloud Communications Alliance is the premier cloud communications group. Kirstel will be hosting a session on Building Your Own Social Media Community. It’s a must go to,” adds Kirstel. Kirstel also discusses his upcoming participation at ITEXPO and Enterprise Connect.
Visit https://www.evankirstel.com/
Recently announced Ribbon integration with Google SIP Link provides significant enhancement to Google VoIP Services. Ribbon SBCs have been certified to work with Google SIP link. Gordan Eddy discusses the enhancements to Google SIP Link with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
Gordan EddyIn addition to selecting their own telecom provider they are provided security, legacy connectivity for analog TDM lines, migration support from old PBX systems and continued support for those PBX systems that need to stay connected. Resiliency and failover are also provided.
For channel partners, this provides a new combined offering that opens up additional sales opportunities for the Ribbon Channel. Listen in to learn more about the channel details.
Google SIP Link requires a Google-certified SBC to act as a bridge between Google Voice and an organization’s telecom provider. The session border controller provides multiple functions:
- Security – it acts as a voice-aware firewall, protecting the voice traffic itself and it prevents bad actors from entering the data network via the voice network
- Interoperability – Ribbon’s SBCs can adjust key deployment parameters to best match your telecom provider’s requirements, making SIP Link setup easy and trouble-free
- Legacy Connectivity – many organizations still have analog phones, elevator phones, door phones, and fax machines. Ribbon’s hardware-based SBCs have analog ports (FXS and FXO) to keep these assets connected and available.
- Migration – organizations may have technical or business requirements that require the old PBX to stay connected for an extended period. Ribbon SBCs can provide SIP forking and simultaneous ringing so that both Google Voice and the legacy PBX share connectivity.
- Resiliency or Failover – Ribbon SBCs have multiple options to manage disruptions in service depending on the deployment model. These tools can keep your organization connected even if the unexpected happens.
For more information, go to: https://ribboncommunications.com/solutions/enterprise-solutions/securing-communications-sip-trunks/google-voice-sip-link
New communications technology and network expansion requests worldwide are being introduced everyday making it impossible for telecom and development staff to stay current. With the additional problem of staff shortages, more and more communications and enterprise companies are outsourcing their requirement needs to companies like Ecosmob.
Ruchir BrahmbhattRuchir Brahmbhatt, Co-Founder and CTO at Ecosmob speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about how they have grown to be one of the go-to companies when things need to get done technically, project-managed or supported. Ecosmob has the communications expertise and staff to take on those urgent needs and have them come to successful conclusions.
Listen to Ruchir review the company and provide details about how they work with customers worldwide. He also discusses the technology and services that they provide.
About: Ecosmob Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is a world-renowned provider of carrier-grade software solutions and services. They strive to deliver innovative and client-centric solutions. They help their clients modernize their networks to improve competitive positioning and business outcomes. With their team of experts, cutting-edge technologies, and transparent processes, they provide excellence while ensuring outstanding customer service.
Ecosmob’s core expertise lies in VoIP solutions, DevOps, web applications, mobile applications, and outsourced developer staffing services. Ecosmob’s highly skilled developers have a consistent track record of delivering customized solutions within specified deadlines. Their market-leading expertise and solutions power many of the world’s tier-one service providers and independent software vendors. Their solutions are deployed in the telecom, IT, healthcare, education, real estate, hospitality, banking & finance, advertising & entertainment industries across the globe.
For more information, go to: https://www.ecosmob.com or call +91-7778842856
“All the complexity of provisioning made simple,” is how CEO Micah Singer describes Kurmi Software. As companies grow, as they scale up, the complexity of provisioning grows. Kurmi solves this challenge by simplifying the provisioning process. In this podcast, Singer provides an overview of Kurmi. The company recently announced Microsoft co-sell ready status, and the option of running their product in the cloud, Kurmi as a Service. “We just want to be there, every step of the way, as this market evolves, for the enterprises.” Singer tells us that Kurmi is used in companies that are literally household names, as well as public sector and NGO organizations. We also learn about a significant channel opportunity, especially for firms that cater to the over 10,000 employee market. We learn that as we look at SaaS, channels that have customers in the 1,000 to 10,000 band, will be able to turn to Kurmi to help their customers and as a new channel opportunity. Turning to Teams, Singer describes a migration process that includes curious challenges that Kurmi solves, along with reducing the amount of time that might otherwise be needed to manage the added complexity that comes with those moves and changes. The company offers an international footprint with leadership bases in both the US and EU markets.
Visit https://www.kurmi-software.com/en
The migration to the cloud accelerated with more focus on security resulting from COVID remote working. One might say that the rest of the market was starting to focus on what Versa had started developing in 2012.
Kelly AhujaKelly Ahuja, CEO of Versa Networks discusses with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication, how Versa Networks was integrating the Security, Cloud and On-Premises 7 years before the Pandemic.
Kelly is very excited about the single platform VOS solution with security built in the network. With SASE implementations accelerating, BlackRock validated their vision of an integrated single platform solution to address the Cloud migration issues. With the VOS system, customers can connect users, devices, and sites while protecting all of them from anywhere to any application or workflow in any cloud.
Listen in as Kelly continues with more details on their solution, where they see the most activity with the SASE technology, and where they will apply the BlackRock funding.
To simplify and secure your business.
In 2012, they saw that forward-thinking enterprises and service providers were becoming concerned about their ongoing reliance on legacy network hardware and complex, static WAN architectures that prohibited their organizations from digitizing their business and embracing the cloud.
They saw the need to converge and integrate in the cloud and on-premises security, networking, and analytics within a single software operation system (VOS). This, combined with a single-pass parallel processing architecture, was necessary to decrease latency, increase performance, improve security, reduce complexity, and enhance visibility network-wide.
For more information, go to: https:/versa-networks.com/ or call: 408-385-7660
When you provide networking services in Africa and the Middle East, you must be ready for a wide range of unforgiving terrain and wide range of old and new equipment. Marisa Trisolino, CEO at CMC Networks speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about CMC Networks’ success in servicing 51 of the 54 countries in Africa, 12 countries in the Middle East, and meeting the needs of their customers.
The Flex Edge was developed in response to the lack of flexibility with edge devices and networking production shortages. Marisa goes on to describe the Flex Edge with rapid deployment capabilities as it helps integration with existing technologies. It connects points of presence without needing to ship equipment or needing to be physically present in the country.
Marisa TrisolinoShe also describes a variety of solutions they have at their disposal including:
- SD-WAN
- SDN
- NFV
- AI
- Cloud
- Cybersecurity
- EDGE
- Virtualization
Listen in as Marisa provides excellent information about their services and their company which strives to deliver quality and the best customers service possible.
CMC Networks® is a service provider offering customized solutions designed for tomorrow’s business needs in a cost-effective, scalable, and resilient manner. CMC Networks delivers next generation intelligent connectivity networking solutions across treacherous terrain. This all-in-one-networking approach provides a welcome convenience and guarantees customers that CMC’s network is future-ready.
Within digital-first transformation, CMC Networks addresses the needs of tomorrow’s network – which is intelligent and software-defined, and these future-ready SDN networks are powerfully established. Conventional networking and the growth and shift towards software-based network automation will revive the role of legacy networks. It is clear that a wave of new network application workloads will drive meaningful business outcomes in managing business requirements.
For more information, go to: https://www.cmcnetworks.net/
First available to Veterans and now available to everyone to make a profile map of their talents. This will also assist employers looking for the right talents for a position, people with disabilities, and second chance individuals.
Robyn J. Grable, founder and CEO of Talents ASCEND, and Veterans ASCEND describes to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how, when she ended her 9 years of service in the Navy, the Navy job descriptions did not translate to the civilian positions available. She basically had to start over with a new career.
Robyn GrableVeterans and civilians alike are now suffering from an antiquated resume and hiring process.
Listen in to Robyn as she highlights the key characteristics of AI Powered Talent Sourcing. This is an amazing process using AI to enable and enhance the talent discovery as well as the talent requirements for specific positions. This is a game changer for hiring that the telecommunications channel can use to fill many of the unfilled positions available.
Talents ASCEND’s mission is to be the beacon of intentional change for talent diversity, equity, and inclusion.
They look for media opportunities that will allow them to share their message, tell their story and help their communities.
Employers are missing out on the talent their military service members, veterans and spouses, people with disabilities and justice-involved bring to an organization.
They remove the barriers and bias.
For more information, go to: https://talentsascend.com/
Unplugged is an emerging technology company that will be delivering mobile phones protecting the user’s privacy. Each current smart mobile phone has on it a Mobile Advertising ID number. Ryan Paterson, President at Unplugged speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication and goes on to say that when you download an app and you agree to their terms, you are giving them permission to collect all sorts of data about you from your location, things you browse, and much more.
Ryan PatersonOnce they have the data, they will sell it to their partners who will then use it to market other products and technology to you. They know everything about you. Where you live, where you work, what groups you are in, who your friends are -they know everything.
This is a must listen to podcast in order to find out all about Ad technology, the marketing of your data and how to prevent it while on your phone or laptop.
Unplugged will deliver the UP Phone with a State-of-the-art Operating System developed for data privacy and security. Independent from Google and Apple.
Stay in control of your information. The UP APP Suite gives you Privacy and Security with apps that do not mine your data. A real alternative to Big Tech.
- Proprietary Apps – Specially developed for your privacy, security, and your peace of mind!
- UP Messenger – Communicate securely without being intercepted or watched.
- UP VPN – Stealthy and invisible. An extra layer of security.
- Safe download – their scoring system warns you about 3rd party app’s data exploitation.
For more information, go to: https://www.unplugged.com/
On December 3, 1992, a developer working for Vodafone, sent the first ever text message from a computer to a Nokia cell phone. It read “Merry Christmas,” the first instance of a classic tradition to send well wishes during the holidays. Today, on the 30th anniversary of the first ever text message, Bandwidth’s Stephanie Lashley will be taking us through the history of texting, from the nostalgic years of the Nokia phones and ringtones, to the complex regulations in place today to support the massive B2C texting industry. Bandwidth has been in operation since 1999, helping businesses navigate the changing space of telecommunications for the last 23 years, and powering over a billion messages each month.
Visit www.bandwidth.com
Previous wireless communication solutions at the end of fiber’s reach helped but never fully delivered what was needed – comparable fiber performance at a fraction of the cost and deployment time. Dirk Gates, president of Tarana Wireless, describes the Next-Generation wireless technology to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
Previous fixed wireless solutions relied on WiFi or 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) which were geared toward mobility and not high-speed broadband access. This limited scalability and performance.
Dirk GatesThe Next Generation fixed wireless was designed to provide the fiber-like speeds over fixed wireless at distance. This provides resellers and business another option to the broadband, expensive fiber and the underperforming traditional fixed wireless.
Listen in as Dirk reviews the the Next Generation Fixed Wireless features that he and the rest of Tarana are so excited about – real game changer technology.
G1x2 mode
On September 27, Tarana announced its release of G1x2 mode, a software update that doubles the current 80MHz bandwidth of the G1 platform to 160MHz, organized as four independent 40MHz carriers — in either 5 or 6 GHz or both — to deliver up to 1.6 Gbps in aggregate for each G1 link. Additionally, Tarana also announced that G1 in 6 GHz will soon be available in the US, Canada, and other countries around the world.
They’ve built their platform company on a foundation of passion for deep innovation and tight focus on getting great things done. their results speak for themselves: they’ve grown from 0 to over 180 customers in their first year of G1 sales, with hundreds more in the pipeline, including companies across the full spectrum of the industry — fiber builders, WISPs, and incumbent broadband providers — connecting businesses and consumers alike. They’ll collaborate with anyone working to make the digital divide a thing of the past. That’s their enduring mission — that’s Tarana!
For more information, go to: https://www.taranawireless.com/ or call: (408) 351-4085
With the massive movement of the workforce to homes during the pandemic, a significant percentage will likely continue the work from anywhere option. This has significantly affected the network security with 20% to 40% growth in cyber-crime. Harald Remmert, CTO of Cellular Solutions for Digi, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the continuing trend and the consequences of a security breach.
Harald RemmertHarald goes on to say that if your cyber-security is inadequate, the following can happen:
- Unauthorized access to confidential data
- Denial of service attacks
- Loss of business continuity
- Regulatory fines
- Reputational damage
Listen in as Harald identifies the costs of a breach to a company and also identifies how future breaches can be avoided when specific preventative actions are taken.
About: From vast oil fields and evolving cities to intensive care units and factory floors, they connect the millions of sensors, valves, and components that allow these critical infrastructures to carry out their tasks. Even in the most demanding environments, Digi provides the essential layer of remote monitoring and management that IoT (Internet of Things) communications depend on.
Their customers are pushing the boundaries of their industries and exploring the possibilities for what’s next. They have innovative ideas, big problems to solve, and aggressive goals. Budgets are tight, deadlines are looming, and their success depends on the ability to make smarter decisions faster. That’s where Digi comes in.
Digi puts proven technology to work for their customers so they can connect complex networks and take new products from ideation to deployment. They bring visions and innovations to life with machine connectivity that’s relentlessly reliable, secure, scalable, and manageable. That’s Digi.
For more information, go to: https://www.digi.com/
AI and machine learning, like many similar technologies, have sometimes been viewed with dread as possibly another step forward that somehow diminishes customer experiences and devalues labor. But in this podcast Michelle Randall, CMO, Playvox, argues that AI may hold the key to improve the satisfaction levels of employees and thereby improve customer experiences. In this second of two podcasts, we learn about Playvox’s differentiated approach to deploying AI as a way of improving efficiencies, cutting costs, but improving the employee experiences when leveraged to optimize scheduling. Playvox also can analyze customer sentiment, invaluable in a company’s visibility to everything from detecting product issues and customers concerns to understanding how to better match team members with anticipated challenges. “AI is a journey, not a one and done answer,” adds Randall.
Visit www.playvox.com
NodeZero is a product that enables the channel to really take advantage of the security threats highlighted by the pandemic. This real-time continuously on autonomous pentesting and continuously learning AI technology proactively identifies and fixes internal and external attack vectors before attackers can exploit them.
Jennifer LeeThe best part of this technology is that it is only sold through the channel. Horizon3.ai wants to continue developing the channel and is looking for national partners as well.
Benefits include:
- Deal protection and increased margins
- New Partner Certification Trainings
- Sales and Technical Resources
- New Incentives
- Marketing Opportunities
Listen in to Jennifer Lee as she provides a very good overview of the product and the channel. This is one product you will want to add to your portfolio!
Autonomous pentesting enables organizations to see themselves through the eyes of the attacker. With this attacker’s perspective, enterprises can continuously identify their ineffective security controls and identify critical, exploitable weaknesses that they must immediately fix. However, autonomous pentesting is only part of the equation. Their larger vision is to leverage their expertise, data, and insights to build an autonomous defense designed to be humans by exception. They will deliver continuous attack, paired with continuous defense–executing an integrated learning loop that gets smarter with every interaction, delivered as an Autonomous Security Platform.
The Cyber Terrain Map, the knowledge graph at the heart of Horizon3.ai’s autonomous pentesting platform, is the critical data structure required to build autonomous security. With every pentest executed, these knowledge graphs get smarter – increasing its understanding of how an attacker can chain together harvested credentials, misconfigurations, dangerous product defaults, and exploitable vulnerabilities to compromise a system. Collective intelligence services analyze these insights and further optimize the attack algorithms. Thus, the more autonomous pentests they run, the richer their collective intelligence becomes, which leads to more efficient & effective attack algorithms.
For more information, go to: https://www.horizon3.ai/
Farmers know Agri and Cypress knows tech, so Cypress Agri-tech started integrating complete solutions for the rural areas knowing that their customers did not have the expertise or the time to integrate their own solution. Joseph Traut, VP of Operations with Cypress Agri-tech reviews their company strategy and sales process with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication.
They are delivering the latest technology to their resellers completely integrated and tested with proven results. When they discuss their technology, Cypress Agri-tech explains how they will help their resellers sell, deploy, monitor, and analyze the resulting data to make adjustments, improve their watering, fertilizing, animal deterrents, communications and more.
Joseph TrautThey have assembled the latest best of breed technology for many of the industries in rural areas. While located in California, their solutions apply to the same industries around the world. Listen in to hear how well they know their products and how they work closely with their resellers and end consumers.
Their mission is to provide effective solutions to the world’s most pivotal industries by creating a streamlined way to access the best technologies and innovations available.
Agri-tech is a sub-sector of technology that has room for exponential growth as the result of mounting pressure to consolidate time spent on repetitive tasks and allocation of scarce resources. At Cypress, their customers deserve easy access to these emerging technologies in a way that creates for a seamless relationship between grower and distributor. Their team conducts extensive research & due diligence when prospecting potential partners producing solutions in the areas of labor management, pest/disease crop management, irrigation allocation analysis, energy efficient solutions and beyond. Through their trusted Family of Partners who share in their vision, they can provide a suite of sustainable solutions to ensure their customers have everything needed to support their operational & environmental goals in the most streamlined manner.
For more information, go to: https://www.cypressagritech.com/ or Call: 661-241-3622
Industry’s First Cloud Service Sales Model That Pays Lump Sums
“Our partners can now choose, at the point of sale, whether they want to get paid up front for that deal or whether they want to continue on a monthly recuring model, where they will see their payments each month,” says Al Kelley Vice President of Channel Sales for the Americas for NEC Corporation of America. NEC Corporation of America (NEC) has launched NEC UNIVERGE BLUE® CLOUD CASH, a program that offers NEC UNIVERGE BLUE® cloud communications channel partners the option to get paid upfront on the full-term of the agreement.
In this podcast, we learn how NEC’s Cloud Cash program offers the partners the option of getting paid upfront, even while selling a platform that includes both products and ongoing services, deployed together in as-a-service model. Kelly tells us that NEC partners now actually have three different ways to choose from to be paid, and that with Cloud Cash, partners do not lose out on promotions and spiffs that NEC might be offering at the time. “One of the benefits of doing business with NEC is choice,” says Kelly, adding, “It’s also the solutions we sell…” pointing out NEC’s scalable and secure approach to hybrid working and other current business needs.
Visit NEC Corporation of America, NEC UNIVERGE BLUE® and Channel
Poly powered by HP commits to hybrid word era
“The office is no longer necessary the place where people are meeting,” says Natalia Herrera, Senior Director Global Alliances at HP. Hybrid working means hybrid meetings and that brings up new challenges, in addition to the ongoing need to deliver high quality voice and video. Poly, with its corporate DNA tracing back into the beginnings of linking conference rooms and remote participants, is now tackling the new challenge of creating better experiences for Zoom meetings, where participants are distributed across several separate settings and locations. In this podcast, Herrera discusses how Poly Studio Systems for Zoom Rooms and the Poly TC10 controller, delivers meeting equity.
“All of our technology is equipped with very advanced AI and machine learning,” adds Herrera. In understanding this announcement in the context of the larger picture for Poly and HP customers, we learn that the company is deploying what they have learned and developed in AL and ML to solve customer challenges and to deliver on the expectations of a changed culture and method of work. The recently announced products are the first out the gate of the newly merged HP and Poly, with the combined company eying new opportunities for both end users and the channel.
Poly solutions for Zoom Zoom Rooms HP Poly powered by HP
Playvox helps customers cut costs, improve CX and EX
The world where voice was the primary way customers reached out to interact with organizations has disappeared, but the CRM, and other systems, that were built to accommodate that world are still here. According to Michelle Randall, CMO, Playvox, companies need something built, from the ground up, for the digital age. In this podcast, we learn about Playvox, that Randall argues offers powerful differences based on not having to bend legacy systems to fit the era’s new challenges. “Customer retention matters,” says Randall, adding that retention depends on CX. “What Playvox figured out was that the agent is the heart and soul of what your customer experience is, so if you can enable, empower and engage the agent, those people will then provide better customer experience, and guess what – that leads to better customer retention.”
Visit www.playvox.com
Over the next three years, enterprise companies will be spending more on 5G than they have in the past. Tom Loozen, Global Telecommunications Leader with EY, speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the status of and future trends for several technology categories.
Tom Loozen
Instead of self-driving cars, the activity around 5G is getting more near term focusing on productivity, optimizing systems and processes. For example, while combining 5G and IoT, they can help energy efficiency and sustainability.
Listen in to Tom as he continues his forecast for the next 3 years for 5G, IoT and cybersecurity. He will also provide insight into the trends that will define future telecommunications. He does not leave out 6G.
About: At EY, their purpose is Building a better working world. The insights and quality services they provide help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. They develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on their promises to all their stakeholders. In so doing, they play a critical role in building a better working world for their people, for their clients and for their communities.
In a world that’s changing faster than ever, their purpose acts as their ‘North Star’ guiding their more than 300,000 people — providing the context and meaning for the work they do every day. They help digital pioneers fight data piracy; guide governments through cash-flow crises; unlock new medical treatments with data analytics; and pursue high quality audits to build trust in financial markets and business. In other words, working with entrepreneurs, companies, and entire countries to solve their most pressing challenges.
For more information, go to: https://www.Ey.com
“Any device you have that’s 3G will become obsolete,” says Tony Nicoletti, VP of Business Development at DPL Telematics. On December 31, “the ball will drop,” adds Nicoletti as the carriers will no longer support 3G devices. In this podcast, we learn about the migration from 3G to 4G and about the benefits of making the switch. As 3G fades out, 4G and 5G are in place in most places, already offering significantly faster speeds and many new options. Nicoletti also discusses the IoT improvements for devices that are also on the network. City by city, 5G is being rolled out but the thinking is that 4G will not be sunset for another seven years. We learn about some strategies to future proof assets as we move forward.
Visit DPL Telematics
“Just a decade ago we were touting single digit mega-bit per second throughputs across the US as a big thing,” observes Dr Paul Carter, CEO and CO-founder of Global Wireless Solutions. “And now we are seeing a twenty-fold increase over that time frame.” In this podcast Carter looks at research conducted by Global Wireless Solutions, a mobile insights consulting firm, which found that the number of consumers who accessed 5G networks in the US grew from just 43% in 2021 to 61% in 2022. This means that 42% more consumers accessed 5G networks in 2022 than in 2021, a significant increase compared to the single digit rise in 5G access of just 7% the year before (2020-2021). A majority of urban and rural customers are accessing 5G one or more times in the past twelve months. “5G is here and we believe it has reached its tipping point.” Carter walks us through how 5G changes behaviors such as screen time, and how 5G up ends whole industries. As well as purchasing more 5G capable devices, consumers with 5G are also spending more time on those devices – perhaps due to improvements in throughputs and access to apps and services that 5G brings. GWS’ OMCP panel test data shows that consumers with 5G smartphones saw their average minutes of daily use reach 312 per day, which means people are spending 33% of their waking day on devices.
Learn more Global Wireless Solutions
The pandemic is over, but the magnitude of network security holes exposure provided by the epidemic is now being addressed by delivering more tightly controlled micro-networks. The Nokia agreement will allow IBM to rapidly deploy those micro-networks around the world.
Stephen Rose, General Manager for the Global Telecom Industry with IBM and Rakshit Mehta, Business Development Leader for Global Telecom Industry with IBM speak with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News about IBM’s current direction with Nokia.
Rhashit Mehta
Stephen Rose
Over the last 24 months, enterprise organizations have learned what hardware and functions can be grouped together to enhance performance and security. Those categories are now being enclosed in micro networks that the Nokia technology will allow IBM personnel to deploy quickly and efficiently while taking advantage of the 5G edge technology as well.
Once the micro network is put in place, there will be more orchestration to put in place AI, automation, and analytics to enhance the micro network performance.
This is all being accomplished with the Communication Service Providers in mind since they are the primary channel that IBM is using to implement these solutions. For example, retail operations will be able to take advantage of 5G and utilize real time AI to improve the customer experience as well as increase sales.
Listen to hear about the new relationship with Nokia and the positive impact it will have.
When you choose IBM, you gain the strength, experience, expertise, and reliability of a recognized global IT security and privacy leader. The IBM Trust Center will provide you with information about their commitment to protect your data, and maintain the security and privacy for their enterprise, products, and services. You will find information on IBM's internal IT security management program, privacy framework, and adherence to industry standards of their products and services.
Trust is foundational to their company and how they engage with their customers.
For more information, go to: https://www.ibm.com/us-en?ar=1
The Evolve2 Buds feature a long wireless range, offering a unique, in-case dongle that can be plugged into your PC. According to Michelle Ritz, Regional Product Marketing Manager, the in-case dongle is a key differentiator, allowing users to use their earbuds with both their phone and their laptop. From there, the Evolve2 Buds check off all the boxes for hybrid workers that need both a ready for work device and for a device that matches their expectations as consumers.
Key features of the Evolve2 Buds include:
Certified for Microsoft Teams and leading UC platforms – for enhanced collaboration experience MultiSensor Voice technology – ensures professional call performance by using multiple mics and Jabra algorithms to block out noise Plug-and-play USB adapter for enhanced connectivity – 20 meter/65 feet range allows users the freedom to move around their work environment Advanced Multipoint connection – connect to two devices at one time Adjustable Active Noise Cancellation – filters out background noise allowing for increased focus HearThrough and single earbud use – allows the user to hear surrounding sounds through the earbuds whilst wearing them Increased battery life – with 33 hours of battery, including the case and wireless charging Ultra-discreet design – for ultimate comfort and a professional look
Ritz walks us through these features and describes how they come together to enable users to operate and work in different environments, and even match needs that might change over the course of the day. Ritz also notes advances in ergonomics and miniaturization.
Visit www.jabra.com
In this podcast, Alex Maguigad from CINNOX sheds light on how seamless telephony and digital channels helps in improving CX, and why EX or employee experience is at the heart of the digital business disruption and why it must be an integral part of the business transformational strategy.
CX and EX are intertwined and parts of a cohesive system that cannot be viewed in isolation. An undervalued and disengaged employee has no incentive to provide the best customer experience and given the plethora of choices a customer has today, all it takes is one negative interaction or experience for the customer to stop using your business’s products or services.
You will learn how to address the gap between CX and EX and ways to maximize everyone’s experience in this engaging dialogue.
Visit www.cinnox.com
Designed from the endpoint eSIM to the app, security is their priority allowing you to know, what the device is, who it is registered to, and should it have ZERO trust access to the application.
Warren Michael Small
Warren Michael Small, Vice President Strategic Growth and Incubation at NTT Ltd. Speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about NTT’s providing Las Vegs their 5G Private Network.
The solution will not only provide data connectivity, but it will also accomplish this while making access affordable, in part, as a result of the solution being integrated into the city’s infrastructure.
NTT is also working with other cities around the world to digitize city operations, improve speed, reduce cost, and provide data feedback that enables better management of city resources, assets, and personnel.
Listen in as Warren details some of the key points and risks involved with the City of Las Vegas and NTT 5G implementation.
As part of NTT DATA, a USD 30 billion IT services provider, NTT Ltd. is a leading IT infrastructure and services company. Through technology and innovation, they deliver a secure and connected future that empowers their people, clients, and communities. To help organizations deliver on their business priorities, they’re by their side, transforming their businesses and technology at the pace they aspire to, driving the outcomes they want with the services they need. As an industry leader in networks, data centers, cloud, security, and managed services, as well as an innovator in Private 5G, they serve 65% of the Fortune Global 500 and more than 75% of the Fortune Global 100. They also work closely with leading sports organizations, including UEFA, INDYCAR and the Tour de France. They enable a connected future.
For more information, go to: https://services.global.ntt
Cloud Communications at a Crossroads
“How are you going to navigate these waters ahead, is a critical question right now,” says Clark Peterson, Chairman of the Cloud Communications Alliance. In this podcast, Kevin Nethercott, Managing Partner of the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance joins Peterson as we discuss the upcoming Cloud Connections 2023 to be held January 16 through 18, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Cloud Communications at a Crossroads, is the event’s theme.
With the new year, and a new economic situation, the CCA is offering an event focused on ideas for cloud communications companies to reload and reinvent. Peterson describes Cloud Connections 2023 as the largest event in CCA history. A CPaaS Showcase will be a headline feature of the conference.
“The idea here is to really take the theory out of it (CPaaS) and to take it into a commercially viable conversation,” says Kevin Nethercott. “We’ll be able to show things that are in service, services that people are buying and using.” Nethercott outlines how the CPaaS Showcase, featuring a competition between available solutions will enable MSPs and CSPs to reimagine their businesses. CPaaS has emerged as the center of new opportunities and possibilities, especially in now critical areas such as creating great customer experiences.
Learn about Cloud Connections 2023 Learn about the CCA Learn about CPaaS Acceleration Alliance
Stadiums. Airports. Warehousing. Industrial manufacturing. Extractive industries. Each of these offers unique challenges. 5G opens new opportunities. In this podcast, we learn about a mesh 5G solution that provides ultra-reliable, low-latency, and highly secure connections for devices and people. Mike Henderson, Chief Revenue Officer, outlines how his company is pioneering solutions in these challenging environments with your technology differentiated from other private 5G providers. Henderson offers us use cases and how these use cases have created changed outcomes for their clients. The company offers three models for partners, opening doors to new recurring income wins, and more possibilities to offer customized solutions for companies and organizations that might have been outside a channel partner’s usual beat. We learn how this might be a place for partner to look at as a space to grow with 5G.
Visit https://gxc.io/
If you want a disruptive player in a disruptive market, then that’s where we are, says Andrew Hall, Chief Commercial Officer, of Quantanite. “I’m the David in the David and Goliath story,” Hall adds, reflecting on how his firm has carved out a space among industry giants. In this podcast we learn how Quantanite is determined to create great customer experiences. Hall describes a company that deploys technology, but at the same time, offers a thoughtful approach to offering their services. Driven by quality over quantity, Hall discusses service differentiation. A big part of that process consists of taking a fresh look at each step of the process of managing, digesting, and reacting to data. We learn about partner opportunities as well. “I am not driven by the number of seats. I’m driven by outcomes for our clients,” says Hall. We hear about advantages their operations in Johannesburg, South Africa, with its strong education resources, multi-cultural, multi-lingual workforce, and strong cultural ties to the United Kingdom. “There is an amazing skillset of people, and just lovely people that just want to have an opportunity,” Hall adds.
Visit www.Quantanite.com
Kyndryl marks first year apart from IBM
“We are advising, designing, building, deploying, and managing the world’s most critical infrastructure,” says Gretchen Tinnerman, US Global Practice Leader for Network and Edge, of Kyndryl. “But we’re doing that in a transformed state.” Tinnerman defines the transformed state as a company that invests heavily in its team, focusing on “reskilling” and “upskilling”. For Kyndryl, 5G not only changes the conversation, and the way we hold the conversation, but 5G also changes the way we do things, including valuing the people inside an organization that make it all happen. In this podcast, we learn how Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider was spun off out of IBM one year ago. Since then, Kyndryl has seen a lot of customer demand for 5G and edge computing support, with use cases ranging from personal safety to manufacturing automation. Kyndryl has also advised thousands of customers globally on how to embrace edge computing to open new dimensions for their business. Tinnerman discusses the experiences of the past year, looks into the future and comments on the major trends she sees in the industry.
Visit www.kyndryl.com
“Once you understand what isn’t working… the answer really becomes more clear,” says Michael Abenhaim, SVP of Americas Sales at Dubber.
Abenhaim describes a seismic challenge facing the service provider community and discusses a path forward. Native services and applications offered at a higher margin and lower cost, underpinned with 100% customer ownership will, according to Abenhaim, deliver the differentiation SPs and customers are looking for, but without deep partnering this solution is still difficult to realize. “By making conversational intelligence native on their network, service providers set the building blocks in place to deliver unique and valuable intelligence back to their customers in ways others are not or cannot,” Abenhaim adds.
In this podcast, Abenhaim opens the idea of conversational data as a place for providers to tap into, offering their customers an invaluable intelligence resource, and unlocking an underpenetrated revenue stream.
Visit www.dubber.net
In this podcast, Doug Green and Infobip’s Ted Franz discuss omnichannel, conversational commence, and how the overall customer experience is evolving. How can companies engage with customers beyond phone calls, email, and their websites? Many SMBs and middle market companies are still new to messaging or are only sending basic one-way alerts. Others have siloed data that limits their ability to deliver a coherent customer journey. Brands are now beginning to understand that true two-way conversational messaging across popular social media channels and chatapps like WhatsApp are desired, the same tools used by many to connect with friends and family.
“You need to meet the customer where they are today, and service them either on the revenue side or the service support side on the preferred channel that they like to use. We see a big shift in brands now recognizing this,” says Ted Franz, Director of Product Strategy at Infobip.
Within companies there is also a heightened focus on providing contact center agents with more sophisticated tools to help them better support customers. If the agent has incomplete visibility and context in a customer interaction, we have the beginnings of a poor customer experience where agents lack the information needed to meet the customer where they are with an issue and then to resolve the issue. “Enterprises are starting to deploy customer data platforms or CDP,” Franz adds. Infobip offers this type of platform, and we learn how a CDP helps an organization segment their audience and deliver hyper-personalized, relevant content at the right time and on the customers’ preferred channel.
One more particularly exciting aspect of our conversation is learning about the accessibility of these solutions for smaller and middle-sized firms. Hyper-personalizing the customer experience is now vital to maintaining customer brand expectations, curbing costly customer defections, and creating deeper connections with customers.
To learn more, visit www.infobip.com.
“The cost of cloud has become a boardroom conversation,” says Becky Carr, CMO of Tangoe. “Ten years ago, cloud was all about saving money.” In the years that have followed, the costs of cloud, the costs of buying infrastructure as a service, and the cost other services, have changed the way companies buy technology. The recurring charges might begin as low costs points of entry, but management of those costs quickly assembles. Recurring charges then, and the proliferation of recurring charges now, remain a cost management challenge. In this podcast, Becky Carr, CMO of Tangoe, discusses how her company has made TEM into a way for organizations to gain visibility into their whole technology posture, how and what they are using and to understand the related costs. Carr shares with us research on the changes that are possible when companies gain a better understanding of their technology spending. For enterprises, TEM is something to look at, especially as we enter a more challenging environment. For channel partners, Carr outlines how TEM can be a fresh opportunity for revenues and new conversations with clients.
Visit www.tangoe.com
Summa Networks software enables mobile communications on 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G and beyond. Francesca Rigamonti, Marketing Director at Summa Networks speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about their NextGen HSS software which was developed by a carrier for carriers. The Summa NextGen HSS enables the creation and management of a single subscription with an unlimited number of profiles:
Home Subscriber Server (HSS) for LTE Data Equipment Identity Register (EIR) Subscriber Location Function (SLF) Home Subscriber Server (HSS) for IMS Voice Home Location Register (HLR) and Authentication Center (AuC) for 2G/3G
Francesca Rigamonti
With 30 carriers utilizing their technology, it is obvious that their HSS model with a common database design is catching on and can improve performance while reducing costs.
Summa Networks, together with its partners, have jointly developed an integrated, fully virtualized, cost-effective, and unique VoLTE/VoWiFi solution: voLTEinabox.
Summa Networks develops and delivers state-of-the-art telecom products that ensure carrier-grade performance. Summa Networks’ unique NextGen HSS reaches further than current HSS solutions and can be seamlessly deployed in-house and in Cloud environments. It enables smooth interworking between 3G and 4G thanks to LTE HSS, IMS HSS and HLR open standard technologies in one piece of software.
Summa Networks belongs to the holding Enreach, which prides itself in the success of several labels such as the Dutch telecom provider Voiceworks and the German IP PBX leader Swyx.
For more information, go to: https://www.summanetworks.com/home/index.html
“The end game is to deliver great outcomes for the end users,” says Iain Sinnott, Enreach for Service Providers’ Head of International Carrier Sales. “They (the end users) pay everyone’s wages.” In this podcast, Sinnott begins with that basic foundational observation and builds out the case that everything the community of carriers, service providers and developers do, ultimately must come back to the customers, whose needs must be met and whose payment of fees and charges, basically pays (and justifies) the whole industry. Sinnott argues that OTT players such as Microsoft have penetrated the SMB market, but don’t always match the requirements of the whole workforce. Service providers have the opportunity to cooperate with hyperscalers to bring a broader solution to the market that appeal to all types of workers. For this, in turn, they need a strong partner that enables them to differentiate, while offering a real partnership approach.
Visit www.enreach.com
ARRA Networks is the best Mesh Network for the edge. With only 5% bandwidth loss between nodes, up to 40 or 50 nodes deep can be deployed with a mile or more between nodes.
Paul Egermeier, CEO of Arra Networks provides a great overview of the company to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication along with some market positioning information.
Sonny Vleisides
Paul Egermeier
Sonny Vleisides, CTO provides a very insightful look at the technology. Sonny highlights the key features of the technology and provides the reasons why their industrial Mesh network is superior to other mesh solutions. It is not just about the mesh network; it is also about a total solution including a network management system. It can literally be set up in minutes.
If you are a reseller looking for an edge micro-network solution, listen in to this podcast. You will learn that this mesh is very versatile and can be deployed for a variety of situations while providing a 37 times cost reduction. We are in a recession – you can provide better service while closing more business with better pricing! ARRA PRODUCTS
About: ARRA Networks' mission is to dramatically reduce the CAPEX and OPEX costs to enable cost effective Broadband Access for under served urban, rural and Industrial IOT/Precision AG markets.
ARRA accomplishes this by seamlessly integrating FOUR technologies together in their Wireless Mesh Router Solutions:
Distributed Ledger Fractal AI Antenna Industrial Mesh Modular Frequency
For more information, go to: https://arranetworks.com/.
The COVID pandemic required a rapid restructuring of corporate and business networks to include mobile and remote work-from-home network access. That 2-year network nightmare also highlighted the security holes accelerating a need for networking and security personnel to address the problems.
Jacob Hess
Don Witt, of The Channel Daily News, speaks with Jacob Hess, Chief Academic Officer, and Co-founder of NGT Academy, about their training programs. Jacob points out that both co-founders served in the Air Force teaching servicemen what they needed to know to be network and cyber security engineers. They have implemented the same style of training at NGT.
For example, their Skills Qualifications Checks process proactively implements a verification procedure for the specific skills on the list. The list was created from those known activities that are required to perform certain functions in their chosen NGT program. Jacob goes on to enthusiastically outline their new training program.
If you are a carrier or enterprise, NGT can update and provide current information to your staff. If you were in the military or not, NGT can prepare you for a new HIGH PAYING career.
Listen in to Jacob and then give him a call to find out how you can hire his graduates!
About: NGT Academy was founded by two Air Force veterans who have trained thousands of engineers for the military. They have combined the military-style training philosophy of job readiness with decades of network engineering and cyber security experience working at Cisco Systems, Arista Networks, and Dimension Data into an immersive program to get people into cyber security or networking careers faster and more effectively than ever!
They believe they have the best program to equip anyone to be cyber security specialists in the fastest way possible. They believe in having a strong foundation in network architecture before students go into their cyber security training. Once the student masters the fundamentals in networking, they are better prepared to step into the NGT Academy cyber security training program along with real-world projects.
For more information, go to: https://nexgent.com/
“Everything is really customer driven at DTEN,” says Scott Krueckeberg, Head of Strategic Alliances at DTEN. Recently, DTEN began certification process for Microsoft Teams. In this podcast Krueckeberg discusses how customers are requiring their technology to be flexible to meet the needs of hybrid work and learning. We learn how those pieces will fit together with this process, including the company’s Zoom involvement. DTEN has also launched a new DTEN D7X Series to offer customers the ability to connect with the video collaboration platform of their choice, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The company’s goal is to democratize technology by providing a seamless, powerful, and intuitive collaboration experience that is accessible to all customers.
Visit www.dten.com
D&H Distributing has stepped up its offerings under its “Modern Collaboration” umbrella, adding partners and solutions and fortifying its staff and leadership to increase sales in this category. This includes the addition of vendors like Jabra in 2022 and other new relationships. It involves partners such as Intermedia, Microsoft Teams, Nextiva, RingCentral and Zoom on the software side; and Airtame, Logitech video conferencing, Neat, and Yealink on the hardware side—to name a few. The company also added two new cloud specialists to the Modern Applications team to expand support for UCaaS. Join D&H’s Vice President of Modern Solutions Jason Bystrak as he speaks to Publisher Doug Green about these new advantages for MSPs and resellers.
Jason Bystrak
D&H is also helping resellers and MSPs learn how to best attach a roster of services to these solutions. This “AIM” (Assess / Implement / Manage) model will help them generate more turn-key projects that include higher margin attachments, which add value for the end-user.
This all falls under D&H’s new Modern Solutions initiative, which includes the creation of a new business unit that helps resellers better bundle turn-key cloud-based solutions, hardware, services and programs to address the evolving challenges of the hybrid workplace. A lot has been put on the shoulders of resellers and MSPs to manage all this technology and cloud-based services, and the Modern Solutions business unit has been designed to better address that.
Visit dandh.com
Being able to analyze one hundred percent of your calls gives you visibility into customer sentiment, which leads to being able to better plan, allocate resources, and react, according to Anthony Perez, Manager, Marketing & Business Development at Miarec. In this podcast we learn how products such as sentiment analysis fits in with a larger family of analytical tools that offer IT managers timely information that leads to a more productive contact center. We also learn how Miarac improves security postures and regulatory compliance. Perez tells us how these tools can deepen a service provider’s relationship with their customers.
Visit www.miarec.com
“We optimize voice for Teams,” says Francine Troumpoucis Channel Account Manager and Business Development with a Focus on Microsoft for SCB Global. With roots tracking back twenty years in the telecom industry, today, making voice work and work well for Teams users, is a major focus. In this podcast, Troumpoucis discusses how SCB does this and why this makes SCB a must-see and must-have technology partner for companies that really want voice from Teams. We also learn about OPTOshield, offering real-time protection for the distributed enterprise using Microsoft Teams, delivering control, security and compliance. We also learn about CCaaS and SD-WAN integration. We learn that SCB offers a Microsoft solution that is native within Microsoft Teams. The company also offers a PSTN redundancy, even as their Teams approach is stable and robust. SCB Global’s customers includes “many households names”. Troumpoucis tells us that, “Our customers are truly global with global challenges.”
Visit https://www.scb-global.com/
What are the eSIMs and iSIMs and why are developers and manufacturers integrating them quickly into product production lines? James Kirby, Senior Vice President & Head of EMEA at CSG speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News about CSG and the evolution if the SIM technology. It will be a quick transition to the eSIM based on all of the advantages that it possesses.
James Kirby
James also discusses CSP and how they will create stronger market opportunities resulting from the eSIM along with other advancements. MVNOs will also feel impacts of the digital transformation.
Listen in as James provides some real insight into this currently hot subject!
About: Customer experience, commerce and payments have changed forever. With innovative new technologies like 5G and AI reshaping consumer expectations, it’s up to brands to deliver digital, engaging experiences that win over customers, no matter where they are in their customer journey.
That’s where CSG comes in. CSG is a purpose-driven, high-growth SaaS platform company helping some of the world’s most recognizable brands solve their toughest business challenges. They’re a trusted partner to global companies that want to evolve to meet the demands of today’s digital economy, with future-ready solutions that drive exceptional customer experiences.
For more information, go to: https://www.csgi.com/people/james-kirby/
https://www.csgi.com/resources/the-path-to-accelerating-a-profitable-mvno-growth-strategy/
https://mobile-magazine.com/mobile-operators/there-place-mvnos-uks-5g-future
Poly announces its expanded portfolio of Microsoft Teams certified solutions designed to deliver greater meeting equity and collaboration. Clint Edwards, Poly’s Vice President of Global Cloud & Service Providers Solution Group, shares the latest updates on Poly’s growing portfolio of Teams certified solutions and introduction of new products aimed to take on the issue of hybrid work and provide ease of use to IT managers.
In this episode we also talk about the new Edge E Series phone and ITSPs. The series features products that typically offer a USB and Bluetooth option. “Whatever the network, we’re ready to go,” says Edwards. According to Edwards, Poly worked to match the needs of today’s hybrid worker to the moment, not only offering products that are ready to go, plug and play, on whatever the network the mobile hybrid worker finds themselves facing, but also having product that matches the aesthetics of the moment too. “Really everyone is excited about them, not only because of the specs, but also the way they look.”
Visit https://www.poly.com/us/en
Accent has updated its Accent Meeting app with something everyone who has fumbled around to figure out which platform is being used at a meeting beginning in a minute or less, will appreciate: the app launches you into the platform called for by the scheduled meeting, whether its Accent or someone else’s solution. In this podcast, recorded live from last week’s Cloud Comms Summit, Accent’s President and CEO, Chris Cameron tells us about his customer centric approach to deliver cloud communications solutions. Cameron walks us through his solution, which includes popular video and text options. Fully integrated with Teams, Accent lets customers choose how they want to communicate. Cameron points out that while Teams offers excellent features, customer service can be easier with a company where you’re going to reach a person very quickly. “Who do you want to call if you have a problem with your phone service? Do you want to call Microsoft, or do you want to call someone like Accent?” Large enough to deliver on customer needs, but sized right to deliver fast customer service, Cameron walks us through Accent’s offerings.
Visit www.AccentVoice.com
Onboarding. Automation. Customer Readiness. Customer Engagement. These are the four pillars of Sippio’s fast track program to accelerate carriers and service providers to Microsoft Operator Connect and Zoom Provider Exchange. Onboarding and automation are must haves to be an Operator Connect or Zoom Provider network. Customer readiness and customer engagement are two pillars SIPPIO has added because, according to Dawn-Marie Elder, COO and GM at SIPPIO, “…because although you need to know the tool set and the infrastructure in order to support your customers, you also need to know a lot about your customers in order to understand their evolving needs as their looking to transition their traditional telco needs to the world of collaboration.”
In this podcast, we learn how SIPPIO views the customer experiences and customer needs to be critical and how their partnerships and offerings have been developed with eyes not only focused on the mechanics, but on the actual people, companies and organizations that will use these services. Understanding, knowing, and then matching their needs, creates a value driven approach. Elder breaks down the process of making things, such as the boarding, simple and easy to follow. In a very competitive market, every part of the experience matters, so onboarding must be smooth and successful, but then SIPPIO works to deliver intel back to the carriers so that the carriers are keeping up with the changing needs of their customers. The much discussed, but hard to achieve, customer trusted advisor relationship, can be achieved by the carriers, but only through making sure these steps and needs are met and met well.
Visit https://www.sippio.io/
UC & CC blurring at a rapid pace, Crexendo offers a company store to help customers navigate the new environment
“What can we do to help our businesses who have invested in our platform, really be successful,” asks John Brinton of Crexendo. As customers need and demand blended solutions, UCaaS companies need to offer their services in a dynamic way that combines choice, simplicity, and effectiveness. In this podcast, Brinton gives us a look at the Company Store approach that his company has built, which enables the partners to find and match up solutions, and where the partners themselves can replicate the model and offer a Company Store of their own.
Brinton discusses Crexendo’s approach in the context of an industry where old definitions, technologies and offerings are becoming blurred. We learn about how these changes are playing out at the agent level and how Crexendo is helping the agent to meet customer needs, including the idea of delivering a rich set of tools that empower agents to be successful, and enjoy a sense of accomplishment.
Visit www.crexendo.com
“It’s all about a solution, and not necessarily a platform,” says William Rubio of CallTower. “We’re all application driven.” In this podcast, Rubio discusses how the challenge of 2023 will be to deliver solutions that possibly leverage products, apps and services across several platforms where the customer has an integrated experience, as though these elements had been designed to work as one. Rubio discusses the ground effort for the coming year, which must include using what the customer has in place and then combining it with those things that are now needed to match the demands of a hybrid environment.
Visit www.calltower.com
Cavell Group Analysts, Patrick Watson and Finbarr Begley join Doug Green in a conversation about how a seismic shift in the way people work, live and recreate is changing what companies and organizations need, and what companies who sell business services, must change. Watson and Begley discuss their company’s market research, a recent survey, and their perspectives on the changing landscape. We learn about how hybrid work might begin to settle into a more structured environment, and how that impacts the carrier and service provider community. The need to create actual teams, the need integrate and leverage Teams, and the need to make it all work together seamlessly, is discussed, just as 2023 promises to be a time when the service providers can distinguish themselves by offering customers productivity building tools.
Visit https://cavellgroup.com/
“It was really an opportunity to bring an opportunity to bring the industry together,” says Matt Townend, Executive Director, Cavell. Now in its seventh year, this week’s Cloud Comms Summit, US, took notice of a world changed by pandemic, political, economic, and technological upheavals. We are seeing really what I think is a strategy reset,” adds Townend. In this podcast we learn how the era of the orders connected to the move to hybrid work brought about by the pandemic is being replaced by a new era of service providers taking a fresh approach to the market, to selling and integrating technology. We hear about Cavell research that seems to argue for integration, portfolio diversity and much more. “You just have to open your mind more,” declares Townend.
Visit https://cavellgroup.com/
It is not only about telecommunications itself that delivers the best experience to the end consumer. It is about the quality of the call, low latency, national support, devices used, etc. There are some options that also enhance the experience such as video and voice to text.
Voice to text is one not too many have had access to since it is rather pricy. However, Banafo is an open-source voice to text technology that is available and includes interfaces to many widely used packages such as Zoho, Zendesk and Chrome.
Joachim Vanheuverzwijn
Joachim Vanheuverzwijn, CTO of Banafo, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the technology. For carriers that want to develop their own solution, Banafo can be a big help and save time and money for those that need to supply the option.
Listen in to the discussion and learn how the technology evolves over time!
For those that just want to use something now, Banafo is available free for limited usage. However, it would allow you to record and transcribe your conversations with one click. It would also allow you to record within your favorite Web conferencing tool and provides integrations for most of the major CRM management tools.
Add it to your browser so you can record and then convert to text. It will make many difficult time-consuming jobs much easier and painless.
For more information, go to: https://banafo.com/en
Kevin Nethercott
Historically, enterprises bought services from carriers. However, over time this built-in market that carriers were able to offer, has eroded. Companies have been buying over the top services from other vendors, leaving the carriers with a commodity product. In this podcast, the newly named Managing Partner of the Communications Platform as a Service Acceleration Alliance (CPaaS Acceleration Alliance), Kevin Nethercott describes how CPaaS enabled the carriers not only to get back in the game, but to offer their clients the type of customer experiences that build brand loyalty, which in turn means the carrier becomes an essential partner. Nethercott sees significant growth for the carriers as they use CPaaS to offer larger firms, innovative customer service, while he sees CPaaS empowering the carriers to provide smaller customers with business building tools for their mobile customers, meaning CPaaS can deliver even for a small business that runs off a mobile device. We learn how Nethercott and founding partner, Rob Kurver, are mapping out a future where the Accelerator Alliance will help the CSP community make the most of CPaaS. Nethercott points out that bringing people together in the community, leads to blending of ideas, approaches, and focusses, where the CSPs can find success with CPaaS.
Visit www.cpaasaa.com
If your sales funnel is full, but your deployments are taking months to accomplish, the technology being used does not fit the solution properly. Colin Constable and Kevin Nickels, the two engineering Co-Founders of the Atsign company provide an overview of the technology with details about the elimination of VPN and Firewalls to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
Kevin Nickels
Colin Constable
The distributed non-blockchain solution helps carriers and enterprise reduce their environmental footprint while reducing the administration nightmare associated with small or large IoT and micro-network deployments.
Listen in to hear about an easily implemented solution that will lock down your network tightly, improve performance and reduce cost.
About: They are a team of Internet optimists committed to making the Internet a more human place, where privacy is a fundamental right, and everyone owns their data. In a world where even things are generating large amounts of data, they created the free, open-source atPlatform allowing developers to easily create privacy-first apps that protect people, and their things, on the Internet. Welcome to their atWorld! And thanks for helping them #FliptheInternet
For more information, go to: https://atsign.com/.
Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., a leading global communications infrastructure platform, has announced the launch of its Application Programming Interface (API) Developer Portal, providing customers with a single online platform to explore, on-board and test live environments with existing API offerings, and stay informed about upcoming developments. In keeping with the ongoing migration of infrastructure companies, Zayo’s offering enables digital transformation, and presents Zayo as a place where great customer experiences begin. In this podcast, we learn how with this new offering, Zayo’s clients can design software integration that creates product differentiation and services. Zayo, VP of Product (Strategic Software), Leidy Perez, walks us through this development and helps us understand how this step forward represents a wider vision at Zayo.
Visit www.zayo.com
Leidy Perez
As the number of security employees needed worldwide continues to grow, enterprise organizations are scrambling to keep their networks running while keeping them secure at the same time.
John Holland
John Holland, Chief Revenue Officer at Thrive speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their recent acquisition of the Edge Technology Group and their focus on the financial community. It has highly specialized needs that Thrive has been involved with for many years and has developed specific technology enabling them to deliver the best and most secure services possible to Wall Street profiled organizations.
Listen in to John discuss their operation and their corporate dedication to providing the best service possible.
NextGen Managed Services
Thrive's NextGen managed services platform is designed to optimize business application performance via secure, redundant Cloud-based infrastructure.
Thrive has built their business around 6 key components:
Culture Talent Technology Service Teamwork Integrity
For more information, go to: https://thrivenextgen.com/
“We want to help our channel partners, our CSPs, our MSPs, to be able to be successful selling Microsoft services and selling the IT services that go with that service to their small and medium sized enterprises,” says Mike Adler, CTO at N-able. According to Adler, that made acquiring Spinpanel seem a natural fit. A multi-tenant Microsoft 365 management and automation platform built for Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) to automate the provisioning, security, and management of all Microsoft tenants, users, and licenses in a single consolidated hub, Spinpanel helps direct and indirect CSPs reduce complexity, bring efficiency, and profitably scale their Microsoft business. N-able, Inc., a global software company helping IT services providers deliver remote monitoring and management, data protection as-a-service, and security solutions, announced it has acquired Spinpanel on July 22. In this podcast we hear how the newly combined company opens up many new opportunities for the CSP and channel communities.
Visit N-able, Inc. Visit Spinpanel
The promise of 5G to deliver services, economic development, and human services, such as health care, is a major focus for the carriers who serve a large part of the US, and their association, the Competitive Carriers Association, the CCA. In this podcast, Tim Donovan. SVP, Legislative Affairs at Competitive Carriers Association, discusses how 5G will bring major changes for the carriers and to the communities they serve. In this podcast we learn how CCA members are closing the digital divide and how the CCA is working to make sure that as “5G is hitting its stride,” that 5G remains accessible to people outside the major urban centers.
Donovan, who will become president and CEO of the CCA, discusses the transformational legacy of outgoing president Steve Berry. Berry raised the profile of the association and led many successful efforts to make sure markets remained competitive. Donovan outlines how significant federal funding will be impacting the adoption of newer technologies and how critical upcoming spectrum auctions are to make sure the promise of 5G is delivered to many consumers and businesses. “That’s in our DNA,” says Donovan. “The true connecting tissue of our members, is exactly that, the focus on competition and making sure there’s that option for consumers in the market.”
Visit www.ccamobile.org
Call app is recognized for outstanding international success
One in twenty credit card payments are taken over the phone, but a surprising number of businesses, organizations and even governments are not in compliance with PCI-DSS obligations as mandated by the Visa and Mastercard. Beyond the contact center, with agents taking cards and collecting payments, there’s a huge world of business operations where administrative, sales and other employees in range of services such as medical and legal practices, accountants, hospitality, government agencies and so on, are collecting ad hoc information, on the spot, often without compliance to the standards the card issuers have set. In this podcast we learn about this UCaaS challenge and the solution that BroadSource offers on their secure call app on their EMU call platform. EMU SecureCall is the first and only PCI-DSS compliant solution that allows a business to use their UCaaS subscription to securely take credit card payments-by-phone in non-call center environments. Haydn Faltyn and Jason Thals walk us through the problem, discuss the scope of the challenge and then tell us about how EMU SecureCall represents a path to secure this vital information. We learn how EMU SecureCall can be a distinctive offering for CSPs looking for a sticky offering that customers can afford.
EMU SecureCall is being recognized by the 2022 Governor of Victoria Export Awards as the winner of the Advanced Technologies category. Global Victoria recognized the BroadSource team for its efforts in exporting unique IP that has global implications for both the Payment Card Industry and the Telecommunications Industry.
Visit https://www.broadsource.com.au/ and https://www.broadsource.com.au/emu-securecall/
“Telecom MSP” is how David Gardner, CEO of Advantage Communications Group, describes his company. It’s intent-driven branding for sure – this unique description is part of a larger strategy to redefine a major space—and gap-- in the telecom market. In this podcast, David offers us an inside look at Advantage Communications Group’s unique model as the first “end-to-end” MSP, evolved from the agent model with virtually no out of pocket costs to their clients. Through hundreds of global service provider partnerships, a deep bench of technology practitioners and groundbreaking software, Advantage is truly a one-stop-shop offering technology lifecycle optimization f of network and telecom infrastructure, as well as voice, data, cloud, video and mobility solutions. In addition to simplifying the sourcing process, Advantage also manages implementations, reduces costs, and transforms technology chaos into well-orchestrated, seamless environments. A client portal provides complete visibility into usage analytics, inventory, billing, and expenses by location, enabling actionable insights. In this podcast, we learn how the status quo and current models of IT management leave too many gaps to be effective, and how an overhaul was just what enterprises needed to address the elusive cost-and labor- savings.
Visit Advantage Communications Group
ERP Systems are vital to matching the best practice standards in handling, restoring, or disposing secondary equipment.
“I see it as raising the bar,” says Michael Hutchcraft, President of Glacier Consulting. In getting companies to step up to R2, Version 3, Glacier Consulting helps companies get their disposition and handling practices to an exacting global standard of a third part, accredited and certified level of handling of equipment coming out of use. In this podcast, we learn how part of that process involves being able to execute, meet and excel specified standards.
Part of that process likely involves ditching “spreadsheets” as a means of tracking for an ERP, as offered by IQ Reseller. In this podcast John Spagnuolo, Implementation Consultant, IQ Reseller joins Hutchcraft explaining how this comes together for companies to meet ITAD standards. Now, more than ever, whether a firm is an enterprise, cycling through gear that’s coming to an end of deployment, or for channel partners and MSPs, who constantly managing client networks, ITAD disposition is literally the gold standard in making sure that disposition is secure and environmentally proper.
Spagnuolo points out that for enterprises, who are now shipping “office in a box” for their now distributed workforce, having an ITAD partner has become critical.
Visit https://glaciercs.com/ and https://www.iqreseller.com/demos/
IT4Kids is a fundraising charity that raises cash to help children engage in sports. They help children who have either been left out of sports by physical disability or by a lack of money acting as a barrier to enter a sport. Jordy Kool of IT4Kids discusses how this unique charity works. We learn that as companies send equipment that they seek to dispose of or take out of use, they, as donors, have a major measure of control over where the money will ultimately go, within the overall objective of helping children join a sport of their choice, that finances or a physical issue has been a barrier to entry. IT4Kids raises money in a variety of ways, but equipment coming out of use is a major source.
ASCDI member BE-Networks is a major supporter of IT4Kids. In this podcast, Martijn Kamerman of BE-Networks discusses how his company backs up the program and why he feels this has been a life changing charity for many children. BE-Networks is a global company, with asset delivery services and products on several continents.
Visit https://www.be-networks.be/ and https://www.it4kids.com/en/home-en/
“Everyone wants a gig service,” says Gregg Tome, Senior Director of Sales at Airspan Networks. Recorded at the recent CCA event in Portland, this podcast explores some breakthrough radio products from Airspan and Mimosa by Airspan. The Airspan Mimosa 6-series fixed wireless access (FWA) solution using new 160 MHz wide channels, will become available with the 6 GHz band, demonstrating up to 1.84 Gbps aggregate speed to subscribers. The Airspan A6 is the highest performing outdoor fixed wireless access point for the 6 GHz band with up to 7 Gbps total capacity and provides critical high antenna performance for extended range and coverage. Tome points out some major opportunities connected to the breakthrough product line. Federal money to build faster network service for rural customer requires faster speeds, which the new radio achieves. In this podcast we also learn about applications beyond the consumer in industry, education and more. Airspan has proof of concept cases in hospitals. Rural health care applications are a major asset for thinly staffed rural medical facilities. We also learn about the potential for these products to revive the economic base in Native American tribal territories, and to enable tribal carriers to reduce dependency on major carriers.
Visit https://www.airspan.com/ and https://mimosa.co/
“You really have to deliver the whole solution, which to us is all about hybrid” says John Eldh, President of ScanSource Inc. In this podcast we learn how ScanSource and much of its partner community have repositioned to a “hybrid model, where sales include a combination of equipment and digital solutions, in a recurring income approach. According to Eldh, the partners who have made the journey to hybrid are experiencing faster growth and are closing larger deals. The number of suppliers involved in those deals are more numerous. Eldh discusses the idea that we may have made a five-year technology change during an eight-week period, in early 2020. From that pivot point forward, recurring income has grown significantly to reach 24% of the company’s gross profit. Recorded at the ScanSource’s Channel Connect conference, we discuss how the growing importance of hybrid means a wider range of opportunities for partners making the move.
Visit www.scansource.com
“The real challenge is how do a I as an SP differentiate my services, how do I innovate on those services,” says Andy Lark, CMO of Dubber. Lark reflects on earlier tries of monetizing the network, which ultimately were expensive and lacked differentiation. Now, SPs are focusing on their core value: enabling conversations. “You need the magic in the network,” Lark adds, to capitalize on the services SPs already deliver and that sit right at the core of their offerings.
In this podcast we learn about using ML and AI to create visibility into the conversations that the SP is already facilitating. Workflow automation, where conversations are captured into actionable data. “What I want is the major action items tagged for me,” says Lark. We discuss how AI and ML enable people to not just get a transcript of a meeting or a customer call, but to be given the exact things they need to glean from that call. We are moving from creating huge amounts of undigested and digestible data, to bite size pieces of data, and then on to being given exactly the bite size bits that we need to react, enabling a sale, improve customer service or get a jump on dispute resolution. Whereas some of this was available to giant firms, now SPs can offer this to their smallest clients. But we need to make sure that customers understand that they’re not just getting a transcript but more of a roadmap for action. Imagine that for less than the cost of a cup of coffee we get quick meeting highlights, a customer satisfaction score and even a notice to check in with customers of note.
Visit www.dubber.net
Building on a thirty-year heritage that began with breakthrough mobility devices for retail, ScanSource today is building growth for its partner community by pursuing opportunities in mobility, productivity from anywhere and security. In this podcast Tony Sorrentino, President of Specialty Technology and Brian Cuppett, SVP Modern Communications discuss how ScanSource is bringing together a wide community of suppliers to bring to market a set of solutions that turn work from anywhere into productivity from anywhere, with an eye to understanding that just throwing together several products and technologies, without any orchestration, can challenge productivity. ScanSource helps its partners find the right combination of products and services to meet individual customer needs. We learn that ScanSource is building solutions that work with networks that might already be in place, and how security is both an urgent customer need and major partner activity, as the edge of the network includes multiple sites and all manner of risk issues. “We exist to help out reseller partners to expand their offerings… to do the best job they can for their end customers,” says Sorrentino.
Visit www.scansource.com
As ScanSource moves from a technology distribution model to being a company that orchestrates technology products and services to help partners custom match customer needs, the company has adopted new approaches to help the partners with that process. ScanSource’s Discover Opportunity program is designed to offer the partner community a broader, more integrated view of creating solutions. Organized along several key verticals, the program offers partners a place where they can view a wide range of solutions, digital and hardware, cloud based and on prem, to find the right combination of products and services to meet a customer’s needs. As we learn in this podcast, the program also aims at encouraging the partners to proactively deliver productivity ideas to their clients. Ansley Hoke, SR Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Jamaal Savwoir, Vice President of Partner Experience walk us through the program and how ScanSource is using it as a path to have partners open new conversations with clients in the public sector, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing, to bring together AI, mobility, IoT and much more.
Visit www.scansource.com
“There’s been a lot of progress, but there’s a long, long way to go,” says Jim Dalton of TransNexus. Dalton says that currently the program resembles a bucket with a hole on the bottom. Reciting statistics that show that as few as 1 in 4 calls are covered under STIR/SHAKEN. TDM networks remain a special challenge. In this podcast, recorded at the Competitive Carrier Alliance conference, Dalton outlines that this is a special challenge to rural wireless carriers and their customers. “The technology is here today,” says Dalton, who adds that this can be achieved inside the market, with technology that is available, accessible, and affordable. We learn what public policy, private sector and technology implementation steps that must come next. “There’s lots of options for service providers.”
Visit www.transnexus.com
TDM, a digital technology, now in eclipse, is still present in many carrier networks, according to Alan Percy of TelcoBridges. “You cannot just overnight, turn off the old and turn on the new,” says Percy. In this podcast, Percy lays out how real digital transformation includes a step-by-step plan, vs a huge, disruptive swap out. To get there, the steps need to be bite sized, affordable, and achieved in a stable, not disruptive manner. The need to make the change is critical, since so many things, such as STIR/SHAKEN can only be achieved by making this technology journey. “It’s an IP world now,” says Percy, adding that carriers need to offer those products and services that can only come with making this migration. The promise of that change might be big. New carrier provided services might end economic isolation, and attract jobs, investment, and people, in many communities.
Visit www.telcobridges.com
Ribbon Communications has been in the business of connecting people and organizations, with a long line of products that stretch back to the dawn of telecommunications. Now, according to Ivan Bykov, who works on Solutions for Mobile Service Providers and Operators, that focus is on experiences. In this podcast, we learn about the need to make customer experiences at a level that makes the carrier indispensable to the customer. Bykov then walks us through Ribbon’s ideas and products that make this possible. Recorded at the CCA 2022 conference in Portland, Oregon, Bykov outlines how Ribbon is offering the solutions that enable the carrier community to go well beyond their traditional offerings and how they can take advantage of the revolution that 5G offers.
Visit www.ribboncommunications.com
The food and beverage industry can be a textbook example of siloed technologies, deployed in an industry that is not always technology facing. In recent years, restaurants have gradually adopted better order taking and payment systems. Now, Unified Office, Inc. is offering an Industrial IoT service for restaurants and other Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) called Total Connect Nowsm Operations Performance SuiteTM (TCNOPSTM). In this podcast Unified Office’s Ray Pasquale outlines how TCNOPS can deliver real-time tracking and alerts enabling them to manage refrigeration, prep table, oven exhaust, thermostats, air conditioners, safe doors, security and video systems, and other mission-critical functions. The development furthers the promise of IoT, in helping companies automate and streamline historically labor-intensive functions, in an industry that is experiencing labor shortages.
Visit www.unifiedoffice.com
The IT and Security staffing problem is not going away any time soon. A great way to mitigate the SOC staffing issue is to provide tools that reduces their time spent on a problem.
Nick Graves
Nick Graves, Chief Architect at Revelstoke speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about how their technology provides a unified data layer. When staff is responding to different events, they need to use multiple tools that are not integrated, Revelstoke integrates the tools at the data layer simplifying the problem and maximizing the staff’s time. Accelerating network expansion requires tools like the Revelstoke.
There is no longer a need to learn the programing language for each tool. Use Revelstoke and have access to all of the tools through a common interface.
Intuitive drag-and-drop kanban-style playbook builder to maximize efficiencies Fully operable in minutes Low-code playbooks for common workflows Connects to most APIs
They have done all of the hard work for you.
Current SOAR platforms are broken… like actually broken because no one has time to build connectors when there’s actual threats to stop. They founded Revelstoke to empower security teams with a smarter SOAR solution that actually makes life easier. Are they heroes? No, they’re just a group of security practitioners with decades of experience, who were tired of doing things the way they’ve always been done.
Some of the most experienced minds in security are driving the innovation behind their SOAR platform. After successful runs at leading security companies whose products you know and use today, they’ve all joined forces to do something truly different. You could say they’re the type of people who like to crack open a cold one and talk case management. For more information, go to: www.revelstoke.io
Being a frontrunner, Blackpoint Cyber knows it is all about channel in the security business. That is why Christine Gassman, who brings with her a vast amount of experience from her previous positions, joined the company as Director of Channel Engagement. Christine has some very aggressive plans for the channel and discusses them with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
Christine Gassman
MSPs are the organizations that can really benefit form the Blackpoint technology. Top cybersecurity practices for MSPs to follow include:
Don’t Slack on Basic Cyber Hygiene Promote Cybersecurity Awareness & Education Implement a Security Stack with Active Monitoring Establish Regular Backups Implement Strict Account Management Get True MDR for Immediate Incident Response
Listen in as Christine provides an energetic review of the Blackpoint portfolio.
Blackpoint Cyber is the forerunner in the managed detection and response space, leveraging their proprietary ecosystem to help their partners fight back and win against cyber threats. They have served the community since 2014 and proudly continue to safeguard businesses around the world.
They believe that no one should go alone into the unfair fight. At Blackpoint, their team strives to provide unified, 24/7 detection to help you take out your adversaries before they can even see us coming.
With decades of real-world cyber experience and deep knowledge of hacker tradecraft, their team moves fast to disrupt even the most advanced adversaries. In a threat landscape where attackers have you in their crosshairs, Blackpoint takes the target off your back and stands ready to respond to malicious cyber events 24/7/365.
For more information, go to: https://blackpointcyber.com/
Arrcus announces the availability of FlexMCN, the industry’s most flexible multi-cloud networking solution, built for the distributed cloud era
“Everybody is doing cloud, however the pendulum has shifted from working with a single cloud to working more than one cloud,” says Shekar Ayyar, CEO of Arrcus. The challenges include how to “stitch and tie together” various clouds and various, pre-existing, on-prem situations. Recently, Arrcus announced the availability of FlexMCN, a multi-cloud networking solution, built for distributed cloud.
The FlexMCN solution consists of ArcEdge as a secure data plane software, coupled with ArcOrchestrator, now available on premises and off premises, to dramatically simplify and expedite the setup of cloud operations. By leveraging ArcOS for robust routing, FlexMCN enables the deployment of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud networking across cloud domains, and secure connectivity for workloads across cloud instances.
In this podcast, Ayyar outlines the solution and how it allows many players, previously locked out of many opportunities and relegated to selling a narrow range of service, to reassert themselves.
Read the press release
Visit www.arrcus.com
“Bring us what you have, bring us your questions, bring us your scenario,” says 888VoIP Advanced Solutions Practice Director, Joe LaBella. “And then work with us as a value-added reseller.” In this podcast, LaBella discusses a refreshed process of meeting the needs of the channel and their customers. LaBella describes a process where 888VoIP offers curated solutions to for each customer, with the understanding that each challenge is unique. “It’s more of a solution sale instead of a cookie cutter.” 888VoIP has a deep relationship with major brands and offers a wide variety of solutions, but we learn that the company will often offer a multi-vendor proposal, again, carefully matching the challenges to finding the best solutions. 888VoIP offers a lot of outreach on their products. Yealink's New Conference Phone Series, the CP9X5 was recently featured in a webinar, and 888VoIP is a major source for the Yealink line.
Visit www.888voip.com
“We’re in a really significant wave of change,” says Andy Lark, CMO of Dubber. As ever, according to Lark, the economics of change quietly move the more visible technology of change. The need for companies to grow revenue and to improve revenue, are causing them to look for, and in some cases, to allow for, technology advancements that can enable them to achieve their goals.
In this podcast, Lark stresses the accessibility of those improvements and the centralist of the SP. Cloud communications, cloud computing, AI and ML, are delivering technologies that were once available only to the world’s largest technology companies to now be available to the local veterinarian. “What if there was no gap,” speculates Lark about the way that sales teams often ignore sales tools such as CRMs. Events, ideas, and comments are literally lost, and a valuable, well-intentioned sales process is undermined. Now, according to Lark, there’s the possibility of recording and capturing events, ideas, and comments in a way that really works with the personas of the people involved. SPs looking to monetize opportunities, need to take a close look at these possibilities for their customers. Lark tells us that productivity improvements can be sold but it must be tangible. Being able to give back a customer the lost time he now dedicates to making meeting notes is an example of this sort of offering real world gains.
Visit www.dubber.net
“It’s really this customization capability that will present the largest challenge for the entire ecosystem,” says Ross Cassan, Director of Mobility Services for Spirent Communications. From consumer to industrial applications that are very latency sensitive, 5G is transformative, and transformative in more ways than one. As such, operators must ensure the evolution to new 5G technology not only brings the improvements promised but must not disrupt or disable the services already in place. With this new class of multi-vendor, disaggregated, and cloud-native infrastructure, the approach to assurance must be as evolutionary as the network itself. In this podcast, Cassan discusses how 5G networks are changing telecommunications, how service providers can maintain end-to-end visibility with new hybrid cloud infrastructures, the implications of URLLC and its demanding requirements, key aspects of 5G service assurance methods necessary to meet challenges across several new use cases, and more.
Visit www.spirent.com
by Gary Audin
Communications platforms like Microsoft Teams are great at bringing your people and customers together in voice or video calls. But how much time and productivity is lost through spotty internet connections? Especially for employees working remotely, in locations your IT team doesn’t have visibility to proactively support.
With more than 32,000 data-points produced from one MS Teams call, Virsae uses Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to identify the root cause of poor calls, and communications network performance.
Ross Williams, Chief Product Officer at Virsae and Gary Audin recorded this EDUcast that explores the reasons for poor connection quality and solutions available for improving Teams performance.
Ross provides information about the problems faced by users. He offers data about the problems that exist, and the major challenges experienced by IT when trying to resolve the issues. Issues are usually not reported by 90% of the users so they keep recurring.
This EDUcast covers:
Accessing Microsoft Teams Connection Problem Impact Defining the Problems Top 10 Causes Virsae Solution Business Impact CEO Case Study
Businesses around the world use Virsae’s services to keep their communications systems performing at their best. Their cloud-native platform, Virsae Service Management (VSM), marries big data with AI-based analytics, automation, workflows, reporting, and notifications to keep the technology that underpins customer interactions running flawlessly. virsae.com
You can view other Virsae EDUcasts, podcasts, and blogs.
Implementing Zero Trust is a customer evolution that requires a channel that is dedicated to their customers success. With over 60 carriers accounting for over 400 million end customers consisting of consumers and small to midsized businesses, Akamai has a very healthy and dedicated channel.
Pavel Gurvich
Pavel Gurvich, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise Security Group speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their Zero Trust technology and how they work with their channel to implement it. Starting with the Micro-segmentation of the traditional perimeter network, Akamai plus Guardicore can get you on track to provide the best Zero Trust possible. By enabling Zero Trust and SASE, you can secure your digital business and get the most out of your security investments.
Akamai plans to continue supporting their channel aggressively with their technology leading the way in securing their consumer/business base. Listen in to hear how they plan to do it.
Flexibility. Competitive Edge. Support.
Partners - Gain the competitive edge A portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access, and video delivery solutions helps you transform your business and support customers as they secure their multi-cloud world.
Partners - Design around your go-to-market plan You know your customers best — that’s why their partner program gives you the freedom to design around your GTM strategy. With their new engagement options, you no longer need to fit a specific model.
For more information, go to: https://www.akamai.com/
by Gary Audin
There are over 100 million meetings per day with 87% of these meetings having a hybrid or virtual component. 20% of these meetings experience some quality issues. The reality is that collaboration technologies and their access are made up of multiple vendors and services which makes it difficult to monitor and maintain a high quality environment, These negative experiences can quickly become costly when workers can’t effectively collaborate with their co-workers, customers, and partners.
This 8 minute EDUbrief with Gary Audin and sponsored by Vyopta, provides a short education about the value and return on investment (ROI) when leveraging insights about your technology, spaces, and users to ensure exceptional collaboration experiences.
Accessing these insights from a purpose-built tool has many benefits. It should be easy to implement and easy to use without complicated training. Your current IT staff should be able to use it with a single dashboard that presents all the information they need.
Vyopta, the sponsor of this EDUbrief, is a leader in digital collaboration user experience management and has helped 40 million people collaborate better. Its Technology and Workspace Insights have helped identify and address over 9 million issues. Hundreds of organizations worldwide spanning 20+ industries use Vyopta to monitor 6 million endpoints and over 20 billion meeting minutes a year.
Zero Trust, as a required technology for enterprise, has been accelerating for the last several years based on the restructuring of corporate workplace to include remote working policies which highlighted the vulnerabilities in company networks.
Pavel Gurvich, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise Security Group with Akamai speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the Akamai Zero Trust architecture. Zero Trust is first conceptualized and then Pavel reviews the implementation strategy of Akamai.
Pavel Gurvich
It is an evolving process which includes Zero Trust Network Access, Micro-segmentation, Application Access restrictions and MFA. With all of this implemented, it is vital to provide the monitoring of all aspects of the network to ensure that no breach has been made, all devices are working properly and at the latest revision levels are deployed. Listen in to a very good description of Zero Trust and their implementation.
Over 20 years ago, they set out to solve the toughest challenge of the early internet: the “World-Wide Wait.” And they’ve been solving the internet’s toughest challenges ever since, working toward their vision of a safer and more connected world.
With the world’s most distributed compute platform — from cloud to edge — they make it easy for businesses to develop and run applications, while they keep experiences closer to users and threats farther away. That’s why innovative companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital experiences.
Their suite of leading security, compute, and delivery solutions are helping global companies make life better for billions of people, billions of times a day.
For more information, go to: https://www.akamai.com/
Earnings show companies are approaching 5G all wrong – discussion on monetizing the promise of 5G
“It’s an evolution of connectivity,” says Anthony Goonetilleke, Group President of Technology and Head of Strategy at Amdocs. CSPs adopt 5G for many reasons and naturally they look for ROI and to enhance brand equity. “I feel we can have larger transformative impact on society,” adds Goonetillek. In this podcast we learn about the idea of looking at 5G as a method of democratizing technology that offers the chance of connecting rural communities and developing nations. People with limited capital and income gain access to technologies now only available to very high-income places and highly capitalized companies. Goonetilleke argues that once achieved, a roll out of 5G creates a great deal of ways for the CSP to monetize on their investment. “The monetization will come from the partner ecosystem.”
Visit www.amdocs.com
The 4 surprising business benefits of centralized voice, video, and network management.
“Companies focusing on management and performance improvements meet with a lot of success,” says Justin Flitter Chief Marketing Officer at Virsae.
Flitter discusses research from Metrigy showing companies focusing on management and performance improvements deliver better business outcomes. In particular, 14.5% revenue growth, 9% cost reductions, 17% customer rating improvements, and 15% productivity gains.
Flitter says, “Companies need to own customer experience, from the head office to the edge of their network, which now includes aspects of internet performance. That means taking responsibility for the quality and performance of the network and technology used by at-home workers”.
Flitter discusses the Virsae approach. “We’re measuring the noise levels around you,” meaning that IT will know the level of background sound that employees are coping with. Machine learning and automation are used to look at everything from network resources to Bluetooth, and everything in between. The IT team gets true visibility into what’s happening at the edge, and the information is actionable.
We learn that the impacts of implementation are very favorable. Gaining insight into the edge of the enterprise delivers real ROI.
Visit www.virsae.com
Just in time for the wave of workers expected to return to office this fall, Poly has introduced the new Edge E Series of phones, designed to embrace the new office standard for hybrid work. With analysts forecasting that almost half of workers will be hybrid, the Edge E Series is the answer to IT decision makers' questions on how to adjust to new standards while maximizing in-office and remote over time in the phone market, productivity. Today we're joined by John Lamarque, Senior Vice President, and General Manager of Poly's Voice Collaboration & Professional Headset Business Unit, to talk about this innovative technology and the future of hybrid work.
Lamarque reflects on the many changes that have occurred over time in the phone market. Two decades ago, the soft client posed the same type of replacement that smartphones have today, for the desktop phone. Yet despite all of those predictions, we are told on this podcast that demand for the news Edge E Series is actually running ahead of supply. Lamarque makes the case that desktop phones are a great investment and form a part of the approach to a refreshed office environment that welcomes back workers for hoteling and other uses.
https://community.poly.com/t5/VoIP-SIP-Phones/Hardware-Poly-Edge-E-phones/td-p/119268
With the internet and technology changing as fast as it is, it is urgent to provide security teams with real-time visibility into their company’s cloud security posture with compliance reporting. This would also include actionable intelligence and risk assessment.
Daniel Deeney
Daniel Deeney, Co-Founder & CEO of Paladin Cloud provides a good overview of the Internet layout in regard to security. The cloud provider for example, AWS provides the cloud security for the infrastructure. It is the user that is responsible to provide security for what is in the cloud such as applications and data. Paladin Cloud is automating the detection and remediation of security policy violations and is designed to secure all the major public clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Both commercial and open-source communities need to review this technology. It can help you automate your process and stay compliant.
They’re passionate about working with developers and security teams to protect their cloud environments to secure their applications and data. They’re all about the community – open source first philosophy which drives everything they do.
Their Security-as-Code, open-source platform leverages the power of the community to improve your company’s cloud security posture. They have hundreds of best practice security policies across multi-cloud environments to significantly reduce security risks. They have a customizable platform that allows developers to build their own policies and extend their plug-and-play, connector-based architecture to collect data from your other enterprise systems. Their code base has a history of running at scale at many of the world’s leading companies.
For more information, go to: https://paladincloud.io/
While the industry is driving 5G, the military recognizes its potential and is creating special teams working across functional groups to evaluate 5G and the next generation of 5G.
Scott Aken
Scott Aken, CEO of Axellio has extensive knowledge of cyber security and explains the evolution the technology form 3G to 4g and the different WiFi standards. With 5G there is more definition, and the speeds will be 100 times faster than previously used.
Current solutions will not work well in 5G. They will throttle the 5G network. Axellio provides100 Gbps Packet Capture and Long-term Storage while allowing for simultaneous read and write access at up to 200 Gbps rates for immediate access to all data. This is a very good discussion with information for commercial, financial and defense affiliated organizations.
Axellio’s approach to security is based on the premise that comprehensive network visibility is critical to address insider threats created by zero-day attacks and advanced persistent threats. Packets are the immutable evidence and the solid foundation needed for comprehensive threat response.
Axellio’s patent-pending security platform PacketXpress® is a network visibility hub that allows you to store and forward all the network traffic processed by the existing security infrastructure. This prevents overload situations in the current security ecosystem, creating more reliable results and allows you to virtualize the monitoring environment for better scalability. Pioneering network packet capture and analysis also creates “PCAP on demand”: packet store-and-forward for real-time and historical analysis, providing direct access to any pre-and post-event packet data for any event for better decision making.
For more information, go to: https://www.axellio.com/?hsLang=en
Bad QoS alienates customers, employees but IT management lacks visibility to the problem
“It happened so fast,” says Justin Flitter, Chief Marketing Officer at Virsae. The pandemic saw millions of workers go home where they set up as best they could with whatever was available. Since then, companies have stepped up to buy devices such as noise cancelling headsets, but there remains a huge gap. Flitter tells us that a survey by Metrigy found that more than half of at-home workers suffer from a spotty internet connection. Poor video performance (46%) and poor voice performance (29%) were also troubling. Beyond the statistics, the culture of work seems to have evolved to accept quality issues. Flitter points out how almost everyone has been on a call where people’s poor Internet, maladroit devices, or flailing apps, see team members flick off their video, hit mute or even place a land line call to join the meeting. To remedy these solutions, employees are spending their own money, pursuing homemade remedies, while the issues they are trying to fix create CX issues that literally cost companies money, not to mention reputation.
Meanwhile, organizations can lack visibility to the problem. “You can’t fix what you don’t see,” says Flitter. In this podcast Flitter lays out the scope of the problem and makes the case for Virsae’s approach to being able to see across the network to discover IT issues that impact employees and CX. Flitter tells us that Virsae can deliver visibility right to the edge, right to the level of endpoint devices such as headsets, whether agents are wearing them in an office or in home or even public space environment. Work from anywhere requires a way to see what’s happening, everywhere. The goal is to get people a consistent level of service wherever they are doing their work.
Visit www.virsae.com
Syxsense has been working on endpoint security for over 10 years. They are talking about all endpoints – even the ones you do not know about. Once more, they will perform a scan of the endpoint and evaluate it for vulnerabilities which would include the verification on the latest release and patches.
Ashley Leonard
Ashley Leonard, CEO at Syxsense speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their current technology and their newly released Syxsense Enterprise which provides MSPs, MSSPs and customers the ability to remediate security configuration vulnerabilities.
Listen in as Ashley provides great insight into the major endpoint issues resulting from the shift to the remote access worker. Since this configuration is now here to stay, he covers the measures necessary to keep the corporate network secure.
Lastly, Ashley is a channel person. He has been part of the channel for a long time and has structured the sales opportunities to go through the channel making it a win – win solution for the resellers and for Syxsense.
Syxsense has created innovative and intuitive technology that sees and knows everything. Secure every endpoint, in every location, everywhere inside and outside the network, as well as in the cloud. Artificial intelligence (AI) helps security teams predict and root out threats before they happen—and swiftly make them disappear when they do.
Headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, Syxsense is a growing and dynamic organization with offices in four countries and 12 partners in nine countries. Over the past 10 years, Syxsense has worked with more than 500 companies ranging from 100 to 100,000 endpoints delivering a variety of solutions for organizations of all sizes as well as managed service providers (MSPs).
For more information, go to: https://www.syxsense.com
“The problem with STIR/SHAKEN is that it’s not a mature technology… just yet” says Richard Quattrocchi of Mutare. “It was originally designed with the hope of stopping robocalls, but it really doesn’t do that. On its own…” Quattrocchi adds. In this podcast we learn that STIR/SHAKEN needs to be used with other layers of protection to achieve the desired impact of decreasing the amount of unwanted automatic calling. Quattrocchi discusses the Mutare approach which serves five layers of protection. We also see a dashboard that pulls together, graphically, the volume and timing of unwanted calls. “The smaller the business, the larger the volume, proportionally, of unwanted calls,” leaving smaller businesses overwhelmed and frustrated. Mutare looks at blocking nefarious calls, which are malevolent, which can include criminal level attempts to commit fraud, along with nuisance calls, which can become disruptive.
Visit www.mutare.com
Wholistic is the word Maurie Munro uses to describe how Peerless Network Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams brings simplification and accountability to create a Tier One, end to end solution. “Now we can offer this to the enterprise customers,” adds Munro. Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams provides deeper integration into the Teams platform to enhance and streamline the Teams Phone experience around networking, provisioning, management, and reporting APIs. Doing this provides customers a simplified Teams Phone experience delivered by operators that has parity with Microsoft offerings.
The more optimal use of Teams means better calling experiences. “Buying direct is very attractive,” says Maurie, adding that Peerless sees Operator Connect as a way for customers to leverage strong choices in the market. Jim Brewer, EVP of Products and Technology at Peerless, adds, “This is just the first,” as he outlines that more announcements are in the works as the company continues to build choice and simplicity into the complex journey enterprises are now navigating.
Visit www.peerlessnetwork.com
R2 rapidly becoming a national standard and without it, buying used gear is severely restricted
Many companies and organizations are making proclamations of the commitment to green, environmentally friendly and community aware policies. The secondary market always offered a great deal of help in this area since the market served as a place to give IT equipment a second or third life, postponing their journey to being disposed of. Now that end of product life requires more scrutiny, more attention, security and environmental issues are front facing. Public entities, publicly traded companies and organizations of all kinds have made claims to the public, to customers and investors. Now markets are insisting on verification.
“It’s all about transparency,” says Michael Hutchcraft who is a R2 Consultant with Glacier Consulting. In this podcast Hutchcraft joins John Spagnuolo, Implementation Consultant with IQ Reseller to discuss R2 and trackability within the ITAD space. We learn what R2 is and why it matters. We learn why Spagnuolo believes that the ends of the excel spreadsheet as the penultimate tracking app in keeping track, is at hand. Major municipalities, hospitals and many more are saying that if you don’t have R2, you won’t be able to buy their used gear. Spagnuolo believes that we are within handful of years before R2 is needed to buy from almost any entity.
Visit www.iqreseller.com and https://glaciercs.com/
Integrates Bitdefender Threat Intelligence Data
“What we really do is focus on the midmarket that has been really abandoned by the industry and give them a solution that’s going to manage all of the aspects of email security under one umbrella, giving them all these data points, and it’s extremely easy to use, manage and deploy,” says Zack Schwartz, Vice President Business Development, Trustifi. “So, you don’t have to be a sophisticated engineer to work on this, as with many of our competitors in the market today.” As an opportunity for the channel, Schwartz says that his product was “Made with the MSP in mind.” In this podcast we learn how Trustifi has created an integration incorporating that vendor's threat intelligence data from 1M+ vectors, which will further enhance the company's outbound email threat protection. We learn about "Smart Indexing" where with cloud archiving that allows for rapid auditing, meaning a faster response to issues. The bigger picture is that as MSPs bring the Trustifi solution to an end user, the MSP gains that “trusted advisor” status they are seeking.
Learn more trustifi.com Read the press release https://telecomreseller.com/2022/08/09/trustifi-integrates-bitdefender-threat-intelligence-data-strengthening-inbound-security/
“I believe that customer service and customer experience is the glue that holds businesses together in tough times,” says Justin Flitter, Chief Marketing Officer for Virsae.
Facing an uncertain environment, businesses are turning to cost cutting, so why not cut spending on CX? In this podcast Justin Flitter makes the case for making CX a priority, not a cut. Flitter tells us that we need to look at WFH, labor recruitment challenges and CX as a continuity: satisfied workers lead to satisfied customers.
But WFH, which itself is appealing to many people, brings new challenges. If workers are trying to self-diagnose connectivity challenges, or worse, if they are not even aware of them, the result can be bad CX. And bad CX has immediate and fiscally toxic results. An unhappy customer can write unhappy social media reviews that can choke growth and amplify the headwinds in an already challenging landscape.
Visit virsae.com
Green IT is more than one thing. Green IT is really a whole way of looking at the entire lifecycle for single piece of equipment, from manufacturing to recycling. Green IT is about process, people, products, and places. It means taking a wholistic approach to IT asset management, to IT people and to IT services. What will it take to get more for a unit of energy, and what will it take deliver an hour of labor. If some of this sounds abstract, Florian Pitten, International Business Development Manager with K&P Computer, draws in the missing lines to give us a big picture view of how Green IT matters to dealers, resellers, end users, enterprises and to the public at large It’s the right thing to do, but it’s also a path to better growth and better margins. Pitten cautions that simply pushing all to the cloud can create limited visibility to the company’s real impact. With over 30,000 products on hand, ready to ship, K&P combines the services of the traditional secondary market with in-house testing, refurbishment, and reseller services, logistics all with a Green IT strategy in mind.
Visit https://www.kpc.de/en/
Nextiva’s brand-new app makes it possible to manage all a business’s conversations in one place - no more app switching, or clunky integrations required. Voice, video, SMS, chat, video meeting, team collaboration, the ability to share, along with customer information and engagement tools. Nextiva brings it all together. The streamlined experience up-levels the customer experience and boosts team productivity. With this launch, Nextiva is making fundamental business technology accessible to every business.
In this podcast, Nextiva CMO, Chris Reaburn, walks us through the Workhub, and discusses the opportunities for end users to do better internally and in CX. Internally, Workhub’s arrival means less fumbling around to fish stray emails out of a sea of mail, while going to another separate system to find notes for a meeting or information on a customer’s history. We learn that this means more internal productivity and happier customers. By bringing it all together, people have the information they need to understand customer pain points and customer history. When a customer feels that they are understood, other issues can be better resolved. Reaburn also sees an exciting channel opportunity.
Visit www.nextiva.com
The edge and securing the edge is a process, a journey. That’s one of the things Salim Khouri, Director of Global Solutions Engineering of Expereo tells us about SD-WAN and SASE. We now live in a changed world, where millions of workers have been sent to the edge. Offering services and platforms that are consistent across a company with locations in rural Brazil and midtown Manhattan, is desired, but not always easily achieved. In this podcast Khouri discusses the technologies. We learn about Expereo’s approach, and how this approach can help enterprises. Khouri compares these approaches to a DIY model, and other alternatives. We learn that that we are on a journey that will eventually take us beyond SASE and SD-WAN. Expereo is the leading provider of managed network solutions powering enterprise and government sites in over 190 countries.
Visit https://www.expereo.com/
Private networks are defined as a network that is not connected to another service provider’s infrastructure. The enterprise owns the radio access network, small cells delivering connectivity, the on-prem packet core and cloud compute platform. All can be owned operated and configured by the enterprise.
Kurt Schaubach, CTO, Federated Wireless goes into more detail with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication. about the differences with existing private networks.
Kurt Schaubach
An enterprise-owned private network allows for a hardening of the network to make it more secure. The data is more secure on the private network since it is not exposed to the MVNO/provider’s infrastructure.
Find out why CBRS is a key component of the private 5G opportunity and, while 5G will not replace wireless, 5G has many features that provide significant advantages over wireless technology.
5G provides great connectivity allowing enterprises to exploit the advantages when integrating their solutions with IoT, Cloud Compute and Edge Compute.
Federated Wireless is about providing innovation and services that connect people, businesses, and industries to the future. They are the market leaders in shared spectrum, making deploying and managing new 5G private wireless networks simple, affordable, and accessible.
They envision a massive opportunity with this new technology. From private networks like stadiums or casinos to large mobile and cable networks, shared spectrum is forecast to be a billion-dollar market in five years, and they are one of only a handful of companies with a solution for managing access to the spectrum.
For more information, go to: https://www.federatedwireless.com/
How to get return on carrier investment in network
Alan Evans, Principle Technologist at Macrometa, tells us that as we pass through an era of network transformation, carriers must still see return on investment. Telcos represent the last mile for mobile applications, but across the board they have similar problems: How can they monetize 5G, get new revenue streams to offset declining ARPU, and detect and prevent fraud? For telcos, the use of edge computing is an opportunity to address these problems and compete in highly competitive markets. In this podcast, Alan discusses the cost efficiency and real-time capabilities of the edge, and how it can amplify telcos in a competitive market. Alan takes us through how carriers can see savings at the edge, and how they can better guard against edge vulnerabilities such as fraud and abuse. We gain a picture of how the use of edge computing can help telcos thrive in a competitive market.
Visit www.macrometa.com
“Historically, there was a very sledgehammer approach to solving things,” says Amit Modi, the CTO and CISO at Movius. “Some firms would say, hey, let’s shut one channel off because I really don’t have control over it, and I really don’t know what’s being discussed. A case in point: messaging.” Phone calls to clients, calls to partners, calls between employees, once was the one size fits all real time communication that everyone could agree on. Today, a three or four generation household, not uncommon, might present a company a baker’s dozen of preferred platforms to communicate as clients, and perhaps a half a dozen of preferred platforms that the two-working people in that same household might want to use for work. Even the notion that you might be able to at least hub everything through the family’s smartphones, might be challenged by one family member who still prefers a landline. A bank might serve all four as customers and might have one or two people in that household as employees.
How can a business find a platform that that will deliver employee productivity, client engagement and security?
In this podcast Modi outlines the challenge and then discusses the Movius MultiLine which works across on any phone, is all software, is an app that is carrier neutral, lives well with other platforms such as Teams, and above all delivers all three needs, concurrently. The app enables employees to use their own devices but provide a formal corporate identity, which is separate, secure and offer privacy for the employee who is working from home or working from anywhere but wants a professional identity and contact coordinate. Meanwhile the app enables the company and its team to engage clients their way, with secure and recorded. MultiLine operates within all the regulations facing financial firms and offers the same level of compliance in several other highly regulated verticals.
Visit https://movius.ai/
Julian Zottl, Chief Technology Officer - Cyber Protection Solutions at Raytheon Intelligence and Space discusses the “Great Resignation” and biggest security threats with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication. During the pandemic, security professionals started living new lifestyle creating remote access security issues. After the Pandemic, security professionals did not want to change their new remote access lifestyle and wanted more money, so many quit. The technology source pool had to be expanded to address the security staffing shortage still in existence.
Julian Zottl
Current Cyber security threats tend to come from nation states, hackers for hire, and for-profit organizations. People can make huge amounts of money based on hacking and ransomware. Listen in to find out how to mitigate the threats and meet the security personnel shortage challenges.
Raytheon Intelligence & Space delivers the disruptive technologies and proven solutions their customers need to succeed in any domain, against any challenge. They develop advanced sensors, training, and cyber and software solutions that provide a decisive advantage to civil, military, and commercial customers in more than 46 countries around the world.
Air Dominance Air dominance means controlling the skies and dictating the terms and conditions of a fight. For that, pilots need a complete range of solutions – from threat detection to jamming and sensing.
Cybersecurity When everything is connected, security is everything. We protect the most critical information systems and operations with breakthrough solutions.
For more information, go to: rtx.com/cyber Business email: cyber.services@raytheon.com
According to Alan Percy of TelcoBridges, we now live in a STIR/SHAKEN world. As with the devolving nature of the pandemic, we are moving from an intense and uncomfortable (and unsustainable) situation of mass illegal robocalling, to a new era where we live with a world where illegal robocalling is mitigated, limited, tamped down, but not altogether vanished. The rise of VoIP lowered the cost for overseas calls to almost zero. That in turn inspired bad actors to flood the system with calls. Percy reports that the number of blocked calls might be on the order of ten to every one call that makes it through. Hence the new normal, where robocalling is greatly reduced, but not eliminated. Percy explains the working of STIR/SHAKEN, where STIR/SHAKEN has been fully adopted, but also where, with smaller providers with older gear, STIR/SHAKEN remains not fully implemented. Percy also tells us about bad actors who try to get around STIR/SHAKEN by posing a legitimate organization and other measures to walk into any gate open, even a jar. In this podcast, we learn what we need to know now to understand what’s happening, what to expect and ideas on what to do now. Percy also places the issue in the larger context of community investment by telcos.
Visit www.telcobridges.com
This technology could not have come at a better time. With the shortage of qualified developers, security experts and operations personnel, DuoploCloud automates the infrastructure implementation process. Venkat Thiruvengadam, Founder & CEO of DuploCloud, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their technology and how easy it is to implement compliance ready technology quickly with reduced staff.
Venkat Thiruvengadam
With IoT going through massive expansion, IoT network additions need to be implemented properly. Listen in to Venkat as he identifies trends in IoT, offers suggestions for companies moving to the cloud and IoT, shows how companies can take advantage of Infrastructure-as-code including IoT, and identifies what steps can be taken to be more secure with IoT. A very insightful discussion!
DuploCloud Automation Platform
An end-to-end DevSecOps software platform that acts as your cloud expert, taking high level application specifications from the user and translates them to detailed cloud configurations employing best practices around security, availability, and compliance guidelines. The software runs within the customer’s cloud account and is accessed by the users via the DuploCloud portal, terraform or API.
DuploCloud Managed Operations
Delivers enterprise-grade operational procedures required in regulated industries. Built on top of the platform, it includes a 24×7 security and operations center, incident management, auditor engagement, application health monitoring, integrating application deployments into a CI/CD framework and assistance with containerization.
For more information, go to: https://duplocloud.com/
Industrial IoT (IIoT) has significantly improved the manufacturing process to a point where a manufacturing company will not survive long without it. Ricardo Buranello, SVP and Head of Telit IoT Platforms relates the manufacturing IIoT to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, which includes Smart Start components of deviceWISE. They collect data from the different manufacturing machines providing a digital stream of the factory and the line so management knows what is happening in real time.
Ricardo Buranello
Smart Start accelerates the digital transformation for the factory. Factory application templates of: IT/OT Integration, Process Optimization, Predictive Maintenance, Quality Control and supply chain management are available.
Listen in as Ricardo provides a very articulate description of the templates and the entire manufacturing process. If you are in manufacturing – this is a must listen podcast.
Telit was established in 1986 as Telital, an engineering company providing research and development services for multinational telecoms. Telit emerged as a cellular technology innovator. They began manufacturing and marketing products under the Telit brand in 1997.
They recognized the potential of cellular M2M and IoT solutions. They launched their first M2M module in 1998. Telit has been a pioneer in enterprise-grade IoT products and software for over 20 years.
Telit helps their customers and partners who require best-in-class Internet of Things (IoT) performance. Their engineering practices and design methodologies exceed stringent environmental requirements and industry standards. Their IoT experts have pioneered an end-to-end system approach to ensure everything works together when connecting devices. They enable businesses to manage IoT devices, connectivity, and everything in between.
For more information, go to: https://www.telit.com/ or https://www.telit.com/smart-factory-industry-4-0/
Catastrophic vulnerabilities come in the places people often least expect it, even if the people involved are managing a sophisticated network, already packed with safeguards, and staffed by seasoned professionals. A connection between corporate data systems and a simple building control operation, such as the air-conditioning unit can create a door that bad actors enter. Target, one of the world’s largest retailers, experienced such an attack. Much smaller companies can have certain routine WiFi uses, where sensitive data is available, become a point of vulnerability.
In this podcast Bob Wudeck, senior director of business development at BenQ America Corp., discusses the risks of cybersecurity attacks and data protection, while introducing the company's most secure wireless presentation systems to date. BenQ’s InstaShow WDC30 is the first commercially available wireless presentation system to meet FIPS and EAL6 security standards. Featuring three layers of wireless protection — Wi-Fi 6 encryption, ISO EAL6+, and FIPS 140-3 — the WDC30 is engineered and certified to meet the stringent security requirements of U.S. government agencies, financial institutions, healthcare organizations, and other high-risk enterprises. Users can instantly connect the germ resistant WDC30 button to their laptop and tap to present sensitive data with stunning, smooth 4K@60fps video output to up to two displays without network logins or software downloads.
Visit BenQ.com Read the news on BenQ
“Digital transformation is not just about technology,” says Robert Cooper, Managing Director of the Americas branch of Wildix, Inc. “It’s about consumption models, it’s about different buying channels that are offered, and it presents a unique opportunity to think outside the box.” Cooper continues, “You need to be able to lean on one specific area that you know inside out.” In the MSP world, according to Cooper, the MSP faces, literally out of the box solutions that the customer can access on his own. Voice, security, CX, CRM, business processes and more, have increasingly been commoditized, at least at some level. There are freemium services and very low-cost alternatives being offered to business customers. Here comes heavier economic weather and the business owner will be looking to trim costs. “You need to be the market professional,” says Cooper. “The business owner must be able to understand the value.”
In this podcast Cooper makes the case for specialization. Knowing as much as one can know about a brand, a technology, a solution, a situation and perhaps an industry. Being seen as the expert on that topic is critical. This is a strategy to move the MSP out of the price depressed commodity markets and into a niche space where customers are buying the value of a company that comes in and advances a whole business process.
Cooper has over 20 years of experience in leading technology sales teams, successfully managing initiatives at large tech companies, and developing businesses as a member of several company and industry boards. Cooper has extensive experience in bringing new concepts to market through the channel and is well-versed in how new market models and technologies impact the channel today. In addition to his military background, he has served as the Alabama State Chair for the White House Conference on Small Business. Cooper is a frequent guest on the TR Podcast channel.
Visit www.wildix.com
Company security is not only the job of the network security engineers. Yes, they need training and certifications continually through Inforsec Skills, but Keatron Evans, Principal Security Researcher at Infosec Institute highlights to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, that it is the job of every company employee. Company attacks are made at every level in a company. Whether it is email, the browser, the unauthorized application access, the endpoint, or the network itself, all the employees need to be knowledgeable security sentries for the company – check out Inforsec IQ.
Keatron Evans
The supply chain is a totally neglected asset of the company. Keatron goes into great detail about the supply chain and how the company is totally exposed unless certain steps are taken to protect the company. Knowing and securing your supply chain is mandatory to completely secure your company and its data. In order to understand some of the basic supply chain issues and why it is so important, listen in to Keatron providing some of the important facts and details.
About: Infosec is a leading cybersecurity education company helping IT and security professionals advance their careers and empowering employees to be cyber safe at work and home. Its mission is to equip individuals and organizations with the knowledge and skills to confidently outsmart cybercrime. More than 70% of the Fortune 500 have relied on Infosec Skills to develop their security talent and teams, and more than 5 million learners worldwide are more cyber-resilient from Infosec IQ’s security awareness and phishing training. Follow Infosec on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Infosec’s Resources Blog for the latest news, or visit infosecinstitute.com for more information.
For more information, go to: https://www.infosecinstitute.com/
Blueshift Cyber Security provides enterprise services to small and medium businesses which include:
24/7 SOC Advanced Threat Intelligence Network monitoring Cloud monitoring Container monitoring Endpoint monitoring
Tom Ricoy
Tom Ricoy, VP Sales, Public Sector and Alliances with Blueshift discusses with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, the history of the company and the evolution of the technology.
They have made their prices raesonable for the market they are targeting. The small to medium busimess does not have the staff and Blueshift plans to fill the void. Listen to Tom enthusiastically discuss Blueshift XDR in detail.
The Blueshift XDR™ service combines advanced deep packet inspection, comprehensive security event logging, and vulnerability detection to actively defend your entire IT infrastructure and devices, including remote workers (work from home). AI and machine learning combine with proprietary algorithms and filtering to distill voluminous alerts to a meaningful and manageable total.
Imagine the industry’s best cybersecurity professionals monitoring your company’s entire infrastructure 24/7, actively preventing hackers from stealing or ransoming your data wherever it resides. Blueshift XDR (Extended Detection & Response) mixes several layers of highly automated, advanced detection and response technology with comprehensive security event logging, machine learning, deception, and vulnerability detection to maintain a complete view of your IT infrastructure. Additional automation and filtering are applied, distilling alert volumes down to a meaningful and manageable total, constantly analyzed and reviewed by the Blueshift 24-7-365 SOC. Best of all, Blueshift XDR is affordable, easy to install, and immediately effective.
For more information, go to: https://blueshiftcyber.com/
Move strengthening Infobip’s U.S. and global offer
Today, TR reported that, Infobip, has completed the purchase of global Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Peerless Network, having received federal and state level regulatory approvals. The acquisition enhances Infobip’s presence in the U.S. and enables the firm to expand its voice offering worldwide, creating a global one-stop shop for omnichannel communications. “We will now be able to expand our products and services to over 70 countries throughout the world”, says Rick Knight, EVP of Sales & Marketing for Peerless, noting as well that the announcement means a “ton of new services” for customers. Mijo Soldin, Director Operator Strategy at Infobip tells us that Peerless offered the missing piece of what Infobip was looking to build into, especially as the company looked to build out services and presence in the US market. In this podcast, we learn that that the two companies intend to make the acquisition a win for all parties. “One and One equals Six,” Knight predicts, as Soldin adds that the merger creates a “one stop shop”.
Visit https://www.infobip.com/ and https://www.peerlessnetwork.com/
The best way to stop ransomware from occurring in your company is to protect the data. Tom Ricoy, VP Sales, Public Sector and Alliances with Cigent discussed with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how Cigent makes the data invisible. You cannot hold for ransom what you cannot see. This is done via a storage device – even at the sector level and can only be accessed by a trusted user.
Tom Ricoy
The device is one layer of the data security, they also have Zero Trust implemented at the file level requiring multi-factor authentication.
Their data security includes:
File encryption Secure file sharing Zero Trust file access
In addition to the data level security, they are also monitoring and looking for the bad actors. Listen in for more details on technology and their successes.
Cigent’s mission is to address advanced cyber threats by moving from a reactionary detect and respond approach to protecting the data itself with invisible, zero trust data protection that is unassailable to even the most sophisticated adversaries who have physical or remote device access.
Stop physical data, stop ransomware, and remote attacks; EDR will fail. Cigent stops assailants from compromising data with zero-trust data protection.
Stop physical data Exfiltration; Cigent protects endpoint data from sophisticated and persistent adversaries by rendering the data invisible.
Protect data wherever it goes; DLP is complex to manage and too restrictive on users. Cigent protects individual files with secure file sharing and zero trust file access.
For more information, go to: https://www.cigent.com/
We’re selling a product but we’re really selling a partnership
“Voice is extremely relevant in a lot of businesses,” says Micah Singer, CEO of TeamMate Technology. Though new technologies have offered different ways for businesses and customers to communicate, there are many situations that require the “complex call control” afforded by a PBX. In this podcast we learn how TeamMate bridges an important gap that faces Microsoft Teams users who are looking for something or are needing something that exceeds what Teams and direct routing offers, at an out of the box level. Singer points out that of the three-hundred and twenty million users across the world, some type of PBX remains a part of the scene. TeamMate combines integration to the Microsoft Graph API, automated scripting of Microsoft PowerShell and marries it to the TeamMate Connector, a purpose-built interoperation layer that allows us to normalize communication with any SIP PBX, SIP Trunk or SMS gateway. Singer also discusses the company’s recent entrance into the Cloud Communication Alliance (CCA). Singer sees many current and potential partnerships with CCA companies, plus a chance to participate as the CCA works on industry wide issues. “We’re selling a product but we’re really selling a partnership,” says Singer.
Visit https://www.teammatetechnology.com/
“Compliance drives a lot of decisions,” says Andy Anderson, CEO of DataStream Cyber Insurance. According to Anderson, an MSP should partner with a company offering cyber insurance, as both a way to help facilitate the sale of products and services, to fulfill the trusted advisor role, and as best practice. We also learn why MSPs need this coverage for themselves.
Businesses are increasingly looking to the IT services community for insight on a variety of new issues in addition to the traditional services they’ve come to depend on. As in the case of cybersecurity, organizations want and need complementary types of support, including consultation on regulatory compliance, disaster recovery and risk assessment. But decision-makers are increasing turning to MSPs for insight into issues on the fringe of their areas of expertise — like cyber insurance — and some of those questions or requests may fall outside of a provider’s legal comfort zone.
DataStream wants MSPs to use their cybersecurity risk assessment tools as a way to open the door to new business. They can leverage these tools to show SMB companies what their vulnerabilities are, then make recommendations for mitigation, in addition to recommending DataStream’s cyber security insurance.
Visit DataStream Cyber Insurance
“There is an alternative, here”
Every telecom operator has embraced the circular economy when it comes to the phone, according to Darren Pearce, Group CEO of TXO Systems. Now the operator is absorbing that idea for the networking gear. Pearce tells us that now sales on the networking side of equipment that was previously in use, is becoming proactive. People are seeking out gear in the circular economy for both the end points and the networks in between. In this podcast we learn about the benefits that telcos obtain by sourcing a company such as TXO to get needed network gear. Over the past three years, TXO Systems has become a routine source. We also learn how TXO is a company that smaller operators are finding both stock and price benefits from. “We are definitely seeing an influx of small operators who see our market as an alternative to the OEM,” says Pearce. One of the inventive services TXO provides equipment needy customers is what TXO calls “proactive mining”. The company will actively poll customers to see if a server, or part or product is not being used somewhere, and that it might be put back in use with a new customer. “It’s a bit like a dating game”, according to Pearce. We also learn that the modern secondary market is not about moving “hand me downs” from the first world economy to the developing world. Products coming off use, in the developed world, typically are “rehomed” somewhere else in the developed economies. “You will see this industry boom,” says Pearce, predicting that changing attitudes among both customers and investors are changing the way people view the secondary market. Investors are demanding companies go green and source companies such as TXO.
Visit TXO Systems Read TXO Whitepapers
The day you receive the IoT devices with the latest in Zero Trust hardware and software technology – they will probably already be out of date. Depending on the IoT device, they can spend months in the supply chain prior to being shipped to the end consumer.
Bud Broomhead
This is where Viakoo steps in to help those customers stay current. Bud Broomhead, CEO and Founder of Viakoo explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how most organizations will have dozens if not hundreds or thousands of different devices on their network. It is a daunting task to maintain Zero Trust with those devices when they are out of compliance with their specifications. Viakoo recently launched their Viakoo Action Platform, a suite of modules which ensures enterprise devices have vulnerabilities remediated, can rejoin the network safely, and function properly while meeting compliance.
Listen in to Bud as he discusses the remediation process for all IoT network devices.
IoT Security – Zero Trust – Governance
As IoT devices become more prevalent, it is important to ensure that they are properly secured and governed. IoT Security refers to the various measures taken to secure IoT devices from unauthorized access and exploitation. Zero Trust is a security model that assumes that all users and devices are untrusted and must be verified before being granted access to resources. In the context of IoT, this means that all IoT devices must be verified and authenticated before being allowed to connect to a network or system. Governance is the process of ensuring that IoT devices are properly configured and used in accordance with organizational policies and procedures. Good governance helps to ensure that IoT devices are used safely and securely, and that they do not pose a risk to the organization.
For more information, go to: https://www.viakoo.com/
As technology races forward, companies are struggling to keep up with training security employees and implementing technology. Many use the band aid approach to security by applying a new solution to the symptom.
Versa resolves the security problem. There is no need for multiple security product lines. Dogu Narin, Head of Product Management with Versa Networks explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication how the Versa VOS solution has multiple technologies built into the stack which can be managed by the single-pane-of-glass Versa Director.
Dogu Narin
Dogu goes on to discuss SASE and their IoT end point support via a four-step process:
Identification of the IoT devices Control with network placement and policies Securing Monitoring devices and communication
An excellent description is provided as Dogu walks you through the logic and operation of the Versa technology.
They accelerate your Digital Transformation.
Versa is unique among SASE vendors, providing an end-to-end solution that both simplifies and secures the modern network. Versa SASE, based on VOS™, delivers a broad set of capabilities via the cloud and on-premises for building agile and secure enterprise networks, as well as highly efficient managed service offerings.
The Versa mission is to address the security and networking challenges that Enterprises and Service Providers face, and connect branch offices, home offices, and users to applications wherever they exist.
For more information, go to: https://versa-networks.com
We embarked on a journey to become carbon neutral about six months ago,” says Adam Moloney, CFO of Blancco. Recently, Blancco formally announced it had achieved carbon neutral status for 2021. In line with PAS 2060, the globally accepted standard for carbon neutrality, Blancco has offset its entire 2021 carbon footprint through investment in two renewable wind energy projects in India, which will generate clean, low carbon renewable electricity. Blancco sets industry standards in data erasure and mobile lifecycle solutions. In this podcast we discuss Blancco’s carbon neutral milestone. “This is not an annual project for us,” adds Moloney.
The announcement comes on the heels of recent industry recognitions garnered by Blancco for its role in helping enterprises reduce e-waste through advanced data sanitization practices, thereby reducing physical destruction of IT assets for security purposes. Blancco was recently named "Sustainability Innovator of the Year" in the MSP Innovation Awards, and "Most Sustainable Service" in the SEAL Business Awards. This podcast covers:
overview of how Blancco offset the company's entire 2021 carbon footprint through investment in two renewable wind energy projects in India key considerations during the process of achieving carbon neutrality best practices and tips for maintaining carbon neutrality in the future
For more details on Blancco's carbon neutrality announcement, please visit: https://www.blancco.com/blancco-achieves-goal-of-becoming-carbon-neutral/
“Nothing lumpy”
Robert Messer says that his company, IPTECHVIEW, has made surveillance a business any MSP can get involved in, and that anyone in the end user company, that needs to, can access surveillance. IPTECHVIEW has developed a VSaaS (Video Surveillance as a Service) platform that drains complexity from everything from installation and launch to actual use. In this podcast we learn about the IPTECHVIEW, a scalable, cloud-based platform that permits growth without the need for servers or other on-prem boxes. “We felt what the MSP needed was something that can securely manage all that equipment without a PC,” says Robert Messer. “Its just cameras and cloud, no servers… nothing lumpy.”
According to Messer, “Its a huge income opportunity.” The system can be white labeled, the MSP can add a services package, leading to excellent profitability. Messer also maintains that the ability to improve customer loyalty might be an even bigger benefit.
By draining complexity and time-consuming, labor-intensive processes, IPTECHVIEW improved the profitability of jumping into the space. For MSPs and others, who might have historically been tied to a phone selling model, IPTECHVIEW offers an entrance into a new portfolio category without the overhead of staff training, certifications, and the old school vendor “university” model. The platform aims to be very plug and play, with no need for manuals. “We wanted it that people didn’t need a manual,” says Messer. “We wanted to democratize surveillance.”
Visit https://www.iptechview.com/
“Our first main goal was to keep people safe,” says Derek Peterson, Chief Executive Officer, Soter Technologies. In this podcast we learn how Soter Technologies is taking a fresh take on security and sensors, with products that detect bullying occurring on a school campus, the use of e-cigarettes or tobacco products, whether internal environmental conditions are safe for workers in an office building. Soter’s products can summon the HVAC system to ionize the air after particulate matter indicates the presence of pathogens. Peterson argues that employers, school boards, anybody managing an office building, or a campus need to bring management real-time awareness to a new level, moving beyond traditional security measures such as motion detectors and perimeter devices. Soter offers MSPs a fresh take on security and building a robust portfolio. In this case the MSP can pick up revenue for the sale of the product, the product’s maintenance, and installation, not to mention on going recurring income. We learn that the company will soon be releasing related solutions that will take these measures to a new level. “We’re giving the MSP something unique to sell,” adds Peterson. As the office is being reinvented, here is a product that enables the MSP to help customers improve safety, environment and comfort.
Visit www.sotertechnologies.com
Dylan Owen, CISSP-ISSEP-ISSMP GNFA GCFA - Associate Director Raytheon Cyber Services speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the current state of corporate security.
The pandemic basically expanded the limit of the corporate perimeter, normally protected by the firewall, so much that some think it is the end of the perimeter. Others look at it as expanding the perimeter to areas not previously conceived. Yet, others look at micro-perimeters around locations, equipment, or other related components.
Dylan Owen
Dylan explains that due to the perimeter redefinition and flexibility, a Zero Trust solution needs to be embraced by corporate entities. Knowing where to start is key, even though some Zero Trust components may already be in place.
Take a step back and identify Individual/Department/application needs. Company policies will evolve from the detailed assessment. Dylan and his team can help with the assessment and the implementation. Listen in, Raytheon can help with your security needs. Actionable Intelligence at the Edge
In today’s fast-paced information age, individuals, companies and government organizations are faced with a unique challenge — gaining insights from the explosion of inbound data.
This mass of data has also led to an increase in large-scale cyberattacks, data breaches, ransomware attacks, corporate espionage and insider threat cases. As our adversaries adopt advanced tools, rapid innovation of cyber analytics and intelligence will provide an edge over those threats.
Raytheon Intelligence & Space’s Cyber Analytics and Intelligence Services are designed to sift through the noise efficiently, find needles in globally distributed haystacks, and convert raw data into meaningful, actionable intelligence and insights. Their deep, multi-domain knowledge and interdisciplinary subject matter experts, coupled with advanced data collection, processing, AI/ML-augmented analysis and visualization tools, keeps their partners ahead of their competition and adversaries.
For more information, go to: https://www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com/what-we-do/cybersecurity
In order to implement a successful security system, it starts with security awareness by the employees. They are the first link of defense and at the same time can be the weakest link. Training is a must to get the entire organization on board with the program.
Udo Riedel
Udo Riedel / CTO and Founder, DriveLock, speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their comprehensive solutions. Udo identifies the goals of DriveLock in the U.S. market and how they plan to strengthen their current position.
Listen in as Udo also addresses the differences between the European and the U.S. markets and why DriveLock can help U.S. enterprise significantly in securing their network and data.
About: They are a German company. Founded in 1999, they are now one of the leading international specialists for IT and data security.
They have set themselves the goal of reliably protecting corporate data, devices and systems. To achieve this, they rely on the latest technologies, experienced security experts and solutions based on the Zero Trust model.
In today's security architecture, zero trust means a paradigm shift according to the maxim "Never trust, always verify".
Their DriveLock Zero Trust platform follows this principle. It combines the elements:
Data protection Endpoint protection Endpoint Detection & Response Identity & Access Management
The fully integrated zero trust platform supports different operating systems, end devices and is offered as an on-premises solution and managed security service.
For more information, go to: https://www.drivelock.com/
“We are always reinventing,” says John Spagnuolo of IQ Reseller. According to Spagnuolo “IQ Reseller is most complete ERP for ITADs.” In this special ASCDI and TR Podcast, we learn how IQ Reseller offers the software basis for running a modern ITAD. A system that is customized to the very specialized needs of a business that must carefully track a chain of custody, must keep very accurate work records and many more very comprehensive asset management activities, all while not pushing the costs of maintaining that control to a level where margins disappear in a margin thin industry. We also learn how the IQ Reseller ERP, enterprise resource planning, is critical in meeting customer expectations. “We understand your needs,” adds Spagnuolo, noting that with IQ Reseller, you’re benefiting from years of experiences and thousands of transactions. As we enter a challenging economic environment, ITADs will become even more vital to the wider IT community, and a purpose-built ERP, more critical.
Visit https://www.iqreseller.com/
While Acronis takes care of many large Enterprise organizations, they are focused on the SMB segment of the channel. Most SMB organizations do not have the expertise or the bandwidth to handle cybersecurity threats that exists in the world today. Thinking that they are too small to be a target is just inviting the ransom-note to be written sooner.
Candid Wüest
Candid Wüest, VP of Cyber Protection Research at Acronis speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the channel and the SMB security threats. Their Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is one the solutions that fits well into the SMB segment and has three pillars for the security including:
Data protection Security end point protection Inventory of Software & devices along with a vulnerability assessment
Listen in as Candid also talks about their Cyber Protection Weekly Report and their priorities for 2022.
About: At Acronis, they believe the data, applications, systems and productivity of every organization should be protected against loss, theft, and downtime – whether it’s caused by cyberattacks, hardware failure, natural disaster, or human error. From MSPs supporting clients to enterprises serving global users to organizations handling sensitive data, they lower risks, improve productivity, and ensure your organization is #CyberFit.
Driven by their passion to protect every workload, they’ve created the only all-in-one cyber protection solution for environments of any size – and solved the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern world.
For more information, go to: https://www.acronis.com/
With the move to the cloud, there has been a significant shift to SaaS and the recurring revenue model by software providers. While each software vendor implements security features, organizations cannot keep up with all of the security requirements for each application and the security risks involved with the interactions of those applications while maintaining compliance at the same time.
Hasan Imam
Obsidian resolves these issues. Hasan Imam, CEO of Obsidian Security discusses with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how “their platform proactively hardens SaaS posture to prevent configuration drift, overprivileged users and publicly exposing data.”
While serving Fortune 2000 enterprise organizations, Obsidian addresses their challenges of posture and threat management. Hasan goes on to discuss the background development, market research and market need behind Obsidian’s SaaS product.
Listen in as Hasan describes the markets they are serving and the issues they are addressing for those organizations.
About: Obsidian is the first and only comprehensive security platform designed for SaaS. From productivity suites and communication tools to HR systems and identity providers, organizations around the world entrust more data than ever before to their SaaS applications. Obsidian creates a comprehensive and contextual understanding of those complex, interconnected applications to make them safer and more secure.
For more information, go to: https://www.obsidiansecurity.com/
Dave George – President & Chief Technologist at Pryme and El Mehdi Sodki (elmedi sodky) – Director of Sales, North America at Streamwide speak to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about technology that is essential in emergency situations and widely used every day in many industries around the world.
Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) is a mobile communication system provided by Streamwide and enhanced with Pryme’s versatile and expansive product offerings. What may seem like a simple device from Pryme can help applications change communications in the public and private sectors and help save lives.
Listen in and hear about how Streamwide’s communication applications differ from others on the market and how Pryme’s wireless Push to Talk (PTT) accessories elevate the user experience for Streamwide’s applications and more.
Dave George
PRYME, for almost 30 years, has been a leading manufacturer of high-quality products for professional users of two-way radios. Located in Brea, CA, their line of accessories serves many markets including public safety, police, fire, emergency services, healthcare, security, oil & gas, tactical and hazmat professionals, as well as industrial, commercial, hospitality and entertainment markets.
For more information, go to: http://pryme.com/
El Mehdi Sodki
STREAMWIDE is a leading communications software technology provider delivering mission critical communications and operations solutions. Their products range from real-time voice and data solutions to geolocation services and digital transformation of operational processes.
For more information, go to: https://www.streamwide.com/en/home/
Susan Elder has been here and done that like few other people in our industry. Having led the marketing program at Jenne, she has had a front row seat for the many seasons and transformations that have occurred over time. “Many companies say they have a plan, but they don’t really have a written plan,” says Elder, commenting on how many people dive into projects using scarce resources and incomplete strategy only to later be disappointed. As the economic situation changes, and as MSPs face a new era where they will need to be creative and more competitive to find, sign, and retain business, Elder discusses how MSPs can step back, and then step forward with an organized way to make their goals. In this podcast we learn about how taking an audit of how a current business finds new customers, is a very good first step to building a successful path. Elder describes how sales and marketing are connected, but different and then relates these differences to the MSP challenge. We also learn how to do things now, using limited resources, and then making small tests of ideas to find what works.
Visit https://www.ignitepropel.com/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanaelder/
Daniele Catteddu, Chief Technology Officer with Cloud Security Alliance speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the history of the CSA and what they have accomplished over the years and recently with the launch of the Zero Trust Advancement Center. The goal of the ZTAC is provide best practices, recommendations, training and education and awareness on Zero Trust.
There is a lot of attention on IoT and IIoT device supply chains, their vulnerabilities as well as potential breaches during production which Daniele addresses.
Listen in as he also describes how Zero Trust can help protect IoT and IIoT systems. In addition, he covers certifications for IoT devices, which were not well implemented in the past, but are now becoming available with a recommended IoT security framework. (CSA) IoT control framework V3
Daniele Catteddu
About: The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, certification, events and products. CSA’s activities, knowledge and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by cloud — from providers and customers, to governments, entrepreneurs, and the assurance industry — and provide a forum through which diverse parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem.
For more information, go to: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/zt/ https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/press-releases/2022/04/26/cloud-security-alliance-updates-internet-of-things-iot-controls-matrix-with-new-incident-management-domain-and-enhanced-technical-clarity-and-referencing/ https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/artifacts/iot-security-controls-framework-v3/ https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/artifacts/guide-to-the-iot-security-controls-framework-v3/
Deadlines. Proclamations. Discussions. Seminars and webinars and panels and great efforts. Even a rare bi-partisan agreement on the overall issue of robocalls. According to Katia Gonzalez Gutierrez of BICS, despite all of this, robocalls might have grown, however slightly, over the past few weeks and months as STIR/SHAKEN should now have begun to have an effect. In this podcast, Gonzalez takes us to a discussion that looks at the problem from beyond the confines of the current policy apparatus, and from the point of view of people dealing with this issue in the European Union. Gonzalez points out that the regulation of robocalling, and related issues, are still not harmonized. There might be legitimate calls being blocked, even while bad actors are still able to make unwelcome robocalls. “We need to find, as an ecosystem, a way to make them (the regulations) coexist, and work together,” says Gonzalez. “There has to be interoperability.” She adds that without better coordination, loopholes will arise, which will be exploited by bad actors, undermining the effort to noticeably lower the number of robocalls consumers and businesses are receiving.
Visit www.bics.com
Everyone has, at some point, bought a list of leads, only to discover people from the wrong companies, holding the wrong job titles, and all that, often no longer up to date. “It’s one thing to get a lead, but if you cannot properly follow up, you will have a very low conversion rate,” says Zamir Javer of Jumpfactor. In this podcast, Javer discusses effective tactics to take now to enable customers to find your business online, and in the social media spaces the target customers are spending their time. Javer discusses how his company guides people on both how to get more leads and how to improve their success with each customer. Javer also points out the critical nature of response time. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, according to Javer, the ROI on your inbound lead apparently begins to go stale, almost exponentially, as time goes by. Being prepared to reply quickly is a key part of the picture.
Visit www.jumpfactor.net
MSPs have grown up with multiple billing systems or produced their own. Today’s MSP needs a revenue management platform not a disparate collection of software modules.
JK Chelladural, CEO, and Sunitha Shetty, VP at OneBill and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale FL. JK presents the current conditions of the MSPs when it comes to the back office when dealing with multiple services supporting multiple customers. MSPs have to think of the whole process order to cash. He stressed that automating the revenue processes leads to preventing revenue leakage, reducing errors, saves labor, and enhancing the sales processes. Sunitha continues with the discussion pointing out the common MSP problems such as scaling the business and the complexities and pain point of taxation. She also discusses the control and payments of commissions to agents.
OneBill is an intelligent platform that powers the entire lead-to-revenue generation experience. Through OneBill, businesses can easily scale complex product and pricing offers, automate the service activation process, accurately manage billing and accounts receivables, configure unique offers for partners/ resellers and provide a superior experience for customers through their subscription journey. OneBill now has a global presence in 4 continents, across 14 industries and close to 100 best-in-class engineers and business consultants driving the new way to do billing.
“There’s no way in which the existing operators could continue to deploy current solutions as is,” says Bejoy Pankajakshan, EVP, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Mavenir. “They will all need to cut costs… and they all need to drive additional revenues on their network.” In this podcast, Pankajakshan discusses how Open RAN based network, “…is the future” and how it enables carriers to achieve lower costs, better revenues, and the delivery of more solutions. We learn about Dish Release, a major milestone in developing the most advanced cloud-native 5G Open RAN network. Pankajakshan walks us through Mavenir’s recent DISH, Telefonica Hispam and AWS announcements, and what these developments mean. Mavenir provides cloud-native Open RAN packet core, IMS, voice, messaging, and orchestration components. We learn how these recent developments are in keeping with the firm’s long-standing posture of bringing forward technologies to enable partners to do more, while cutting costs, and eliminating vendor lock-in. Mavenir’s Open vRAN supports all generations (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) and is built from the ground up to be cloud-native, with fully containerized microservices allowing it to be deployed easily on any cloud, private, hybrid or public.
Visit https://www.mavenir.com/
Martello and Mitel, a relationship going back a decade, has been renewed for another three years. In this podcast we learn about how Martello has continued to position itself as a trusted resource for users on several platforms and stages in migration. “If you can’t make telephone calls, and now with Office 365 being dominant, you can’t send emails, that’s your productivity,” says John Proctor, CEO of Martello. Proctor argues that you need a single go to resource that can handle your issues across the network, and across the vast, remote, network hybrid working. There will be meshing of on-prem, and remote, of Mitel and Teams, a spectrum of available resources and infrastructure, and unnumerable ways that such a network might fail. Martello can pinpoint problems and deliver real time problem resolutions. Proctor points out that organizations such as a hospital might have multiple environments: on-prem, off-site, work from anywhere, all with security, privacy and stability being major mandates. Martello can handle these diverse work landscapes. Proctor further points out that user expectations of the ready use and available communications, are generally high, even as the respective network turns up unprecedented concurrent challenges. Modern IT teams will need a partner that is ready to tackle all of these environments, together.
Visit http://www.martellotech.com
Living through the evolution of M2M to IoT, Noam Lando, Co-Founder and CEO of Webbing walks Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, through the requirements of each phase of the development and what is important to the MVNO, the manufacturers and the consumers. It is not just connecting devices that is important.
Companies make decisions based on portability in the sense of moving a device or a car from the United States to Germany or Japan. What are the effects on the IoT devices, and can they automatically reconfigure in the new location? Devices are intended to be used for 10 to 15 or more years. The carrier a company starts with may not be the carrier they continue with for service. Thus, reprovisioning the unit to work with a new carrier is vital. Zero hands on is a major concern when contemplating millions and millions of devices.
Noam Lando
Listen in to Noam as he discusses past and present IoT trends, the role of eSIM, adopting of eSIM, eSIM trends and more.
Webbing is a full MVNO that delivers innovative enterprise grade, global connectivity and IoT services. They have a distributed core network with its own infrastructure and security. The Webbing network fully supports all cellular technologies from 2G through to 5G. Their secured network of 600+ mobile carriers across more than 200 countries, ensures superior data connectivity between business, people and things wherever the device is located.
Today Webbing’s portfolio consists of WebbingCNCT and WebbingCTRL. WebbingCNCT is a global data connectivity solution that delivers the reach of a global carrier with the quality of a local one with a single carrier that has flexible offerings, low latency, and sustainability at competitive rates. WebbingCTRL is their innovative eSIM solution. It is an eSIM with a management portal, that can easily and remotely be configured as any wireless carrier’s profile, thus eliminating network provider lock-in.
For more information, go to: https://webbingsolutions.com/
The Technology Advisory Board adds a critical component to the MEF organization. Until now, MEF was comprised of a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers. Pascal Menezes, CTO of MEF explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication how TAB came about. Pascal continues “TAB will bring important senior executive vendor perspectives to the strategy and work of MEF augmenting the leadership of it service provider-oriented BoD.”
Pascal Menezes
It is all about the experience and TAB will be representing the users giving valuable feedback about what is needed to make their operations more productive, cost effective, and secure while providing service to their end consumers.
Listen in as Pascal reviews TAB composition, what TAB will bring to the industry, what enterprise pain-points TAB will address and more.
MEF is a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers. Together, they drive network transformation to power the digital economy. They provide a framework for digital service providers to develop, monetize, and scale services across an automated, inter-connected ecosystem.
The MEF Technology Advisory Board (TAB) brings critical technology perspectives to the strategic work of MEF. Through extensive collaboration with the Board of Directors and MEF membership, the TAB further strengthens MEF’s mission to accelerate enterprise digital transformation through a better-together ecosystem of service, cloud, and technology providers.
For more information, go to: https://www.mef.net/about-mef/
MSP customers are looking at or getting into the Internet of Things (IoT) support. There are multiple services available and a wide range of edge devices, sensors, and actuators. The choices keep expanding and evolving.
Mike Anderson, Director of Product Management at GetWireless and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale FL. GetWireless is a distributor that deals with MSPs. In this role, they support MSPs who are working on IoT projects. Mike mentioned that security, control, and reporting are major issues when deploying and managing IoT solutions. GetWireless provides consulting education as well as marketing support services. They provide many case studies of IoT deployments so that the MSP can grasp where there are opportunities for business.
Established in 2001 and based in Minneapolis, GetWireless is a leading Value-Added Distributor of cellular solutions that connect the Internet of Things. By supporting a strong portfolio of embedded modules, end-device modems, intelligent gateways, and cellular boosters, GetWireless is able to supply the most advantageous cellular solution for each new IoT application.
Peerless Cloud PBX Hospitality, New offering for hospitality
“We’re connected to every major carrier in the US,” says Rick Knight, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Peerless Network. At last week’s MSP EXPO, Knight and Peerless EVP, Jim Brewer visited the TR Podcast station for a fast update on Peerless and the MSP community. In this podcast we learn how the Peerless acquisition of Infobip is moving through its final regulatory stages, and how that expansion will benefit Peerless’ community of partners and customers.
We learn about the roll out of Peerless Cloud PBX Hospitality, a UCaaS for hotels product that utilizes Jazzware. In place of an old-style PBX, Cloud PBX Hospitality, fully integrates a hotel’s Property Management System (PMS). Because Peerless owns and operates their own network, the cost structure is very competitive, especially in this vertical where every hotel room must have a phone, by law, while the rest of the facility typically have other places requiring an instrument including retail, dining, room service, administrative functions, housekeeping, parking, concierge, and of course front desk. Peerless can offer a state-of-the-art solution, but at a price that is sensitive to the special needs of hospitality property owners and managers. “This is a good opportunity to modernize,” says Brewer, who notes that hotels offering a certain type of hospitality experience need to consider the presentation and functionality that an aging phone may send in contrast to an otherwise updated room.
Visit www.peerlessnetwork.com
Bandwidth and Alianza have partnered to accelerate cloud migration for communications service providers (CSPs). Under the partnership, Bandwidth’s network platform and APIs, combined with Alianza’s full-stack CSP platform, will enable CSPs to transform their legacy infrastructure and remain competitive by offering high-growth, cloud-based voice, messaging and videoconferencing services.
Already serving more than 50 CSP customers in the U.S. and Canada, the partnership gives CSPs a tool as they work to combat the threat of over-the-top providers eroding their customer base. By offering a solution that is practical and cost-effective, and that eliminates the complexity and expense of maintaining existing legacy systems, the partnership allows CSPs to build upon their long-standing relationships with local business and residential customers and keep and grow their customer base with differentiated services.
In this podcast Alianza CEO and Founder Brian Beutler discusses the drivers behind the Bandwidth/Alianza partnership, the benefits it is providing to CSPs and end customers, and also what’s next for the companies.
Visit the Alianza website or Bandwidth webpage for more information.
“What happens when you keep the customer?” asks Dr. Vasudeva Akula, co-founder and the head of data science at VOZIQ AI. “The customer keeps on paying, that’s the value of recurring revenue.” Akula notes that when a paying customer is retained, the value can be enormous based on the long-term value of all the monthly payments. In the era of recurring revenue, reducing the number of customers leaving can be even more valuable than new sales.
Reducing customer churn by a few percentage points is perhaps the biggest business growth opportunity for any recurring revenue business because of the compounding effect it creates over time. Studies suggest that the average churn rate among U.S. companies is about 20%. That means a company with 1 million customers and an average customer revenue of $500 per customer would end up losing about $100 million in revenue each year if they don't act quickly. The problem is even worse in the telecommunications industry, where dynamics are constantly changing, competition is intense, and customer switching is high.
Today, we have with us Dr. Vasudeva Akula, co-founder, and the head of data science at VOZIQ AI. VOZIQ AI is helping many recurring revenue businesses in achieving retention and customer lifetime value breakthroughs with their AI/ML-powered predictive customer retention solution. In this podcast, Vasudeva talks more about how VOZIQ AI is helping their clients re-imagine customer retention using their end-to-end business solution.
Visit https://voziq.ai/
“Whether you’re at home or in the office, we want to give you a seamless experience,” says Jeff Kubick, Head of Global Voice Service Provider Marketing at Poly. At the MSP EXPO ITEXPO, Poly notably featured two products for the smaller spaces that the new hybrid workforce utilizes, such as home offices and rooms that might be smaller and have different background noises than a traditional office. Poly is presenting new ideas designed just with those new workplaces in mind. The Poly Sync 10 USB speakerphone is designed for home office use, with microphones that offer professional grade quality sound, and noise cancellation with the typical at home distractions in mind. The Poly Studio R30 video bar, also featured, packs the sophistication of Poly’s conferencing devices but into a package designed for smaller rooms. The product has advanced technology such as Poly DirectorAI that keeps everyone in frame at all times and audio that filters out background noise, so each participant is heard clearly.
Learn more at www.poly.com
“We don’t know what we don’t know until there’s some investigation,” says Ben McGahon. Just in time for a challenging economic turn, our very first ITEXPO 2022 podcast features a company that’s focused on finding cloud savings. In this podcast we learn that although the move to the cloud was designed to make a more rational use of resources, companies still have orphaned resources, improperly scaled resources, spending on assets that may not be justified and much more. If the adage that recessions catch what the auditors missed, is true, AVMS has an interesting offer for MSPs to consider just as their clients shift from an environment of free spending consumers and forgivable government loans to a very visible effort to tighten credit, which may mean that people will be looking at spending. McGahon thinks that there is a great opportunity in offering companies a simple path to savings, where the cost cutting begins with services and assets we literally are not using or are underusing. McGahon makes the case that automated advanced cloud resource scheduling, and the savings and efficiencies that this yields, is a conversation the MSP needs to have with their customers today.
Visit www.advancedvmsolutions.io
“Our roadmap is driven by the feedback from our resellers,” says Wojciech Wieroński, CTO of Viirtue. In this podcast Daniel Rosenrauch, CEO, Charlene Gustafson, Vice President of Sales and Wieroński of Viirtue join TR’s Doug Green to update listeners on the company’s end user facing innovations and the development of other tools to help MSPs focus on sales and better matching of customer need. We hear about a new end user interface, built mobile first with the customer in mind, offering accessibility for those with disabilities. We also get an update on Viibe, the company’s quote to cash tool, for the resellers, that was built to offer sophisticated services to customers paired with simplicity for the MSP and reseller. “Our resellers tell us how intuitive our platform is, says, Gustafson. Recorded live at MSP EXPO, Rosenrauch says, “It’s a great time to be a Viirtue reseller,” noting how the company has focused on making it easy for the reseller to deliver the services customers need today.
Visit www.viirtue.com
“A lot of people just didn’t want hear it,” says Alec Fenichel, CTO. Today, June 30 is a major deadline for many carriers to comply with the STIR/SHAKEN program. In this podcast, recorded last week at MSP EXPO ITEXPO, we learn about the status of the cascading deadlines, that have come and gone, today’s deadline and next steps. Listeners may be surprised to learn that despite a major effort in both the public and private sectors of the industry to notify and educate people, many carriers are still not prepared, and a Fenichel points out, may have not understood how their company’s carrier status was being defined about this effort.
Fenichel outlines steps people can take today, and in the weeks ahead, to get back on top of this challenge, and the services TransNexus offers companies. TransNexus STIR/SHAKEN solutions enable you to authenticate and digitally sign calls you originate and verify signed calls you receive. These are complete turnkey solutions that include everything you need to deploy STIR/SHAKEN quickly and easily. The good news is that there may be, even today, a path to not face the consequences of not complying. The bad news is that companies that simply miss the deadline without any further action could basically face a situation where they are effectively shut down.
According to the FCC, “STIR/SHAKEN is a framework of interconnected standards. STIR/SHAKEN are acronyms for the Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN) standards. This means that calls traveling through interconnected phone networks would have their caller ID "signed" as legitimate by originating carriers and validated by other carriers before reaching consumers. STIR/SHAKEN digitally validates the handoff of phone calls passing through the complex web of networks, allowing the phone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify that a call is in fact from the number displayed on Caller ID.”
Learn about TransNexus STIR/SHAKEN Visit TransNexus
According to Indrajit “IG” Ghosh, CEO of ConnX, helping enterprises obtain the promise of AI and better data management, is an opportunity worth considering for the MSP. In this podcast Ghosh discusses his company as a Transformation as a Service platform provider that integrates SD-WAN, UC collaboration, mobility, security, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation to help enterprise customers transform from fragmented and siloed communications services to an integrated, AI-driven, multi-service collaboration platform. Ghosh discusses how his Platform as a Service, offers a fast on ramp to gaining the benefits of AI, and much more, while bypassing a time consuming and expensive process that’s already built into the ConnX offering. As we move towards a new era of communication, ConnX cloud edge applications were built with the hybrid workforce in mind.
Visit https://connxai.com/
Recession ready solutions, as contact magic exceeds underlying UC
“At the core of everything is UCaaS,” says Stijn Nijhuis, CEO of Enreach. “We create human contact.” Nijhuis’ company is focused on integrating UCaaS, CCaaS and mobility into services and experiences that take the idea of UC to a new place: converged contact solutions. The aim is to integrate all those stand-alone ways of connecting – fixed voice, mobile, video, chat, email, SMS, social channels – into one easy, user-controlled, context-based and flexible environment resulting in more effortless, natural interaction between people bringing everyone closer together. In this podcast, Nijhuis discusses how this approach creates a distinctive set of solutions and experiences that help companies save money while improving the “contactability” of business and organization team members for better control over the day and optimized work-life flow.
We also learn about Enreach’s approach to Microsoft Teams, where the company offers a wide range of integration options so customers with different needs can enhance Teams as part of a more comprehensive digital workplace. Benefits include additional PBX and Contact Center features while ensuring that all calls, PSTN, mobile or via Teams, can be handled the same way. Plus, Enreach’s Teams integration creates a powerful opportunity for telecom and ICT partners to differentiate and expand their own offerings.
With a possible turn in economic conditions, Nijhuis sees an opportunity to offer services that require no capital investment, scale, contractual flexibility, and immediate savings and productivity improvements.
Visit www.enreach.com
“The customers really feel appreciated and listened to,” says Trey Norman, Senior Pre-Sales Engineer, at Mindbreeze. According to Norman, that level of CX can be achieved when AI tools are used to organize company wide data in a purpose driven way to enable companies to interact with their customers, armed with an understanding of what a customer needs, prefers and where that customers’ needs might be. The ability to see the full scope of customer data has significant benefits for organizations trying to maximize their customer experience efforts.
In this podcast, we learn how Mindbreeze uncovers the power of customizing customer interactions and using the right technology to understand company-wide data. Mindbreeze ensures that companies get the most out of their data to personalize approaches and ensure customer knowledge stays within the company when veteran workers are resigning at an alarming rate. Stay tuned to learn more about personalizing, customizing, and optimizing customer experience in sales during times of economic uncertainty and beyond.
Visit www.mindbreeze.com
The MSP and provider back office could do with more automation, automation that increase profits, reduces employee stress, and can help with improving employee efficiency.
Paul Dundas, CEO of Emersion, and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Paul points out that any size service business has to deal with a range of billing platforms and different levels of automation. He points out that one platform can standardize outcomes, reduce errors, free up staff for other functions, and provide better security for the service provider. Paul stated that the goals for a good platform are:
Good customer engagement Integration with other tools and apps Better automation Standardized process and outcomes
The service provider community is looking for a scalable product that can work with a small service to a large telco provider. The product must demonstrate operational maturity.
Emersion is a specialist business automation platform with offices around the world. Owned by the Novatti Group (ASX:NOV). Emersion’s, powerful business automation platform supercharges billing, provisioning, and order flow for telecom, MSP, and utility businesses. Emersion has more than a decade of success as the leading billing, provisioning, and business automation provider to the telecom industry in the Asia-Pacific region. Validated by more than 200 integration partners, Emersion is uniquely positioned to help its users “close the door on the competition” by creating a single point of contact for telecommunications, data, software subscriptions, managed services, hardware and support billing.
Internet of Things (IoT) assets can be anywhere. There are instances where there is no wired access and mobile services do not exist. This is where satellite access provides a solution.
Dave Haight, Vice President of IoT at Globalstar and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale; FL. IoT endpoints can be fixed and mobile. IoT devices are found in most business verticals. Satellite IoT devices allow you monitor business remotely and provide tracking in near real time. John focuses on the value propositions and ROI of satellite access. He goes on to discuss strong security and satellite service as a redundant service when cell services fail. John discusses the edge devices available from Globalstar and other vendors.
Globalstar pioneered personal safety by introducing its SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger in 2007. Today, leveraging its low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, Globalstar reliably connects and protects IoT assets, transmits key operational data, and saves lives – from any location – for consumers, industrial companies, and government agencies in over 120 countries. With a portfolio that includes SPOT GPS messengers, next-generation IoT products and modems, and cloud-based telematics solutions, Globalstar’s cost effective satellite-powered innovations give users visibility and intelligence for improving safety and operational efficiencies.
VSME offers path to solve WFH challenges
“To quote our friends at Gartner, 74% of enterprises expect the shift to remote working to be permanent, and the global workforce predicted to be remote will be 600m by 2024,” says Raymond Pearson of Virsae. Pearson points out that an estimated 600 million people are now in a work from home mode, meaning that one in every 12 people in the whole world, now WFH or something like 1 in 6 of everyone in the world who has a job, now has a bedroom, a kitchen or a spare room as a workspace and place. Pearson points out that there’s more to WFH than geography and more comfortable shoes. It turns out that what happens at home often looks more like home, than “at work”. According to studies, one in two employees are seeking resolution of technical issues on their own instead of using their IT departments. Internet services, quality, stability, and security are inconsistent, not only across the country, but can differ greatly from one mile to the next. In this podcast, Pearson offers a list of issues that effectively make the management of WFH a nightmare for entperise IT management teams.
We learn about how Virsae Service Management with VSM-Everywhere comes into play. “VSME focuses where the problems are,” says Pearson. By integrating VSM Everywhere into their already-robust offerings, IT teams can leverage VSM Everywhere to give their customers comfort and security. For example, you know those post-call surveys you are asked to fill out? The reason everyone skips them is because nothing happens to them. IT teams can leverage those bad surveys to immediately open a ticket to be addressed.
Visit www.virsae.com
Are you “fit for purpose”? This was Robert Cooper of Wildix’s question at this year’s MSP EXPO. According to Cooper, the pandemic brought a wave of panic buying as companies scrambled to move to the edge. But the end of the pandemic and the end of the flow of demand driven orders means, according to Cooper, a need for MSPs to change their business model. In a rapidly shifting landscape like the telecom industry, being fit for purpose is more important than ever. If MSPs and VARs are not able to meet the needs of their customer base, how can they possibly expect to survive in this post-Covid revolution? Cooper focuses on the common practice of people offering a large selection of partner logos and brands, offering up themselves as a value-added agent to a collection of different services. Cooper outlines why he feels this is a mistake, and that specialization, being a deep expert on a single brand and then offering expertise in that ecosystem, is a greater value-added proposition. In this podcast we discuss the mistake that Cooper sees when MSPs and VARs are trying to become fit for purpose, we define what it means to be fit for purpose, and we learn how MSPs/VARs tell if they are fit for purpose.
Visit www.wildix.com
“Connect, collaborate and get paid,” says David Jodoin, President, and CTO of Nynja Technologies. Mass resignation, pandemic and the mass retirement of the baby boomers creates a situation that is unprecedented in living memory. The very arrangement of work, how we define it, where we do it, how its preformed and how people are compensated, has been disrupted. Nynja was created from the ground up to enable companies to pay talent the way modern talent wants to be paid and offers talent a seamless and secure way for talent to transact with organizations. The platform also offers cyber currency options. Connect, collaborate, and get paid, each have a set of solutions and tools that Nynja offers. The company also provides tools for content makers, offering live streaming, but much more. A piece of content that began as a live streamed event could be recorded, edited, and then distributed with the tools available, including putting up a paywall, for content makers to get paid.
“We’re not the application for the CFO to talk to the CMO,” says Jodoin. “We’re the application for the modern enterprise to be able to communicate to the external workforce, the talent pool they’re trying to tap into.” Jodoin adds that the Nynja pricing model is structured so that the MSP who has decided to break out of their traditional portfolio limits by offering these different services through Nynja, can make a profit with new conversations, perhaps with enterprises the MSP has previously served with more traditional offerings.
Visit https://gonynja.com/
“Digital transformation has become a necessity for survival for many organizations,” says Divya Wakankar, Vice President Enterprise Market for BICS. According to Wakankar, the imperative to move to a digital future, which had prevailed before the pandemic, was accelerated during the crises. A next step to keep businesses fresh became a necessity. Wakankar discusses how digital transformation offers companies an improved ability to develop and roll out services. These changes can potentially improve customer experiences and they help address some of the gaps created by the labor shortage. 82% of the large enterprise community are, reportedly, during a digital transformation path, aided by things like government stimulus and the demands of the changing work environment. In this podcast, we learn how BICS helps their customers make the transformation happen and happen successfully. Wakankar outlines how from the very first steps of a customer placing an order, through delivery, to post sale follow ups, digital transformation offers companies and organizations improved internal efficiencies, enhanced customer services and improvements in the management of everything from inventory control, production or being able to meet future demand.
Visit www.bics.com
Last year, NetSapiens and Crexendo merged, bringing together a core platform and a UCaaS company to build a firm with a diversified portfolio that offers end user facing solutions, while offering two hundred licensees who build their own platform to build their own technology, and now a CCaaS solution. Jon Brinton, Chief Revenue Officer and Anand Buch, Chief Strategy Officer and NetSapiens founder, join Doug Green on a podcast recorded live at MSP EXPO. In this podcast we learn that the merger has to date been a major success, proving that the companies were complimentary and have since been able to build on previous strengths and achievements, now as one firm. Brinton and Buch also discuss how their ability to face several giant markets creates a learning and development “feedback loop”, where hard-won lessons learned at the enterprise level, among the verticals or by the licensed developers, are shared, making the company unique in many respects. Buch and Brinton discuss how Crexendo is working with their customers, community, and partners to offer unique approaches to hybrid working. “We really resonate with that (MSP) audience,” says Brinton, noting that, “…with our platform and the open API approach.” Buch sees the company as an open door to choices. “Pick your path of where you want to enter the UCaaS economy,” says Buch, laying out the case that Crexendo offers a wide range of choices and approaches from wholesaling to very specialized development.
Visit www.crexendo.com
It’s an image from our vision of the future, and the past: Leia's hologram message. At this year’s MSP EXPO and ITEXPO, one of the more intriguing new company and product offerings was from a company called IKIN. IKIN’s CEO, Joe Ward, might refer to his company’s holograms as similar to Princess Leia, but as Ward discusses in this podcast, his company is settings it sites on the most practical of applications, such as a re-imagining of warehousing. IKIN was the sponsor of this year’s Idea Showcase and IoT Evolution Conference at ITEXPO 2022. “We can go into any vertical and any application and design a solution around the customer,” says Ward. In the case of IKIN’s warehouse application, IKIN leverages 5G. In this podcast, Ward makes the case that hologram technologies, and specifically his company’s ability to deliver industry by industry applications, offers the MSP community many of the things they have been looking for in their search for a smash hit in their portfolio: recurring income, good margins and a fresh uniqueness that offers MSPs the ability to fulfill the role of being “that trusted advisor”.
Visit https://ikininc.com/
“Anywhere and everywhere” challenges
“All the security services and all the networking services are integrated as one offer,” says Michael Wood, Versa CMO. Today, Colt Technology Services’ customers now have access to an integrated full Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution that brings together SD-WAN and SSE features, with the launch of its new Colt SASE Gateway solution. In this podcast, Wood discusses why the offering will be important to Colt Technology Services customers and to Colt itself. Wood explains how SASE is more important to the security well being of any company that has moved partially or entirely into a hybrid or all work from remote posture. The traditional safeguards that enterprises were able impose on a site now have to be duplicated in a huge number of off site locations, often across all manner or hardware and assorted other variable with employees logging in from home, from public spaces or from a newly retooled office that hosts work spaces and huddle rooms. We learn how the solution Colt will be offering is also available to carriers to use and for MSPs to sell. White label opportunities are also available. According to Wood, SASE solutions are going to be a very demanded service, in what he describes as a “watershed” moment.
Read the press release visit https://www.versa-networks.com or follow Versa Networks on Twitter @versanetworks visit https://colt.net
If you are looking for a hardware and software distributor, the products are important but the customer service when buying and supporting the products is even more important.
John Zador, Chief Revenue Officer at 888VoIP and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale, FL. John provides insights and experiences that 888VoIP has encountered in their customer support. He emphasizes that just having trained staff is not enough. They must be consistent in their customer support. Continuity of support is also relevant. John says that 888VoIP’s goal is to “make business easy to do.”
888VoIP focuses on driving the success for their customers. They identify and understand their customers’ project-specific requirements, and then apply in-depth knowledge of their manufacturers’ products and technologies to meet them. Their customer service delivers expert tailored solutions designed to help customers win sales and grow their business.
888VoIP is the go-to distribution source for VoIP and collaboration-focused hardware and software solutions. Fully staffed with manufacturer-certified and trained engineers, technical support personnel, and knowledgeable channel managers, 888VoIP can assure successful completion of the most complicated of projects. They have warehouses on both the East and West Coasts, ensuring rapid order fulfillment across the country.
Kaitki Agarwal is Founder, President, and CTO of A5GNetworks, which is headquartered in the Boston area with development centers in India. Kaitki provides a company overview and then identifies problems with current networks around the globe to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
In order to correct the problems in the architecture, it is easier to start from scratch. The company was started in early 2021 and is making great progress in the goal of creating new connectivity and smart services which can be private networks, smart city, connected car networks or server-based services for example. At the same time, the network would be providing security and an optimized service experience to the subscriber. This will all be a part of the autonomous and distributed A5GNetworks.
Kaitki Agerwal
Listen in as Kaitki identifies the challenges with the current mobile network transformation? She will also discuss the current network evolution (private and public networks). Lastly, she will identify opportunities and where technology will lead the channel.
For more information, go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitki-agarwal-4685942/details/featured/
For a list of her 45 Patents, go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitki-agarwal-4685942/details/patents/
Businesses are now displaying brand name to wireless subscribers using the latest in call enhancement technologies
Branded calling is still a new technology but it has the ability to elevate trust in a caller’s identity. This tech is powered by rich call data (RCD) that is displayed on a wireless subscriber’s incoming call screen in the form of the company’s brand name and/or logo, sometimes with an optional call reason field, depending on the solution and device.
When successfully implemented, branded calling can empower consumers with more call information, boosting their confidence to make the right choice when deciding which calls are important to them and whether or not they want to answer. In this podcast, we’ll cover both misconceptions of what this technology IS and IS NOT, and take a look at the security considerations involved in keeping this technology out of the reach of bad actors.
Visit www.numeracle.com
Unified Office, Inc., a leading managed services provider offering highly reliable, cloud-based, business communications services, IoT services and business analytics, announced today at ITEXPO its next generation sentiment analysis offering. Unified Office has greatly enhanced its Total Connect Nowsm Sentiment Analysis Suite (TCNIQTM) and is now offering it to a broad range of businesses. TCNIQTM scans thousands of recorded conversations and messages to detect the sentiment of callers and screens them for happiness, exuberance, anger, sadness, and for pre-determined keywords and phrases to help identify customers who need extra care or employees who may require more coaching or both. It enables businesses to save time by not having to manually review every recorded call.
TCNIQTM enables companies to improve customer service, grow revenues and reduces the time to identify positive and or problematic customer service issues. Benefits of TCNIQTM include:
Automatically scanning thousands of conversations to detect calls for negative or positive customer sentiment. No need to manually review call recordings. Create a winning company culture, reward superior customer service and coaching staff Analyze the data and upsell with advanced analytics. Access to your data on the go and on any device.
TCNIQTM integrates with Unified Office’s Visual Performance Suite™ (advanced analytics) and customer Portal to provide real-time views, alerting, and reporting for actionable intelligence for business managers and owners. TCNIQTM is based on Unified Office’s Total Connect Nowsm (TCNsm) business communications platform is an easy to use managed communications service that integrates voice communications, service-level monitoring, business continuity, business analytics tools, and an Internet of Things (IoT) based operational performance service for small and medium sized businesses. Visit Unified Office at booth 524 at ITEXPO 2022.
Companies and organizations have different ideas about the edge and what it means. In many respects, it is all about the perspective from which you view the Edge. Bill Lambertson, VP of Cloud, 5G and Edge with IBM provides a multi-perspective view of the Edge to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication. From the IBM point of view, there are four edge locations including:
Service Provider Edge On Premise Edge Ruggedized Factory Edge Far Edge
Bill Lambertson
Listen in as Bill provides details about each of the above as well as speaking about Edge applications which can be defined as Born at the edge, Cloud out edge strategy, and Edge out approach. Bill prsents some great insight about the Edge.
IBMers believe in progress—that the application of intelligence, reason and science can improve business, society and the human. IBM’s greatest asset is the IBMer.
They believe their strength lies in the diversity of their employees. IBM encourages creative pursuits and passions outside of work, because when IBMers can explore their curiosity, it gives all of them a new outlook on the world and its possibilities for emerging tech. Together, IBM can drive progress through meaningful innovation and action.
For more information, go to: https://www.ibm.com
The hotel brands continue to line up for the complete hospitality solution offered by Ooma. Having all of the necessary components in the portfolio including the internet service, customized hospitality service, and a way to continue service for pots lines in the elevators and other locations with AirDial plays a big part in the sales process.
Raj Shah
Raj Shah, Strategic Sales Manager with Ooma speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about Ooma’s success in the Hospitality industry. They now have enough hotels in service that they can start being certified by various brands which will accelerate their sales even more.
Listen in and find out some hospitality trends, success stories, and what is in line for the future.
Ooma is helping hotels large and small modernize how they interact with their guests and employees. From the booking experience to check in and check out, they provide a more efficient way to communicate with staff and customers.
Ooma is dedicated to empowering customers to connect in smarter ways. They create powerful connected experiences for businesses and consumers, all delivered through their smart, cloud-based software service platform. Ooma's business and consumer phone service solutions are each ranked #1 by customers in third party surveys.
For more information, go to: https://www.ooma.com/business-phone-service/hospitality-services/
Jon Mykrantz, VP of Enterprise Sales speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the composition of 5G which has three bandwidth categories:
Low-Band - < 1 GHz - Long Distance Mid-Band (C-band) 1GHz - 6 GHz – faster speed shorter distance High-Band Millimeter wave 24 GHz & > Very Fast & short distances
Jon Mykrantz
In addition to the shorter distance, due to its Millimeter wavelength, the signal tends to get absorbed by walls, trees, or normal obstacles in the path of the millimeter wave. In those cases, it would be wise to add a repeater as part of the solution to not only repeat the signal but also amplify the signal. The repeater will assist in turning corners and redirecting the signal to areas previously serviced poorly or not at all.
Listen in and find out how WilsonPro can help you with your future 5G installations.
Deep Experience in High Tech. With 30+ years of experience and 250 active patents, they know what it takes to optimize wireless communications. Their repeaters are outfitted with the latest in 5G amplification technology and remote management is available.
The Newest Technology in Signal Amplification. WilsonPro is constantly working to improve their customizable 5G cellular signal repeater solutions for fixed wireless applications. On Us
Count On Them to Outperform Their reliable support team goes above and beyond to find the best solution for every client, every time.
For more information, go to: https://www.wilsonpro.com/
“There is a perfect storm in the field industry today,” says Founder & CEO of Field Nation, Mynul Khan. “The demand has never been so high for in the field technology services,” adds Khan. For example, retail, which faces shortages for filling job vacancies at the clerk level, is turning to automation for customer check out. But automation still needs a human presence, at least at the point of installation. In this podcast we learn how Filed Nation is revolutionizing the way on prem technology services are delivered. Field Nation enables companies to buy the technology field services, when and where they are needed, thus avoiding the expense of building a large bench of technologists and the structural cost issues that come with bulking up payroll.
At the same time, Field Nation’s approach is appealing to many technologists. People can decide when and where and on what projects they would like to work, and can also choose their own schedules, number of days to work each week and so on. Khan sees this as an enormous opportunity for the reseller market, the MSPs and channels, as they are all in a great position to be working with companies that might need technology labor.
Visit www.fieldnation.com
Dave Hogan, VP of Growth Segments which includes Distribution Channels, Enterprise and Business Development speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their success in following the trends. Recently at Channel Partners, the conference was well attended and had a common theme from vendors and customers alike – SECURITY. As a result of the rapid expansion to accommodate remote access workers, carriers, enterprise and SMBs are trying to strengthen the security of their networks or divide them into smaller networks.
Dave Hogan
Dave gets into more detail about their enterprise strategy – what are the applications driving the consumption and growth of voice data and wireless networks. Find out how Ribbon provides secure solutions enabling seamless and scalable solutions.
It is all about the experience at Ribbon for their employees as well as their channel partners and their customers. Listen in as Dave discusses how Ribbon is making it easier for partners to resell Ribbons solutions.
Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN) delivers communications software, IP and optical networking solutions to service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors globally. They engage deeply with their customers, helping them modernize their networks for improved competitive positioning and business outcomes in today's smart, always-on and data-hungry world. Their innovative, end-to-end solutions portfolio delivers unparalleled scale, performance, and agility, including core to edge software-centric solutions, cloud-native offers, leading-edge security and analytics tools, along with IP and optical networking solutions for 5G. They maintain a keen focus on their commitments to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) matters, offering an annual Sustainability Report to their stakeholders.
For more information, go to: https://ribboncommunications.com
“CSPs are going to have to streamline processes and really remove a lot of single points of failure from their operation,” says Patrick Elliott, VP of Marketing at Rev.io. Reflecting on trends in the challenging cloud market of commoditization, labor shortages, disrupted industries (at the customer level) and a new economic landscape. As the era of customers placing huge orders as they scramble to the cloud (and remote), sunsets, CSPs will have to become more proactive and more agile in their approach to the market. In this podcast we learn about Rev.io approach to billing and how billing represents an opportunity to improve internal resource management, and up the game with clients. We also learn how there are growth opportunities and hoe Rev.io’s acquisition of Park Bench software and Odin software have expended Rev.oi’s ready to go portfolio of products that help CSPs achieve their growth goals.
Visit www.rev.io
Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) has launched a cloud-based Media Production Platform which the company believes will shift the world of remote production. “Work from anywhere production opens up jobs and opportunities to people who might have been excluded by travel requirements or because of having to be somewhere that wouldn’t be so easy to be…” says Anna Lockwood, Vice President, International, for Telstra Broadcast Services. Lockwood sees the new platform as opening up production possibilities to people and organizations that might have been locked out by up-front investment costs, scale, location and other factors that a fully cloud and pay as you go, pay for service model addresses. In this podcast we learn how the cloud-based production and playout service brings all the functionality and quality of traditional on-premises broadcast workflows into a fully virtual environment, giving users complete remote control and management through any web browser and the public internet.
The Telstra solution is powered by Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP) and the combination of both technologies was recently chosen to enable cloud-based production and playout capability for an Australian streaming service’s premium, live and on-demand add-on sports package.
Visit https://www.telstra.us.com/en/industries/telstra-broadcast-services
“It’s not if, it’s when,” says HYCU Founder and CEO Simon Taylor. Taylor believes that in the new cloud environment, it’s just a matter of time for a company, an organization, government department or NGO, to face a ransomware crises. HYCU’s approach departs from the usual security offering because it stresses recovery. “How can get back online faster,” asks Taylor, noting that the average organizational victim of ransomware can be offline for sixteen days. In this podcast we learn how HYCU has a different approach. HYCU takes a multi-tenant approach, a true SASE approach combined with offering the service providers an ability to customize. The result is a recovery that occurs much more quickly. HYCU provides granular recovery capabilities, supporting individual file systems and networks that enable SaaS services to easily write an enterprise-grade data protection solution directly into its platform. Their unique answer to the challenge of offering a rapid recovery process has attracted a vote of confidence from the technology investment community. HYCU announced its $53 million Series B led by Acrew Capital. All Series A investors returned, including Bain Capital Ventures (BCV). Strategic investors and innovation leaders Atlassian Ventures and Cisco Investments also participated in the round.
Read the full news release
Learn more https://www.hycu.com/
Listen to the podcast
Roughly 70% of SMBs’ executives believe working with an MSP helps them stay ahead of their competition. However, many MSPs primarily focus on supplying ‘products and services to sustain IT infrastructure’ – which is not explicitly on the list of SMB’s crucial customer technology requirements.
A recent report revealed this lack of alignment between what small businesses want and what channel providers believe they should offer, showing that providers are missing the mark on SMBs’ needs. Today’s talk will focus on ways MSPs can better align their business strategy with the growing number of SMBs seeking the kinds of tools and services they are capable of providing.
AT&T recently introduced a new managed service with Cisco Meraki that provides organizations with security tools and an integrated network that will improve performance, enable resilient access, and defend sensitive data. The service is designed to provide organizations of any size and industry with a powerful networking and security offering.
Jay Chokshi, Director of Product Management for SD-WAN and SASE Solutions at Cisco Meraki, walks us through how the new service provides secure and reliable access with cloud-based security and SD-WAN capabilities, and why secure connectivity should be top of mind for organizations today. More details on the announcement can be found here.
With a strong background in product management and marketing, Jay is responsible for driving SD-WAN and SASE solutions at Cisco Meraki. He holds a Bachelor of Electronics Engineering from Vivekananda Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai University and an MBA from San Jose State University.
Xperien is the first ITAD provider in Africa to achieve certification to the new Sustainable Electronics Reuse & Recycling (R2) Standard v3. In this podcast, Xperien CEO Wale Arewa discusses how the company’s latest certification represents a unique opportunity for American and Canadian IT channel companies to participate in the world’s fastest growing economic regions with a partner offering a unique level of services. Arewa describes how his company offers a higher level of equipment processing and recycling that is the highest level that can be found among over fifty rapidly growing economies. Arewa discusses how data breach is common in Africa, where governments have been slow to impose fines and even full regulatory standards. Many international companies have growing operations on the continent. Xperien offers a place where enterprises can confidently dispose of gear coming offline, knowing that the data will be wiped properly and the gear itself properly repurposed or disposed of. Arewa tells us Xperien is looking to build a set of new relationships with North American resellers as long term supply partners.
Visit www.xperien.com
With uncertainty in the air about power outages across the country this year, it is becoming more important to reassess emergency procedures for your SMB, enterprise, and carrier operations. What do you do and how do you comeback online if you actually go down or close to it?
Listen in as Bryan Keepers, Director, Channel Sales Americas of Opengear discusses the process with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication. One of the requirements is an out of band access to all of your network components no matter what kind of network is servicing them or where it is located.
Bryan Keepers
Opengear brings network resilience to IT organizations, ensuring business continuity through Smart Out-of-Band management solutions. Over their fifteen-year history, they have led the evolution from simple terminal servers to complex console servers with the development of centralized management software, embedded 4G-LTE cellular access and NetOps-ready appliances.
As large amounts of compute power have moved from data centers to edge locations, the ability to securely manage critical network components from anywhere has become increasingly important. Your users expect the same level of service whether from a core compute location or a local POP; the cloud may be just a concept to them, but it’s a reality for you.
Opengear helps you to manage, monitor and remediate your network remotely, even when the primary network is down, or the production network is too congested to respond. their network resilience platform provides an independent management network, giving you secure access to provision, configure and troubleshoot critical IT infrastructure without sending someone to site – minimizing downtime, protecting SLAs, and saving you money.
For more information, go to: https://opengear.com/
In the recent study sponsored by Dubber and AT&T Business, conducted by Incisiv, we learned that the majority of enterprise leadership participating identified major gaps over the last 2 years as it pertained to supporting a hybrid work model, previously not as predominant. Now that it’s obvious a dispersed workforce will remain in place going forward, these gaps must be closed for businesses to attain profitability and sustained growth.
In Part 2 of this 4 part series focused on the ‘Future of Work’, we will discuss with Adrian Di Pietrantonio, Dubber’s EVP of Global Platforms & Partners, what top challenges surfaced in this research, the most pressing organizational gaps that must be addressed, and what role Conversational Intelligence plays in addressing these critical issues.
When your architecture operates securely, you do not need to worry about external security add-ons or end-users manually implementing best practice security. Robert Cooper, President, and Managing Director of Wildix Americas, goes on to explain to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how elements of the secure-by-design architecture include DDOS protection, WebRTC architecture, encryption and other security components.
Threats will continue from Russia electronically, but Wildix eliminated one of Russia direct threats by moving 200 employees and members me from Ukraine before any of the conflict started. Listen in to hear about this well thought out product offering.
Robert Cooper
100% SECURITY WITH NO FURTHER APPLICATIONS Traditional PBXs and UC&Cs require the addition of SBC and VPN infrastructures to work remotely: they are barriers that protect your system from cyber-attacks and external viruses.
SBCs and VPNs are not included in the traditional PBX package you purchase and require constant maintenance and attention, otherwise, your data is in danger. You will end up spending more and still expose yourself to high risk: a failure to update these infrastructures can bring you million-dollar damage.
Would you feel safe knowing you are buying a PBX that needs additional, expensive applications to be safe?
YOUR PBX MUST BE INHERENTLY SAFE WITHOUT NEEDING ADDITIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES.
Wildix is secure-by-design: it does not need SBCS or VPNS: voice and data are ALWAYS protected because it is created with a native encryption system.
For more information, go to: https://www.wildix.com/
“The stakes of this transition are incredibly high. It is therefore critical for SMEs to choose a suitable meeting room solution to transform to a hybrid working mode,” says Eric Liu, Senior Product Marketing Manager Yealink. In this podcast, Liu discusses the rapidly changing workplace and how revolutionary workplace changes are driving new needs. “Companies are considering how to reconfigure in-office meeting and conferencing spaces so they can deliver better experiences for remote participants in a hybrid work environment. And more companies are investing in setting up professional meeting room systems,” adds Liu. We dive into these trends, discuss their impact, and explore Yealink’s products and approach to matching these needs. We learn about products such as the Yealink MeetingBar, which builds on AI video features with Auto Framing, Speaker Tracking, Picture-in-Picture and Multi-Focus Framing, seamlessly delivering the immersive and user-friendly meeting experience. “Yealink MeetingBar is not a single solution, it can work with the RoomPanel to offer a one-stop meeting room experience. Features like book a room, check-in and the knock-knock are super useful in our daily meeting activity. All these bring SME customers to a better, modern workplace by one single provider. And all these features make it a cost-effective choice, especially for SMEs.”
Visit www.yealink.com
“A perfect marriage”
“We think this builds on what we have been doing,” says Mary Stanhope, CRMO Unitas Global. Recently, Unitas and PacketFabric announced that they will share their network bandwidth to expand their cloud access and SDN capabilities. Unitas will use Unitas Nexus, an edge to cloud connectivity platform, to share enterprise demand with PacketFabric’s connectivity services. PacketFabric will also add the connectivity capabilities of Unitas Reach, a network interconnection platform.
“There’s great value to both companies, and to our customer base, in bringing the highly scaled middle mile network to connect all of the last mile locations that Unitas and already has…” says Jezzibell Gilmore, Chief Commercial Officer and Co-Founder PacketFabric. She adds, “And we can also now bring those fifty million end points to entperise customer base who are already using the highly scalable, highly reliable, core network the PacketFabric has built between data centers, cloud service providers and various service provider destinations, and take them all the way back to the branch offices, the headquarters of these enterprise customers via the last mile reach of Unitas. So really, it’s the perfect marriage…”.
The alliance will streamline PacketFabric’s NaaS platform and its self-service REST API portal with Unitas Reach and Unitas Nexus. Unitas and PacketFabric are members of the Digital Alpha Advisors portfolio, which leverages the compatibility of its various member companies to create the next generation of digital automation.
PacketFabric Unitas Global Press release
P360 recently announced the ZING Engagement Suite, a UCaaS solution for life sciences companies that's focused on physician engagement. ZING Engagement Suite is a comprehensive digital-first solution that enables compliant omnichannel HCP engagement by enhancing existing communication channels with features including text messaging, two-way voice and video calling, onscreen collaboration and form sharing, inbound communications with QR code scanning, artificial intelligence (AI) assistance, signature capture, easy access integrations and more. In this podcast, P360 co-founder and CEO Anupam Nandwana discusses a purpose-built solution for physician and health care professional engagement. Nandwana explains that ZING Engagement Suite equips pharmaceutical sales and marketing teams with everything they need to engage with healthcare professionals.
Read the press release Learn more about P360 https://www.p360.com/
Your phone flashes “Unknown” or the name of a person or company you don’t know. Just another spam call, to be ignored. Meanwhile, a nation whose industries and services have gone remote, have never relied more heavily on their ability to contact customers in real time. In this podcast we explore a possible solution: Branded Communications. Nick Andrews, Director of Channel Sales and Partnerships at First Orion discusses INFORM and ENGAGE, which allow companies to place their name, logo and reason for calling on the call recipient's mobile device at the time of the call and in the call log afterward.
First Orion is one of the fastest-growing telecommunications companies and helps businesses reach customers more effectively by equipping them with the ability to brand their mobile phone communication and deliver secure, trusted connections – adding value to the phone and revolutionizing the way customers engage with their brands today. Hundreds of companies worldwide utilize First Orion's industry-leading Branded Communication solutions. In addition, First Orion's Communication Protection suite offers scam, fraud, and spoof protection solutions to hundreds of millions of consumers and processes more than 100 billion calls annually for major phone carriers.
Visit www.firstorion.com
Telstra embraces the channel in the U.S. and Canada with their Adaptive Networking. It was developed in response to the hybrid and cloud demands being placed on them during and after COVID 19.
Noah Drake
Noah Drake speaks as the VP of Solutions and Architecture to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their channel focus, technology, network, and partner program. It is all about the experience and they start with a subsea fiber cable network that is the largest in Asia Pacific, with access to the most lit capacity not just in Asia, but also from the region to Australia, USA, and Europe.
This is a great interview and provides some real insight into the new Telstra Americas president.
Standing side by side is the key to profitable growth, with shared resources, expertise, and experiences. They partner with experts in consulting, sales, technical and managed services, to provide a full solution to customers.
Their partner program is designed to enable you to better differentiate yourself and serve customers through their accreditation, sale incentives and marketing programs.
They benefit from their partner’s expertise; their partners benefit from their experience and capacity. Most of all customers benefit from this powerful combination.
For more information, go to: https://www.telstra.us.com/en
Ken Bisnoff, New Channel Chief of the Americas with GTT speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication in depth about the GTT Partner Channel. He explains that GTT characteristics such as the company’s customer first culture, focus on operational excellence, a great set of network assets and product capabilities helped him decide to start working with GTT.
Ken Bisnoff
Ken goes on to discuss how the company’s new channel strategy that focuses on the indirect channel as an important revenue growth opportunity for its business. He plans to grow the channel by building off of its relationships with most of the top master agents and approximately 300 sub-agents.
In addition, GTT is transforming into a company dedicated to the managed services security business model, including its new product strategy focused on SD networking technologies and state-of-the-art SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). This leverages its partnership with Palo Alto Networks and will have a positive impact on the channel.
Telecom agents and technology services providers are winning in the channel with GTT’s flexible portfolio of cloud networking services. By living their core customer first values, underpinned by a commitment to operational excellence, they enable channel partners to profitably build networks based on their customers’ enterprise needs rather than the business objectives of their telco partner.
Delivering a GTT solution ensures your customers have the services, reach and capabilities they need to improve communication, productivity, and efficiency across their organization. Their dedicated channel sales engineering and project management teams provide a consistent and scalable network services plan supporting connectivity on a metro, national or global level.
For more information, go to: https://www.gtt.net/us-en
Jason Beal, Global Channel Leader at AvePoint, an ISV providing SaaS and Data Management Technology speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News about their successful first year in the channel. AvePoint went public and announced 18,000 global employees in 17 counties. When they entered the channel, they had a huge sales force help them bring on the channel partners quickly.
Jason Beal
They have created a New Renewals program enabling to the channel to lock in their Recurring Revenue through their partner portal. They have also initiated partner technical and sales certifications. Lastly, AvePoint created a 15-member advisory council to help them monitor and improve the channel support and sales process. Listen in to hear Jason define all the key points.
In 2001, their founders were busy preparing to bring their first product to market — a backup solution for Microsoft's email service, Exchange. Shortly after, their focus quickly turned to providing a backup solution for a new Microsoft product that offered site-based collaboration: SharePoint 2001.
Today, their full suite of data management solutions for Microsoft 365 is hosted across 13 global datacenters for unmatched scalability, and to support data sovereignty requirements. Their cloud platform is certified against leading security accreditations and boasts one of the largest SaaS userbases in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
They have pushed the boundaries of enterprise digital collaboration with first-to-market technologies for two decades. More than half of their workforce – including their senior leadership team – are technologists.
For more information, go to: https://www.avepoint.com/
AVANT has one of the most aggressive and supportive channel programs in the world. It is not only what they do for the channel, but the quality and depth with which they address their goals. Alex Danyluk, Chief Strategy Officer for AVANT speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about his additional roll as Managing Director of AVANT Analytics.
Alex Danyluk
Alex explains that AVANT has historically provided reports, like the 6-12 Report, to the channel and their customers to enable them to make informed decisions. The reports have covered subjects like security, UCaaS, and CCaaS. The new effort will be to take advantage of key current tech information or events to turn the channel into a strike force taking advantage and monetizing the information. He will be expanding with more people and more products. Listen in – Alex has some great info.
Empowering the Trusted Advisor
The velocity of innovation in technology today is driving an equally rapid evolution of the IT marketplace. More and more, IT departments are relying on Trusted Advisors to help them manage change and plan for the future. We enable the Trusted Advisor to navigate the ever-evolving technology landscape with the knowledge and support to prepare for the future. AVANT keeps you ahead of the accelerating pace of change.
AVANT has over a decade of experience and was born at the beginning of hyper-accelerating technology. A time before cheap bandwidth and impossibly fast processor speeds drove new cloud technology and the convergence of IT, voice, and connectivity into ubiquity. Their mission is to build a platform that navigates the relentless pace of change for Trusted Advisors and their customers, enabling business transformation and an effective and efficient ecosystem for Trusted Advisors to leverage.
For more information, go to: https://goavant.net
Mark Denny Chief Revenue Officer with Tangoe explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication how Tangoe works with business to get control of their operations. For example, Tangoe One provides complete enterprise technology management including: orders, invoices, inventory, expenses, and payment processing all in one place.
Mark Denny
Mark, who has had 25 years of channel experience, knows how important the channel is to a solid predictable revenue stream. Tangoe’s entry into the channel is with both feet – they are totally committed. Serving half of the Fortune 500, Tangoe’s technology success demonstrates that they are ready to serve the mid-market through the channel.
Listen in as Mark provides details and passion for the channel and technology they will deliver!
Tangoe is the industry-leading global provider of technology expense management and managed mobility services for enterprise. Nearly half of the Fortune 500 relies on them to pay their bills, process their orders, manage their inventory, and find them savings.
Fueled by an innovative automation framework and unified customer experience, they deliver:
Comprehensive expense management and advanced auditing for telecom Seamless MMS for simple mobile program management Expert expense management and advanced usage optimization for cloud
Technology matters, but their complete solution is not just about great software. It’s about personalized service and support. Their 1,400 technology, product, and service delivery experts leverage their platform to connect people with processes and technology. Drawing from 20+ years of experience, they empower their customers to focus on increasing efficiencies, cutting costs, and finding new ways to increase revenue.
For more information, go to: https://www.tangoe.com/
VOSS Unveils Enhanced Dial Plan Integration Between Microsoft Teams Phone System and Cisco Call Manager
Many organizations are migrating their UC and voice to Microsoft Teams Phone System but still have significant estates of Cisco infrastructure that needs to co-exist. VOSS helps solve this business challenge by integrating, simplifying, and automating the overall complexity of managing these diverse, multi-vendor platforms. In this podcast, we talk to VOSS Solutions about their enhanced dial plan integration between Microsoft Teams Phone System and Cisco Call Manager. During the interview, VOSS explains how automation workflows enable system administrators to keep track of a combined inventory of numbers, on-board new users, manage licensing, or simply migrate services from one side to the other.
Visit https://www.voss-solutions.com/
Major shifts are occurring in the telecommunications and networking industries. Couple that with cyber threats and technology advancements, enterprise is being forced to change just to stay current.
John Holland, Chief Revenue Officer at Thrive speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their all-encompassing solutions for enterprise.
John Holland
When enterprise finds themselves in a security, IT or employee predicament, they should contact Thrive. Thrive can come in and assess what company needs exist. Then, Thrive can arrange for partial or complete outsourcing of their technology requirements as needed.
For those organizations starting to fall behind, listen in to this conversation. You will find it very informative, and it may open up the option of outsourcing to get your company back on track.
Today’s shifting tides of technology innovation create challenges and opportunities. As more and more workloads shift to the Cloud, IT management is now about making technology work outside the corporate walls more than within. Thrive is here to help. They have teams of expert engineers and support teams dedicated to Cloud, security, network management, disaster recovery, business continuity, and more.
They still roll up their sleeves with internal IT teams to manage help desk and traditional LAN environments. Leveraging Thrive’s NextGen technology expertise will ensure your organization is ahead of the curve and leveraging technology to its fullest.
Their mission is to become the most respected and referred to provider of NextGen managed services, serving emerging, mid-market, and enterprise customers — customers of all sizes not only in the Northeast, but around the United States.
For more information, go to: https://thrivenextgen.com/
“As this trend of cloud continues, customers are going to more and more want cloud communications,” says Frank Seltzer, ConnectMeVoice’s Channel Manager. “If you don’t sell it, someone else will.” In this podcast, we update listeners on the progress of ConnectMeVoice’s new Clarity open UCaaS platform and management portal, which was announced in January. Seltzer believes that the channel must sell both VoIP and Cloud, to block competition and to make their offerings more “sticky”. We learn how Clarity has simplified setup and management of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) by making everyday administration simpler, more transparent, and intuitive. Clarity helps simplify things at the actual end user level, while offering powerful, labor saving tools to the MSP community. Seltzer also outlines how ConnectMeVoice helps simplify the telecommunications tax challenges. Seltzer discusses the company’s upcoming appearance at ITEXPO and MSPExpo in Fort Lauderdale and involvement with the Cloud Communications Alliance.
Visit www.connectmevoice.com
Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect helps providers
According to Greg Zweig, Ribbon’s Director, Solutions Marketing, as Teams adoption escalates, “…it’s just a matter of time that people ask ‘what else can I do with this’ and phone is a natural extension.” In this podcast Zweig discusses the sweeping changes that Microsoft Teams brings, including the way enterprises deliver voice and real time communications. Teams also breaks the connection of geography to carrier. Zweig outlines Microsoft’s recently announced offering for telecom service providers, Operator Connect Accelerator. With the development, Ribbon is enabling Operator Connect Accelerator with their latest Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect offering. Zweig discusses how Ribbon’s SBC’s, a fifteen-year relationship with Microsoft and organizational DNA that tracks back to the dawn of telecommunications, have come together to make Ribbon a trusted and known partner for many companies as they make this migration for themselves or their clients. “There’s a sea change here and I think the service providers really see it,” says Zweig.
Read Greg Zweig’s blog Ribbon Connect for Operator Connect Visit https://ribboncommunications.com/
Focusing on A Single High Margin Solution
“Choosing which service to offer really has a big impact, says Jason Byrne, SVP Marketing at NetSapiens. According to Byrne, the break-fix model was great, but its aging. The recurring income model is great, but the revenue per contract can be skimpy, and is prone to be falling, on an individual basis. With 40,000 MSPs chasing the post pandemic, post crises driven migration, market, Byrne is thinking that the time has come to find a service one can sell, that offers a better margin. Byrne tells us that people, facing small margins, try to counter the problem by selling more services to more clients. But this leaves the practical problem of less and less return on each win. Those lower and lower margins slowly eat away at the vibrancy of a business, impacting everything from having the revenue to attract top tier talent, reinvestment in keeping an MSP up to date, and even the firm’s attractiveness as an eventual Mergers and Acquisition partner or participant. Nobody wants to buy a low profit business. In this podcast, Byrne has some answers.
Read the eBook: Ways to Boost MSP Margins Visit netsapiens.com
Cellusys currently has over 1 billion subscribers worldwide – and growing fast. Brendan Cleary, CEO for Cellusys speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their technology and their solutions. He explains how they monitor the DNA of the data traffic identifying nefarious activity and notifying organizations so something can be done about it.
Brendan Cleary
Many carriers are currently behind the security personnel hiring 8 ball. There are not enough telephony security personnel available. Those that are available are not familiar with many of the protocols like SS7. This makes the Cellusys services that much more important to their carrier customers. Cellusys has the talent and the staff to support their growing customer base.
If you want to hear about how roaming is supported moving into and out of a network, you will hear some interesting facts. This now also applies to IoT device roaming.
Cellusys delivers innovative elegant solutions for mobile operators. They design and deliver solutions that give operators clear insights and comprehensive control over their signaling, with a focus on security, roaming, SMS monetization and analytical applications.
Cellusys has continually broken new ground since their inception in 2005, when they brought together a team with a depth of expertise in signaling, technology, and IP not seen elsewhere.
They are not held back with preconceived notions of how things should or shouldn’t be done. With this, plus their creativity, and huge input from customers, they will remain leaders in innovation, and the commercial and common-sense choice for mobile network operators.
For more information, go to: https://www.cellusys.com/
“The stuff that used to work in sales are no longer effective,” says Jen Allen, Chief Evangelist at Challenger Inc. Reflecting on some hard earned lessons from over a decade ago, Allen discusses how Challenger began a journey to discover what was missing in the traditional thinking about a sales process that often devolved into falling back on price cutting or a sort of shadow boxing where agents and their sales management teams simply guessed on why they were hearing no, or the soft no of a no response. “It’s not about price, really,” adds Allen. “What it is about is the customer does not perceive the value in the same way we do.” Previously, managers had to listen to hours of recorded sales conversations or interpret conversion rates to try to determine areas for sellers' improvement.
In this podcast we learn how sales leaders can use customer feedback and AI-driven technology to save themselves time, get ahead of potential challenges and implement the appropriate training to improve their sellers' success. We also learn about a most interesting and unique approach: surveying customers during the purchase process.
Visit https://www.challengerinc.com/
A long pandemic and a compressed era of rapid change has seen the contact center change beyond recognition into a hybrid or remote operation. At the same moment, contact centers are more critical than ever to many companies as their main human-to-human connection to customers, vendors, partners, and the public. And to make matters more urgent, the Great Resignation creates novel staffing challenges to a field that historically struggles with agent churn. Agents reportedly spend up to 35% of their time searching for information, which leads to four in six feeling disengaged, contributing to more agents looking for the exit door.
In this podcast, Jeff Palmer, CRO of Upstream Works, provides an overview of the challenges and trends in this space and outlines how Upstream Works has been developing solutions to not only face those challenges but to “supercharge” the contact center with innovations that will improve customer and agent experiences. We learn how this can be achieved and how Upstream Works leverages existing infrastructure investments. “We help them evolve with migration flexibility - from on premise to cloud on their own schedule, and with a consistent desktop experience which helps reduce training time and improves speed to competency,” says Palmer.
Learn more: upstreamworks.com Webinars: Supercharge CX & Evolve Your Cisco Contact Center
“If you think about how we communicate today and the convergence of technology, it's said that around 80% of calls are augmented with digital - which means the types of calls we make are for the most part quite deliberate and full of contextually rich information. Meaning the type of conversations that hold meaningful data. We call that data, Conversational Data,” says Adrian Di Pietrantonio, the EVP of Global Platforms & Partners at Dubber.
In part 1 in this 4 part series, you will learn more about how conversational data is captured and analyzed to produce critical insights for customers which directly impact Customer Experience, Employee Experience, Productivity, and Compliance just to name a few. Adrian walks us through how Dubber’s technology uniquely brings this data to life and how Service and Solution providers are embedding Dubber’s technology into their networks and solutions, further empowering their customers.
Dubber is the world's leading unified call and conversation recording platform (UCR) inside over 170 leading Service Provider networks & communications solutions globally. Provisioned with a click, UCR enables voice data to be generated from every conversation - voice, video, and chat - and delivered to Dubber’s infinitely scalable Voice Intelligence Cloud where AI, NLP, and machine learning create insights, intelligence, beautiful transcriptions, and more.
Branden Rineer Assistant Vice President AT&T Partner Solutions speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the AT&T products being featured at Channel Partners.
AT&T Partner Solutions and Wholesale is divided into 3 major categories:
AT&T Alliance Channel AT&T Business AT&T Partner Exchange
Brendan Rineer
Through all three, customers are afforded options to white label for their own independent company with connectivity, leveraging the AT&T Brand and can co-sell with AT&T.
The support organization provides dedicated technical resources with solution engineering.
AT&T Partner Exchange is a first-of-its-kind reseller program that puts you, the solution provider, in the driver’s seat. You can build a recurring revenue stream with customized product offers, co-branding capabilities, tools, and open APIs while fully owning the end-customer relationship.
For more information, go to: https://www.business.att.com/industries/partner-solutions.html
The attendees at Channel Partners were all ears when listening to Brent Earlewine, SVP of Indirect Channels with IntelePeer speak about their channel program.
He filled in Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the program tier structure including: Authorized, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. The program allows the partner to select their own engagement model to sell build or a combination of both. Various benefits such as:
Brent Earlewine
Commissions Discounts Incentives Co-selling Training/Certifications Deal Registration MDF funds Co-marketing Partner Directory And more…
Listen in as Brent walks you through the Intelepeer story and provides a few examples of how Intelepeer and their partners worked together to successfully meet the customer’s needs.
IntelePeer delivers rapidly deployable communications solutions for an always connected world. Powered with AI and analytics, their omni-channel platform instantly improves your customers’ communications experience. IntelePeer provides industry leading time-to-value automated communications solutions that work seamlessly with your existing business software and infrastructure. Their no-code templates, low-code, co-creation, and developer API options provide you with simple, easy-to-use tools that can be utilized by anyone and are also accessible through developer APIs.
For more information, go to: https://intelepeer.com/
Konftel saved the day at Channel Partners for Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication when Peter Gasparro, Regional Sales Director for Video Conferencing was able to replace a failed microphone being used by Don at the conference. Peter walked to his booth and brought back a Konftel Ego conference mic & speaker. I plugged it in and without any system changes, I was able to make the Konftel podcast as well as the rest at Channel Partners podcasts. A big thank you Peter!
Peter Gasparro
Konftel has some exceptional products which are very high quality, for which I can now personally attest. Listen in as Peter provides insight on the Konftel product line as well as some insight into the near-term future of the hybrid workplace requirements.
Konftel develops and manufactures products for effective and sustainable distance meetings. Their multi-award-winning speakerphones are easy to use, showcase classic Scandinavian design and are equipped with their world-beating OmniSound® audio technology.
Konftel is always innovative and always committed. Their collaboration products are designed to be world class and they never settle for anything less. They also aim for similar standards when it comes to their levels of commitment and service. When dealing with them, you can always expect to be treated in a helpful and friendly manner. You can trust Konftel – in all your meetings.
For more information, go to: https://www.konftel.com/en
Along with the new image, the organization was restructured into two main product categories GoTo Connect and GoTo Resolve. Patrick McCue will be the Last Pass Channel Chief and Michael will be the Channel Chief for GoTo.
Both speak to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the new structure and product packaging.
Listen is as they enthusiastically embrace the channel, new organization and product packaging
It's not about where or when you work. It's about how you get it done.
Michael Day
Patrick McCue
Today, their the trusted partner for companies of all sizes to connect, collaborate, secure their workforces, and support employees and customers. Their portfolio of products, including LastPass, GoTo Connect and Rescue, helps:
People, by letting them work securely from wherever they need to, keeping them happy, safe, and productive. Businesses, by guaranteeing continuity in the face of disruptions, accelerating their ability to reduce costs and hit sustainability goals. Everyone, by delivering flexible tools built for navigating work and life easily.
For more information, go to: https://www.goto.com/
Recent additions are reviewed by Kristyn Hogan, Head of Global Collaboration Partner Sales at Cisco with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication. The four notable standout additions start with Babble Labs noise cancellation technology. It really enhances the user experience. Slido Poling drives up participation and the audience experience. Socio provides virtual event capability to Webex along with its hybrid event management. IMI Mobile augments sales, support, and account management with business-critical customer interaction management.
Listen in to Kristyn as she describes Webex GO and other features shown at Channel Partners 2022.
One app for everything and everyone.
Calling, meetings, messaging, and events in the cloud for teams of all sizes. Working better, together. Trusted by 95% of Fortune 500 companies.
Kristyn Hogan
Flexible and adaptable for any workstyle, role, or device so you can choose when, where, and how you work. Inclusive equal experiences for everyone regardless of geography, language, or communication style. Secure by design, private by default, to defend against threats no matter where you're working.
The future of work is hybrid. Webex powers a new way of collaborating that’s centered around the work you do, not where you do it - whether it’s in the office, at home, or anywhere in between.
For more information, go to: https://www.webex.com/
With a focus on the edge, Alef has developed a solution that gives independence to enterprise from being locked into restrictive latency bearing networks. Alef technology enables warehousing, education, healthcare, manufacturing, many more industries to reduce their costs significantly.
Shawn Sweeny
Shawn Sweeney, Head of Strategy and Product with Alef explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how Alef plans to overcome challenges that they are facing as well as how they plan to deal with carriers.
Shawn goes on to explain the benefits of private wireless technology and why enterprise should choose wireless over traditional carrier services. Listen in as much more is discussed about 5G and the edge.
Alef is a global edge connectivity platform company that empowers enterprises and developers to rapidly launch their own private networks and develop innovative mobile applications through their flagship Edge Point Platform.
At Alef, they simplify the complexity of 5G and edge computing through a suite of APIs and tools that allow for more control and security with less overhead, while operating at a fraction of the cost of legacy mobile network providers.
Leading systems integrators, distributors, and technology partners trust them to help power the edge economy and enable companies and communities to connect with a purpose.
For more information, go to: https://www.wearealef.com
“It all starts with the recording of a phone call,” says Gary Graves, CEO of TotalCX. In this podcast we learn how each recording of calls with customers creates actionable information that ultimately improve customer experiences. TotalCX offers, in real time, the ability of a manager to coach an agent or have the call escalated. “Total is indicative of our approach to capture communications which is holistic,” says Graves. “The CX aims the arrow.” Graves walks us through how the data his company can amass of how a company is interacting with customers, can provide a deep understanding of areas of improvement, strengths, and opportunities. Graves points out that this whole service is turnkey with the customers being free to focus on continuously improving their game. In a time when agent help is a precious resource, the tools available will also help companies make the experience for the agents better as well, with the data enabling customers to curb areas of agent frustration. Graves also discusses TotalCX involvement with the Cloud Communications Alliance, which he describes as “impactful”.
Visit www.totalcx.com
Earlier today, Lumen Technologies selected Alianza’s cloud communications platform to strengthen its voice and UC service portfolio and provide customers with a feature-rich, anywhere business communication functionality. Built on the Alianza platform, the new Lumen Cloud Communications offering will be positioned as a primary option for customers ready to migrate to a cloud communications solution.
In this podcast, Scott Velting, Vice President of Product Management at Lumen and Alianza CEO and Founder, Brian Beutler discuss the drivers behind Lumen’s decision to work with Alianza and the benefits Lumen’s new Cloud Communications offering will provide to Lumen customers. In choosing to work with Alianza, Lumen can offer a solution that differentiates them from over-the-top (OTT) competitors and helps them achieve strategic revenue goals. With a fully digital customer experience for online ordering, deployment and management, Lumen Cloud Communications simplifies operations and offers a robust migration path for customers on legacy voice services.
Visit the Alianza website or Lumen Cloud Communications webpage for more information.
Inhi Cho Suh, General Manager of IBM Strategic Partnerships, shares with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, insights of the extensive telecommunication partner relationships IBM maintains as recognized by the Gartner Magic Quadrant as a leader for IT. Their partners include companies like AT&T, Telefónica, Verizon and Vodafone.
Inhi goes on to discuss the adoption of the cloud in telco along with how some of their business partners are involved with major modernization efforts.
Inhi Cho Suh
It is a very exciting time at the 5G edge. Listen in as Inhi reveals how IBM is helping telecommunication companies apply automation to improve productivity and decision making. They also help telco clints to overcome complex business challenges.
What is PartnerWorld?
It's a premier program that empowers partners to create with IBM. As a partner, you’ll get access to industry-leading Hybrid Cloud and AI technology, first-class support, specialized tracks, training and resources and reach into IBM's customer network.
Build unique solutions with IBM's leading Hybrid Cloud and AI technology Discover security and performance your customers demand without lock-in to a single cloud provider Automate, unify and manage with AI
For more information, go to: https://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/public
With less than a month in her new position, Diane Frazzetta takes charge as she speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about her vision for the Fusion Connect channel and discusses what the Channel Partners can expect. Building on her eastern regional success, she looks to replicate her approach to the channel across the country.
Diane Frazzetta
With new partner portal tools to be released soon, Fusion Connect will provide the Channel with access and insight into the Fusion Connect process and network allowing their partners and their customers to have a better user experience.
The pandemic has set the stage for a hybrid workforce in the future. Fusion Connect delivers enterprise solutions that addresses the channels needs to better manage the realities of the evolving modern work environments.
Listen in as Diane starts to energize the channel!
About: Fusion Connect provides a flexible suite of products to their partners and customers.
They build their solution on a Diverse Nationwide IP backbone that allows them to have critical junctions across the nation, providing a highly available and less latent network hand-off for any traffic traveling across it to many different application vendors. They layer their SD-WAN and UTM on top of that access to offer redundancy, prioritization, and security to their clients.
Next, they layer application services on top of those layers to provide Optimized Application Performance to the services they provide as well as other providers on their core network. Finally, they wrap everything in a management and security layer to provide the best overall experience to their customers.
For more information, go to: https://www.fusionconnect.com/
“We really want to reinvent what the process of what activating and buying a personal connected device looks like,” says Stacy Hamer, VP of Client Experiences, iQmetrix. “We want to empower telcos to be the best option for their consumer, adds Hamer. In this podcast Hamer discusses that 5G is not automatically a revenue maker and that just adding 5G will not necessarily lead to growth without making other changes. Hamer points out that people might love their device, but their affections for their carrier likely run cooler. The cost of customer churn, customer acquisition and other issues can basically create a speed bump to a telco trying to match the higher costs of serving 5G. Hamer outlines the challenges and offers ideas to move forward by getting a company ready to sell 5G part of a larger refresh.
“You need to think about the customer journey, end-to-end, and the context,” says Genefa Murphy, Chief Marketing Officer at Five9. Genefa discusses how data can be used to improve customer engagement and how marketers can remain confident when it comes to using data to offer a personalized experience despite the rise in security risks and an increased focus on data protection. In this podcast we learn about the trends in managing calls and the development of data. We hear about how that data, properly applied, can create better customer experiences. At the same time, misused automation and digitization can lead to alienated customers. Genefa describes a path to avoid those mistakes and deliver on the promise of AI and other technologies in the contact center.
Five9 is an industry-leading provider of cloud contact center solutions, bringing the power of cloud innovation, digital engagement, analytics, workflow automation, workforce optimization and practical AI to more than 2,500 organizations across industries worldwide to reimagine their customer experiences. Genefa Murphy, who heads up the Five9 marketing team, holds a doctorate on the adoption of technologies.
Visit www.Five9.com
“No one saw it coming,” says Craig Doig, CEO of Markee. At the dawn of the pandemic, Markee was looking at the events space, but quickly began working on the healthcare sector where Markee responded to the crises by offering secure ‘out of the box’ solutions designed to be easily adopted by the healthcare provider community. “We had to have something that would be very different and be very focused,” adds Greg Plum, Markee’s SVP of Strategic Alliances. In this podcast we learn how Markee offers a simple interface, that’s browser only, thereby avoiding the clumsiness that comes with downloaded solutions and making it something so easy to use that clients want to use the platform more. We hear about the improved care provider and patient experiences. We also learn about how Markee is tackling HIPPA concerns. As the pandemic devolves into an endemic, with a new normal coming into play, Markee thinks that healthcare providers now need to make choices beyond ‘Zoom-like’ meetings to more secure and specially built platforms.
Visit https://markee.io/
For decades, the ASCDI has served the technology markets by enforcing a code of ethics, holding events where dealers, brokers and OEMs can network and learn about industry best practices. The group has also acted as a voice for the whole IT industry on issues such as Right to Own and Right to Repair. Last week the ASCDI held its first in person meeting of 2022 in Newport Beach, California as part of a plan to begin more such ‘live’ meetings around the North America and Europe. In this podcast, ASCDI President Joe Marion updates readers and listeners of association and industry news. Marion discusses ASCDI’s embracing of ITAD and how the ASCDI adds value to the ITAD proposition. While ITAD standardizes the recycling process, the ASCDI combined with ITAD can be a reassurance to buyers and sellers that their ASCDI ITAD partner is carrying out ITAD level procedures on things such as data wiping and proper end of life product recycling. “More and more of our members are becoming ITADs,” says Marion, “… and more ITADs are trying to become members of the ASCDI.” Marion notes that not everyone who applies will gain membership. The ASCDI has peer reviewed and peer approval structured membership application process, that affirms membership as a recognition that the new member, its ownership, and its leadership, meet standards of business conduct in the past and present. Today, Marion explains, ASCDI members are meeting market needs, driven by law, to protect customer data and to protect the environment.
Visit www.ascdi.com
Robocall volume dropped 26% last year compared to the 106.9 billion robocalls Americans received at the pre-pandemic peak in 2019, but consumers aren’t buying it: only 38% of Americans report they received fewer robocalls during the pandemic than before Covid-19. Frustration with robocalls remains universal: nearly half (45%) of consumers perceive they get more than five robocalls per day. TNS’ recent Robocall Investigation Report and Robocall Consumer Survey explore discrepancies in gender trust in answering robocalls, consumers fed up with political robocalls and robotexts, an increased consumer demand for branded calling and how branded calling can help mitigate the overwhelming issue of robocalls.
In this podcast, Bill Versen, President, Communications Market and Chief Marketing Officer at TNS, walks us through the report and discusses what we in the telecom community can do. We learn details about impact on brand and gender reaction differences. Machine driven calling could and can be effective. Public safety notification or calling targeted people for a notice they will need to hear, are examples. But brand damage can occur with robocall misuse.
Visit https://tnsi.com/
This Channel Partners week, AVANT is welcoming the channel community to consider donating to Razom for Ukraine. Razom is an organization that has been focused on the long-term development and prosperity of Ukraine. In this podcast Alex Danyluk of AVANT discusses how Razom offers a simple way for the channel community to rally and support, both on an individual and on a corporate level. Alex has Ukrainian immigrant parents who fled the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during WWII. Now, Ukrainian Americans are seeing a sad repetition of history happening a generation later. With this personal tie, Alex is rallying the channel community together to make a difference with a goal of raising $100K for Razom (Razom for Ukraine), a 501(c)(3) in the heart of Little Ukraine in New York City. The channel community has responded – already banding together to raise nearly $40K. Alex has also produced a series of videos to help people better understand the background of the situation.
To learn about the fundraising page: https://donorbox.org/avant-fundraiser-for-aid-to-ukraine-via-razom Watch Alex’s videos about Ukraine: https://linktr.ee/AlexDanyluk Learn about AVANT: https://goavant.net/
phoenixNAP is an infrastructure as a service partner (IaaSP). In this podcast we learn about how phoenixNAP is offering the partner and channel community innovative options such as bare metal servers and bare metal cloud. John Hardie, Vice President of Sales, discusses how partnerships with companies such as Intel, “…a new model that has never existed before.” Hardie tells us about how these new, scalable solutions offer both security and major savings, in a pay-per-use model that shreds the high costs of unused capacity but offers the security of a server that a customer is not sharing. Recorded at The Big Event in Chicago, which featured TBI’s growing technology parted cadre, Hardie discusses how their connection with TBI is opening a whole new set of options from companies in the TBI community.
“Where are you on your cloud journey,” asks Hardie. According to Hardie, it’s a question phoenixNAP suggests that their channel companies ask end user customers. Many people still answer with concerns about security or worries that the cloud might not be robust enough to meet needs. Still others, further along the migration path, relay answers that they are not achieving the developmental freedom and agility they were expecting. We learn how phoenixNAP offers real answers and has ready to go solutions for both.
Visit https://phoenixnap.com/
Laz Gonzalez, Chief Strategy Officer for Zift Solutions Speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their all-encompassing channel partners ZiftONE solution. Truly a complete package that enables the channel partner to work closely with their supplies while accelerating the customer and revenue growth. The solution improves the customer experience and maintains a high-quality standard.
Laz Gonzalez
Listen in as Laz discusses the solutions key features and how they help channel partners.
Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions has grown from a channel marketing software start-up to a global organization focused entirely on channel success. In working with thousands of the world’s leading companies selling through indirect channels, they saw the need to move beyond siloed solutions. Sure, their customers needed powerful channel-focused technology and they have and continue to deliver the most comprehensive cloud-based solutions for channel marketing, sales and operations. But they know there is more to channel success than software.
Today’s channel leaders need strategic guidance to help their partner programs thrive. They need seamless integration with the tools they (and their partners) are already using every day. They need flexible service options to support a wealth of activities — and partners working around the globe. And they need new, broader channel-focused capabilities to expand their reach, revenue and ROI. That’s where ZiftONE fits in.
For more information, go to: https://ziftsolutions.com/
Pandemic, generational and technological tectonic changes have created challenges that many people experience daily: missing files, missed emails, meeting programs and platforms that won’t load, unsupported apps and so on. Disparate technologies have been kit-bashed in such a way as to create awkward moments that, for large firms can be counted in lost productivity, and in smaller firms, per user costs that can sting. “As our founder originally said, there’s got to be a better way,” recalls Jim Berkman, CMO of Nynja. In this podcast we learn about a new way to look at work, or workstream collaboration and how Nynja presents a way to pull things together on a better basis that saves money, labor time and offers improved experiences. Berkman points out that improved workstream collaboration not only saves companies money, but it also helps improve worker and associate satisfaction, a now very critical consideration in a market where employers compete for workers and where gig workers have multiple choices on who to work for or with. This week, during the Channel Partners Conference, Nynja is announcing its channel program. Berkman lays out the opportunity being offered to create partner differentiation, present creative ideas to clients and migrate customers to something not only new, but better.
Visit www.gonynja.com
Read more TR reporting on Nynja:
https://telecomreseller.com/2022/04/04/nynja-elevates-technology-visionary-david-jodoin-to-president-and-chief-technology-officer/
https://telecomreseller.com/2022/04/12/nynja-introduces-channel-program-to-deliver-integrated-workstream-collaboration-solutions-to-smes-and-enterprises/
“Customers want a choice in how they engage, whether it be voice, messaging, chat or email, and we make it a sinch,” said Ed O’Hara, President of Sinch Voice, who was interviewed by Ruth Marion, Telecom Reseller, at Enterprise Connect 2022. In this podcast, you’ll hear how the recent Sinch acquisition of Inteliquent has created an innovative leader in omnichannel communications. Plus, you’ll find out how Sinch Voice instills trust and confidence in partners and enterprises to deliver the best quality communications over the largest super network powering voice, messaging, and email.
Founded over 25 years ago, Sinch Voice owns and operates the largest voice network, reaching 95% of the U.S. population with over 115M numbers in service. The super network allows customers to scale and add numbers extremely fast as proven during the pandemic when volume increased 40%. By combining the Inteliquent voice expertise and network with Sinch messaging and email strength, a powerful leader and one-stop shop for global, omnichannel communications was formed.
When looking for a communications provider, what makes Sinch unique is its commitment and track record of building trust among its customer base by mitigating fraudulent robocalls while delivering legitimate calls across the network. Their large, nationwide network and HD voice-enabled services, provide significant improvements to voice quality, especially when reaching wireless devices.
Customers want a choice about how they engage with organizations. Sinch provides the expertise, customer support, and network to deliver across all channels what customers want, where and when they want it.
Visit www.sinch.com
“Unfortunately, healthcare lagged behind in this whole ‘as a service’ kind of movement within in our economy,” says Mark McNeill, Strategic Healthcare Program Manager for TBI. While healthcare often uses some of the most advanced technologies to deliver actual medical care, the way in which the industry has utilized communications has often lagged other comparable industries, especially when it comes to managed services. The special needs of healthcare, with HIPPA regulations, state by state licensing, and many more factors, made this sector more cautious than most in letting go of an on-prem, on-site managed model. In this podcast we learn how this was changing before the pandemic, but how the pandemic sped up acceptance of cloud-based solutions, and telehealth. McNeill points out that as a community, healthcare providers often placed their capital in the state-of-the-art diagnostic or therapeutic equipment while demurring change on administrative connected infrastructure such as communications. The pandemic brought communication inside the circle of care while at the same time regulators waived restrictions to open availability of care during the lock down. The pandemic changed the landscape, making telehealth not only an accepted communications platform, but in many cases, the preferred method.
In this podcast, McNeill makes the case to look beyond terms such as telehealth to a broader vision he labels ‘remote care’. McNeill argues that the new opportunities partners face in serving their healthcare clients includes a wider range of choices, in a hybrid approach. We also learn how TBI proactively uses training and outreach to help partners understand the needs of healthcare providers and how to meet those challenges. McNeill points out that this is a longer sales cycle activity, but the rewards of working on a longer-term scale are major.
Visit https://www.tbicom.com/solutions/
Those enlisted in the military are provided some very unique and desirable skills for the business environment. Glen Brynteson, Board President of Train Our Troops spoke to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, prior to the 2022 Channel Partners. He has a number of goals for each conference he attends.
First, he tries to raise awareness of military trained veterans to corporate organizations. There are some veterans that have the expertise for some positions already. There are others that need transitional training. TrainOurTroops has created together over 160 different programs for people to study and receive certificates of completion. Some provide industry acknowledged certifications.
Glen Brynteson
While attending this year’s Channel Partners, stop at the TrainOurTroops booth. You cannot miss the Hummer & Military Campsite. You will be amazed at the information you receive and the new perspective you will have of today’s veterans. Listen in on this podcast to get a sample TrainOurTroops! Supporting Organizations
About: TrainOurTroops focuses on getting veterans, and their spouses, trained, prepared, and engaged in the marketplace to obtain solid positions to better support their families and excel in their individual careers. They want to ensure veteran families remain strong in a challenging work environment and be successful in any organization or profession. For more information, go to: https://trainourtroops.org/.
“It’s all about recognizing and incentivizing,” says Michelle Tamras, Director of Partner Experience at TBI. For many years, life as a partner in the telecom’s world was all about commissions and other similar incentives to perform. At TBI’s The Big Event, this week, a new program called PGA (Partners Gem Award) was showcased. The first ever Partners Gem Award winners were announced at the show, celebrating a program put in place by Tamras that rewards sales success, but also aims to improve overall partner experiences. The program aims to step up the process of on boarding new partners and to go beyond that to proactively helping partners learn how to close their first sales, and to bring into play the many resources TBI has assembled to improve partner success. In this podcast we learn that Tamras and her team take a highly personalized approach to making sure partners feel supported. The program reflects a broader trend at TBI and the industry, to move away from selling services almost in a commoditized posture, to a more differentiated approach which includes creating customized solutions at the customer level and deeper teamwork at the partner level. Tamras explains that TBI is taking a longer-term strategy with their partners, that still includes focus on achieving sales goals, but also includes a deeper approach to making sure partners are matched up with the right resources and backing so that they in turn offer creative solutions.
Visit https://www.tbicom.com/partners/
“One of our, the engineering teams, main tenets is to follow the data,” says TBI Solutions Engineer, Justin Foxwood. In this podcast, Foxwood takes us behind the scenes on how TBI works client challenges and matches solutions to client needs. TBI has a large portfolio of suppliers, with each one offering a set of solutions. Foxwood and his team maintain a continuously updated understanding of that portfolio, and then work to match up solutions to the needs to of the clients, thereby helping the partner navigate a process of choosing what combination of things to offer. “We are extremely emerging tech focused,” adds Foxwood, noting that along with offering an extensive portfolio of choices, TBI’s posture is to offer partners and clients leading edge solutions. “I want to make sure it’s the right fit,” says Foxwood, noting that as projects engage his team, the search is for the right answer, which sometimes even includes moving a client away from an original plan if that plan doesn’t match up with what can be done, or if there’s a better way to arrive at a solution. We learn how Foxwood’s team continues to work on partner experiences, as part of larger way that TBI manages its partner relationships.
Visit https://www.tbicom.com/solutions/
You’re using WebRTC (“Real Time Communications”) every day, on your laptop and on your smartphone – it’s what makes voice and video available through your browser. In this podcast, Christian Stredicke, CEO of Vodia, a cloud phone system company, talks about how Vodia is working to use WebRTC to create new communications environments for PBX users. WebRTC eliminates the interoperability issues that have long plagued the VoIP industry, and it’s based on HTTP, which means it's the best network protection currently available, particularly in light of the DDOS attacks during the last quarter of 2021.
“Over the ten, even twenty years, I cannot imagine anything replacing WebRTC,” Christian says. The podcast also discusses the relevance of desktop phones and SIP trunks, how the team at Vodia has found a way to route calls from WebRTC into mailboxes or an IVR, enabling communications between browsers and servers, between browsers and desktop phones, and between browsers and SIP trunks. “I think we’ve achieved ‘choice of device,’” Christian says, “which offers so many possibilities to businesses. This is something unique in the industry, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished.”
Visit https://web.vodia.com/
“Cyberwarfare is not new; it is certainly beginning to intensify with Russia, but we’re seeing the impacts on the enterprise environment,” says Robert Cooper, Managing Director Americas, Wildix. According to Cooper, the current crises has already resulted in high-profile distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks targeting VoIP providers and even impacts on bandwidth availability. In this podcast, Cooper outlines issues that enterprises and their MSP/Channel partners should be aware of and should be planning to prevent or mitigate. VPNs and SBCs, industry wide favorites might, Cooper points out, come with security issue drawbacks. We learn how some cloud communication companies may have data and other sensitive areas of exposure to hostile players. We look at best practices in view of a situation which might escalate. Cooper discusses the safety of choosing solutions that use a ‘secure-by-design platform’ to protect customer data from cyberattacks.
Visit www.wildix.com
Over the past few years, rapid digital transformation has spread across all enterprise departments, and has uprooted traditional CX practices – especially in the contact center where employees are directly engaging with customers. With the role of service agents evolving in line with the growing number of customer contact channels, the value gained from customer interactions can be felt across multiple areas of business.
So how can executives – from individual departments up to the C-Suite – better understand areas of improvement as they invest in new technology and CX solutions, like conversation intelligence? How can they analyze customer data and uncover insights from what’s happening in their contact or customer service centers, and transform it into enterprise-wide success and ROI?
In this podcast, CallMiner CTO Jeff Gallino discusses how organizations are using customer data to transform their businesses, as well as his takeaways from this year’s Enterprise Connect conference, including key industry and customer experience trends around omnichannel, scalability and automation.
Visit https://callminer.com/
by Gary Audin
You may already have Teams as part of Microsoft 365. You may be considering Teams for you collaboration efforts. In either case, you need to consider connecting to the PSTN and mobile service. That is where direct routing comes in.
You have two possible choices when using Teams for a PSTN call:
Microsoft’s Phone System and Calling Plans Direct Routing
Switching from an existing PSTN carrier may result in a penalty. Your existing carrier calling plans may be cheaper than a calling plan from Microsoft.
Gary Audin discusses direct routing in this 6 minute EDUbrief. Direct routing enables a Session Border Controller to mediate between the on-premises PSTN or SIP trunk and the Microsoft Teams service. Direct Routing offers greater flexibility, broader geographic coverage, lower rates, and increased levels of support than Teams calling plans.
In this EDUbrief you will learn:
About Microsoft Teams Direct routing with Teams Why use direct routing How direct routing works
This EDUbrief was sponsored by Ooma. Ooma creates powerful connected experiences for businesses and consumers, delivered from its smart cloud-based SaaS platform. For businesses of all sizes, Ooma provides advanced voice and collaboration features, including messaging, intelligent virtual attendants, and video conferencing to help them run more efficiently. Learn more at www.ooma.com or www.ooma.ca in Canada.
“So much more data is running through the network, and the edge network is taking on more of the processing…,” says Henrik Nilen, Director, Global DC Power Offering, Vertiv. Network transformation and 5G have completely changed the future of the telecom industry. In turn, this has affected core edge and access areas. In this conversation, Nilen digs into the access and edge spaces and discuss how Vertiv helps its customers overcome industry challenges. 5G means more data, and more data brings network challenges that telcos need to understand, anticipate and plan for when doing their migration. 5G also impacts power use and power needs, along with other infrastructure impacts such as cooling. Nilen explores the access site challenges and challenges at the edge of the network.
Visit www.vertiv.com/en-us
Mitel is one of the ‘storied’ names in enterprise communications, with corporate and product development DNA tracing back to the dawn of the modern corporate grade communications era. In this podcast, Paul Ginn, Group Director, Global Product Marketing, Mitel sits down with TR’s Ruth Marion at Enterprise Connect 2022 to discuss Mitel’s offerings to the enterprise market. Mitel recently announced subscription-based offers across all flagship platforms in its global portfolio. We learn that this announcement is in keeping with a larger approach by Mitel to offer customers a wide range of choices as they migrate their communications. Mitel is embracing the shift to hybrid work with a new, convenient way for organizations to adopt communications and collaboration services in ways that minimize up-front cost and best suit the respective goals of their customers. Mitel, with over 35 million connections globally, has over 5,000 channel partners. Ginn discusses how their channel presence is local. In most places, in much of the world, there is a local Mitel partner who lives and works in the same community as his customers, thereby enabling Mitel to translate their offerings to meet local needs.
Visit www.mitel.com
“We love audio,” says Tom Darnell, Chief Commercial Officer at IRIS. IRIS is a revolutionary audio technology company with a mission to enable the world to Listen Well. Its suite of patented products leverages decades of research into the effects of sound on the brain, prioritising focus, productivity, and wellness for all. By harnessing the science of sound, IRIS dramatically improves how people experience audio across all digital platforms, from video meetings to streaming, podcasts to audiobooks. Darnell explains that IRIS bridges a technology gap, where video has progressively improved audio is often an ignored art and science.
Launched this year, IRIS’ latest product is IRIS Clarity, a simple desktop application that eliminates all background noise from online meetings. Using AI-powered, bi-directional voice isolation, IRIS Clarity ensures each participant’s voice is heard clearly on both sides of the call. In this podcast Darnell shares how IRIS’ technology aims to bring control to otherwise uncontrollable environments, improving communication and productivity in the workplace, and enhancing customer experience in telecommunications companies.
Visit https://iris.audio/clarity
Watch the product video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36d31EfYvIM
According to Darren Kretz, Imagicle represents an almost exclusive path for Cisco customers who seek a hybrid approach to their migration path. In this podcast, Kretz, who is Channel Account Manager Mid Atlantic and Public Sector, Federal for Imagicle, there are big advantages for Cisco users and Cisco dealers, to take that direction. The close relationship between Cisco and Imagicle was recently on display at an event called It’s Cloud Time! Kretz outlines 3 main reasons why anyone involved with the community of Cisco users and channel companies will benefit from watching the recorded sessions from the Imagicle Virtual Event. Kretz discusses Customer Service solutions such as the Imagicle Attendant Console with Advanced Queueing and Auto Attendant, the only solution available for Cisco customers who wish to operate with a mix of on-prem and cloud architectures. We learn about Imagicle Call Recording with Voice Analytics, and Digital Fax and get a glimpse at the upcoming Imagicle Conversational AI solution, designed to automate experiences by building virtual assistants or chatbots, streamlining the experience for both customers and employees in several ways and use cases.
Visit https://www.imagicle.com/en/ and https://bit.ly/36B6f9l
Jon Brinton of Crexendo and Ian Maclean of Mavenir sit down with TR’s Doug Green to discuss their partnership. “What we found was that we had a great synergy,” says Brinton of Crexendo, describing an RFI process that began with a “baker’s dozen” of partnership candidates, but eventually narrowed down to having all indicators pointing to Mavenir as a partner with a very well aligned set of complimentary strengths. “50% of the worlds mobile phones touch Mavenir’s technology, at some point,” adds Brinton, noting that creating the partnership satisfied goals for both companies, and broadly opened new opportunities for the two company’s respective ecosystems of partners and customers. With this partnership, Mavenir integrates Crexendo’s Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) with the Mavenir Connect brand. At the same time Crexendo integrates Mavenir’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and omni-channel customer engagement, chatbots and automations. In keeping with Crexendo’s commitment to white labelled solutions, Mavenir’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) will be presented to the Crexendo community as a solution that the partners will be able to build their own brands on, thus creating more opportunities for the partners to offer differentiation and loyalty building services. Meanwhile, Mavenir’s offerings are also enhanced by the partnership. Maclean describes haw those offerings create new choices for the carrier community, where Mavenir is an already a trusted and known resource.
Visit www.crexendo.com and www.mavenir.com
Two years ago, Boxlight acquired Sahara, a leader in distributed AV products and a manufacturer of multi-award-winning touchscreens and digital signage products, including the globally renowned Clevertouch and Sedao brands. In this podcast, TR’s Ruth Marion sits down with Dermot Sweeney, VP Sales, Platforms & Services at Boxlight Group (building Clevertouch Partnerships USA – UK) to discuss how Clevertouch by Boxlight offers creative solutions to many enterprise challenges. The company has focused on education and healthcare. We learn how the Clevertouch all-in-one Enterprise Ecosystem facilitates business-wide collaboration, with interactive displays designed to work in a wide spectrum of enterprise environments and use cases. The company has special vertical offerings for retail, education and healthcare, plus cross industry solutions that facilitate work from home. The organization is experiencing high growth as it continues to offer creative ways to change customer, client and employee experiences.
Visit www.clevertouch.com
by Gary Audin
If you are using Microsoft Teams, then you know that the Teams cloud based service will be working with multiple vendors and providers to implement an end-to-end collaboration experience.
Multi-vendor environments occur 64% of the time. About 74% of organizations use Teams with a second UC platform such as Zoom. Remote workers are quite common in 84% of organizations.
This 6 minute EDUbrief with Gary Audin and sponsored by Vyopta, provides a short education about the challenges and solutions when monitoring and maintaining a productive UC Teams solution.
To fully comprehend the collaboration experience, you need insights from three sources. You are depending on technology insights that offers a single-pane-of-glass visibility (not multiple displays) with real time monitoring, quality scoring, modern alerting, with automated reporting.
The second source of information is workplace insights. These provide workspace utilization and performance metrics. The third source and maybe the most important source are user insights.
Vyopta, the sponsor of this EDUbrief, is a leader in digital collaboration user experience management, has helped 40 million people collaborate better. Its Collaboration Performance Management and Workspace Insights for technology and workspaces have helped identify and address over 9 million issues. Hundreds of organizations worldwide spanning 20+ industries use Vyopta to monitor 6 million endpoints and over 20 billion meeting minutes a year.
Peerless Network, an established wholesale carrier with a 14-year track record of growth, is joining forces with Infobip, the #1 most connected CPaaS provider in the world with over 700 direct connections. The two companies announced a definitive agreement in late 2021 for Infobip to acquire Peerless.
Rick Knight, EVP of Sales & Marketing with Peerless Network, and Mijo Soldin, Director, Operator Strategy and Partnerships with Infobip, sit down with TR Reseller’s Doug Green to discuss how the mission and goals of both companies are aligned, and how this combination truly makes sense for Infobip and Peerless’ employees and customers.
In this podcast, you’ll learn more about this truly unique combination and how connecting the strengths of Infobip and Peerless will lead to even greater success and rapid growth for the combined company. As Mijo and Rick agree “This is a very powerful package for customers!”
More at www.peerlessnetwork.com and www.infobip.com.
“It’s not just set it and forget it,” says William Svien, a principal at Vita Safety Partners. As voice, real time communications and the entire infrastructure of the way organizations communicate internally and externally, staying compliant with existing and emerging E911 regulatory requirements and OSHA’s guidelines for a safe working environment is an ongoing challenge. This past week at Enterprise Connect, TR’s Ruth Marion and Bill Svien sat down to record this podcast where we learn about the new challenges of staying in compliance as both work venues and the technologies that support work venues, change. We learn how Vita Safety Partners begins by offering an analysis that allows the enterprise to understand where it has fallen outside of compliance and to better understand its overall safety posture. From there, Vita Safety Partners offers a scalable service, which Svien describes as a la carte, meaning enterprises can chose the level of service that makes sense for them. Svien, a pioneer in the cloud communications space, understands how safety measures adopted in another time, with a different network, can easily become ineffective or below legal guidelines. The Vita Safety Partners team are very familiar with the types of legacy, hybrid, and cloud platforms that organizations have and understand how to help companies get and remain inside compliance. “It’s an ongoing process,” adds Svien.
Visit https://vitasafetypartners.com/
“It’s the combination really of AI and human touch, to give the perfect customer experience”, says Chad Haydar, VP Reselling, Talkdesk. As the contact center evolves into a very new type of operation and service, enterprises need new technologies and fresh thinking about how to manage and use this major company asset. The contact center of today is evolving into a strategic resource for powering better CX and increasing business value, and the role of the contact center agent is transcending from simply being a call handler to becoming a trusted advisor guiding the customer journey. We look at these changes in the context of changes and news challenges such as the Great Resignation and rapidly changing customer needs and demands. Talkdesk offers a variety of solutions to help enterprises create better customer experiences, which their research shows, can make a difference in brand loyalty, repeat sales and much more.
Visit www.talkdesk.com
Pindrop announcement made
Migration of a large enterprise to the cloud can be quite daunting, according to Caroline Sutton-Vogler, Senior Director of Enterprise Marketing at Bandwidth. Now, Bandwidth’s enterprise ready solutions are available directly to the enterprise. At this week’s Enterprise Connect, TR’s Ruth Marion sat down with Sutton-Vogler in a podcast and we get a broad overview of the products, solutions and resources available to the enterprise community from Bandwidth. “We want to make the Bandwidth platform the place to be to kick off your contact center migration,” says Sutton-Vogler. We learn about the new announced partnership and integration with Pindrop, a global leader in voice authentication technology. According to the news release, “Now, Pindrop can be natively integrated with Bandwidth at the carrier level, giving enterprises a faster, more direct route to migrate their contact centers to the cloud with Pindrop’s mission-critical authentication and anti-fraud technology already built in.”
Visit www.bandwidth.com
The modern contact center extracts a mountain of data every day. They transcribe millions of call recordings, sort billions of keywords, and pair it all with metadata. But has all that analytical activity yielded quality action plans, increased revenue, or superior security? What’s blocking us from receiving the transformative benefits we were all promised, and how do we break through the barrier to realize the competitive edge speech analytics offer?
In this podcast we’ll talk about how to finally make practical use of the richest, most honest source of customer data available to an organization, customer call data. Personalizing the customer experience is the ultimate goal for many organizations as part of improving the end-to-end customer journey. However, personalization requires accurate, accessible, curated data.
Even though Speech Analytics and Machine Learning can deliver this quality of data, for organizations to actually benefit from it, the data must be humanized in how it is organized, presented, and automated.
Visit http://www.miarec.com/
“What we’ve tried to do is to come up with a way for a reseller to easily combine together all the things a customer would need in order to get Microsoft Teams working, as a phone system,” says Ribbon’s Director of Solutions Marketing Greg Zweig. In this podcast, Telecom Reseller’s Ruth Marion connected with Zweig at the Enterprise Connect show to discuss the partnership that is facilitating that solution for Teams users, along with other news at Ribbon, including the recent partner bundle with SYNNEX and Poly, recent Ribbon innovations, Cloud migrations for popular collaboration suites, like Teams and Zoom and Ribbon’s IP Optical support for enterprises.
Ribbon Communications delivers communications software, IP and optical networking solutions to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors globally. The company helps customers modernize their networks for improved competitive positioning and business outcomes in today’s smart, always-on and data-hungry world. Ribbon’s innovative, end-to-end solutions portfolio delivers unparalleled scale, performance, and agility, including core to edge software-centric solutions, cloud-native offers, leading-edge security, and analytics tools, along with IP and optical networking solutions for 5G.
To learn more about Ribbon Communications, visit https://ribboncommunications.com/.
“The best and the brightest in the world are expecting that flexibility in work,” says Beau Wilder, SVP and GM of Video Collaboration at Poly. This week at Enterprise Connect, Poly issued new global research looking at how employers and employees are thinking about work policies, culture, and wellness with the transition to hybrid work. The findings demonstrate that organizations of all sizes need to address their hybrid work plans or risk losing new and existing employees. In this podcast, Ruth Marion interviews Wilder on the new world of developing a defined hybrid work strategy. We learn about how Poly is thinking about the future, the changing role of the office, and how the office becomes a part of an overall hybrid approach, where other spaces are involved. Wilder discusses how Poly is offering technology and product solutions that match these changing needs, for both workers and for the IT and support staff, who must furnish those workers with updated tools that help hybrid workers show up equally whether they’re in the office, at home or on the road. Poly’s report shows that over 60% of employers believe that not having a successful hybrid approach may result in a loss of talent. At Enterprise Connect this week, Poly presented ideas, products and solutions to help businesses of all sizes rise to the hybrid challenge.
Visit www.poly.com/us/en
The Virsae VSM Everywhere, a cloud-based dashboard service that captures and analyzes critical performance and technical data in unmanaged work from home environments has won Enterprise Connect’s award for the Most Innovative Use of AI. “The Best of Enterprise Connect award winners and finalists all demonstrate the high level and vibrant pace of innovation occurring in enterprise communications and collaboration technology,” said Eric Krapf, Enterprise Connect general manager and program co-chair. “We congratulate all the winners and finalists for delivering on the promise of communications/collaboration technology at a time when enterprises continually need to improve their own customer and employee experiences.”
Ross Williams, Chief Product Officer of Virsae joins TR’s Ruth Marion to discuss Virsae’s achievement in the use of AI. The company is exhibiting at the conference for the first time. Williams explains that the award recognizes a twelve-year journey, with a commitment to a cloud-based solution and creative use of AI. Virsae’s unique approach helps companies understand the well-being of agents, as they work from across multiple situations and scenarios. We learn how Virsae helps companies meet the flexibility modern workers are expecting.
Visit www.virsae.com
“Are we really capturing your voice in the best way possible?” asks Scott Houston, Field Engineer with EPOS. As Enterprise Connect got underway, Ruth Marion of TR sat down with Houston to learn about EPOS’s approach to the hybrid working environment. EPOS, with a deep heritage of offering the very highest quality microphones in their product (indeed, many TR readers use EPOS brand Sennheiser microphones for work and other uses). EPOS combines high quality microphones with technology that reflects the fact that we hear with our brains, not our ears. In this podcast, we learn how BrainAdapt is being used to help people manage the diversity of background noise environments the new hybrid worker faces. BrainAdapt is a key part of the EPOS story this week at Enterprise Connect 2022.
Visit www.eposaudio.com
“A passion for performance”
On the eve of opening evening at Enterprise Connect 2022, Dorthe Krogh Jensen is VP, Global Marketing at EPOS discussed with Doug Green of TR, the EPOS approach to the post pandemic world of work. In this podcast we learn more about the BrainAdapt design concept, where they leverage algorithms and acoustical data from parent company Oticon (hearing aid technology) to create solutions that better adapt to how the brain interprets natural sound. This reduces strain and overload, creating a more productive workplace experience for today’s new hybrid environments. The BrainAdapt approach is part of a larger vision of how to take audio quality and user experience to a new level, even with uninterrupted focus on the on taking a high-quality path to the market. “The foundation of our design principles is really to put cognitive performance in the front of everything we do,” says Jensen. With that in mind, EPOS seeks to offer pioneering technology, comfortable solutions, and what Jensen calls, “… a passion for performance” into each product offered. While paying attention to detail, EPOS seeks to offer a better solution by looking at a wider circumstance from hybrid workers, and then delivering what they need.
Visit www.eposaudio.com
We all know that 5G is the next big thing on the edge and that it is really fast, but what is behind the speed? Jon Mykrantz, VP Enterprise Sales at Wilson Electronics speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, and delves into the various technologies to explain the difference and highlight the need for cellular signal amplification in their repeater technology.
Jon Mykrantz
The applications for the repeater technology can be very beneficial to the channel and your commercial customer base in pretty much every industry. Once you understand the technology and the limitations, you will understand the many scenarios where it would apply and make you the hero for providing the solution.
Listen in as Jon, provides a lively review of the technology that will remain with you for a long time into the future. Great facts and products to be in your portfolio.
About: When you partner with Wilson Electronics, you're bringing the innovators of wireless amplification to your team. Since 1987, they've been the #1 brand for cellular signal repeaters. They innovate the wireless communications industry and strive to improve it every day. To do this, they work closely with the FCC, forward-thinking engineers, and inspired designers. With 30+ years of experience and 140 active patents, they know what it takes to optimize wireless communications. Their repeaters are outfitted with the latest in 5G amplification technology and remote management is available.
For more information, go to: https://www.wilsonpro.com/
It is all about quality and reliability in telecommunications. Versa delivers both through their VOS™ 5G and SASE. Michael Wood, Chief Marketing Officer for Versa gives Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, some insight into the SASE and supporting technologies that are available to the ACE Channel Partners.
First, while the Versa ACE channel is diversified including Carriers, Telcos, Service Providers, Operators as well as VARs, System Integrators, Distributors and Agents, they doubled their channel size over the last two years.
Michael Wood
If you are looking to implement SASE in the near term, Michael discusses the key drivers for the technology in the channel. He also covers the key SASE functions that the channel is requesting.
Listen in to find out how Versa works to support and enable their Channel Partners.
About Versa: They accelerate your Digital Transformation.
Versa is unique among SASE vendors, providing an end-to-end solution that both simplifies and secures the modern network. Versa SASE, based on VOS™, delivers a broad set of capabilities via the cloud and on-premises for building agile and secure enterprise networks, as well as highly efficient managed service offerings.
The Versa mission is to address the security and networking challenges that Enterprises and Service Providers face, and connect branch offices, home offices, and users to applications wherever they exist.
For more information, go to: www.versa-networks.com or https://versa-networks.com/partners/
iBASIS launches its Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) to generate growth for Carriers and Service providers
“Our flavor of CPaaS is enablement,” says Nicola Tamma at iBASIS. Tamma tells us that iBASIS is simplifying the path CSPs take into new cloud driven markets, with a series of new products and services, and with a continuity of relationships that are unique. That mix of time-tested service and deep customer connect, combined with a commitment to move to the cloud, attracted Nicola Tamma to iBASIS. Today, Tamma serves as Cloud Communications Product Manager, a front row seat in that CPaaS journey. In this special podcast for the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA) and TR Publications, we learn about new products and services iBASIS has been rolling out. Tamma takes us through the new offerings and discusses how they have been carefully crafted with CSP real world needs in mind. A major differentiator is iBASIS recognizing the CPaaS ground war is staffed by a salesforce that can easily struggle without training and tools. Tamma discusses how iBASIS has curated several tools to enable the telecoms salesforce to have everything they need to not only sell cloud in lieu of traditional offerings but to sell cloud as a set of critical solutions that their customers need.
Visit www.ibasis.com
Small business has had to become creative to survive and to service both employees and customers properly. Ooma Office is an option that many are choosing. Jeff Zoloto, Channel Sales Manager with Ooma, speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR Publication about Ooma Office and the Value Add that it brings to the office using the service. Key differentiators in the Ooma Office include:
Jeff Zoloto * Ranked #1 VoIP business solution 8 years in a row + Best Features + Best Service + Recommended more than any other provider * Customer service based in the U.S.
If you are struggling with the current phone system you are using or selling to your customers, contact Ooma. Listen in as Jeff does a great job of providing excellent positioning for their Ooma Office solution.
Ooma is dedicated to empowering customers to connect in smarter ways. They create powerful connected experiences for businesses and consumers, all delivered through their smart, cloud-based software service platform. Ooma’s business and consumer phone service solutions are each ranked #1 by customers in third party surveys.
For businesses, Ooma Office phone service enables small businesses to sound and act like a big business, with powerful features including desktop and mobile apps so users can work from anywhere. Ooma Enterprise phone service provides larger businesses with a complete unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution that can be customized to meet the individual needs of complex organizations. Ooma Connect delivers innovative fixed wireless internet to businesses, for both back-up and primary use.
For more information, go to: https://www.ooma.com/
In our ongoing series of podcasts reporting on billing, we are exploring the world of billing from different points of view. Billing is the one certain point of contact between vendor and customer, and yet it’s often overlooked as an area of opportunity. In this podcast JK Chelladurai, Founder & CEO of OneBill discusses how billing can maximize revenue. “You can only do so much through your direct sales force,” says Chelladurai. “A faster way to get market penetration is to leverage channel partners.” Chelladurai discusses how the OneBill platform can enable this process, maximize revenue and how OneBill offers all of this with a white label program. We also learn about how OneBill, while helping improve revenue, also seamlessly keeps the whole process in compliance with regulations, taxes, and other best practice issues.
Visit www.onebillsoftware.com
In today’s IT equipment markets, compliance and data security, along with environmental sustainability and employee health and safety are important. In this podcast, we learn how Apto Solutions, a member of the ASCDI, offers customers these critical, certified services. Apto Solutions CEO, Jeff Jones walks us through the company’s process and approach. “Data security is always top of mind for our corporate and OEM customers,” says Jones, “…so we built systems to validate that.” Jones outlines the layers of process, checking and re-checking to make sure every server, PC or even part, has been scrubbed, wiped, and properly managed, whether it’s going back into use or headed for a recycling process. With current events re-focusing IT buyers and users on things such as supply chain, parts, sourcing plastics and mined materials, we discuss the new critical nature of how Apto Solutions, as an ITAD certified resource, can offer a deep partnership to companies as they modernize their networks, accommodate Work from Anywhere and confront a less predictable global IT supply system.
Visit www.aptosolutions.com
People want to hear a real human voice, storytelling might be a better tactic than on hold music
Voice actors and their art begin with the “talkies”, in the actors who created voices for cartoon characters, and narration of major films. A technology breakthrough of offering voice with motion pictures, and now the new technology of AI will not replace the human voice, according to David Ciccarelli Chief Executive Officer of Voices. According to Ciccarelli, there is a 72% higher preference for human voices over the synthetic alternative. “After listening to more than 1 minute of an AI voice, respondents reported more discomfort, and decreased trust and connection to the voice.” Ciccarelli believes that AI will augment, not replace the human voice. 90% of Fortune 500 companies do not use AI voice in any marketing or customer engagement activities. Matthew McConaughey’s distinctive voice is now a well-established brand for the Lincoln Motor Company. Ciccarelli points out that American Express, greeting inbound customers with a simple set of familiar chimes, puts customers at ease by sending out a message of care and safety. In this podcast, Ciccarelli makes the case for using the on-hold times as a place to offer useful information, a first step to caring for anxious customers and as a place to begin a distinctive experience. He also cautions that these technologies and occasions can be misused, creating an unintended effect on customers.
Visit www.voices.com
Big news for the contact center, doesn’t need an SBC connection, and works with calling plans, direct routing, and operator connect
“It makes for an easy on-boarding process, and easy proof of concept process,” says Ryan O’Connor, Technical Sales Lead, North America for Tendfor. Tendfor has just became the first API-based platform to work with Microsoft Teams native integration (meaning the PBX replacement is all Teams). In this podcast we learn why this is a significant step forward because this type of integration opens a completely new service provider independent and global way to build telephony that has never been possible before Teams. Essentially, you can have local breakouts from any service provider (including Microsoft), based on any technology for numbers (DR, CP and OC), in any geographical region/market all over the world. And you can mix and match on every level. Tendfor customers can also mix these forms of PSTN connectivity, for a truly service provider independent global solution. A revolution in enterprise telephony for professionals, powered by the unique capabilities in the global Microsoft Teams infrastructure.
Visit https://tendfor.com/en/
We’re here with Darren Kretz, a proud member of the Imagicle sales team with many years of experience and a passion for making customers happy. Today, Darren will outline who Imagicle is, what they do, and their strategic and long-term partnership with Cisco. But most importantly, Darren will tell us of a great opportunity to learn more about Cloud market trends and solutions & the disruptive Cisco + Imagicle integrations. We’re talking about It’s Cloud Time, Imagicle’s Cisco-dedicated virtual event taking place next March 15-17.
You can register here! (Full link: https://discover.imagicle.com/l/925773/2022-02-02/91zlf)
The International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers, Inc. (“IAITAM”) is the professional association for individuals and organizations involved in any aspect of IT Asset Management (“ITAM”), Software Asset Management (“SAM”), Hardware Asset Management and the lifecycle processes supporting IT Asset Management in organizations of every size and industry across the globe. The organization bridges the gap between technology and management to ensure organizations receive value and mitigate risk while using technology. In this podcast we talk to Dr. Barbara Rembiesa, CEO of IAITAM, about the organization’s role in an era of rapid change, as cloud and tectonic changes in the way large portions of workers choose their venues. Rembiesa reminds us that asset management is a critical part of the IT picture. Rembiesa says that companies that, “…aren’t managing that technology they aren’t managing their business.” We also learn about the organization’s upcoming post-covid conference. The conference will take place in Las Vegas, May 17th-19th, 2022.
- Visit https://iaitam.org/ for more information
- Visit https://ace.iaitam.org/ for conference information
by Gary Audin
Unified communications (UC) are everywhere. Every UC operation contains multiple vendors and providers that need to be managed, including now-critical SBC and SIP components. Many enterprises are using 2 to 5 different UC platforms. No single vendor or provider can perform the management end-to-end. This opens up revenue opportunities for MSPs and providers to perform the UC management for their customers whether enterprise or SMB.
Mike Cebulski, Director of Channel Development at Virsae and Gary Audin recorded this EDUcast about managing SBCs and SIP as a MSP or provider for an added revenue stream. Mike discusses:
- How SBCs and SIP relate to UC
- The diversity of products and services in a UC environment
- The overwhelming data produced when managing the UC function, more than humans can fully process
- The SBC security statistics
- Creating new revenue streams by managing UC end-to-end
What you will learn in this EDUcast:
- Challenges with SIP and SBCs
- What are the problems?
- Resolving the problems
- SBC security
- VSM in a service organization
- Revenue streams and opportunities
Virsae delivers unrivaled insight to enable flawless communication. Their cloud-based platform, Virsae Service Management (VSM), continuously processes billions of data points from thousands of sites around the world – delivering AI-powered analytics and diagnostics to enable progressively smarter management of contact center and UC platforms. www.virsae.com
In order to provide the complete solution for each of their customers, Kajeet looks at their needs in three areas for:
- Secure network
- Secure applications
- Secure devices
Greg Jones Greg Jones, CTO for Kajeet describes to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, their secure solutions including IoT. While some current machine-2-machine IoT is simplistic in nature as we move to the edge, the IoT will get more complex and become more vulnerable. Network and IoT security will need to be implemented at multiple different levels including device verification, authentication, firewalls, network anomaly detection and more.
Listen in as Greg identifies why IoT devices are vulnerable to malicious attacks and how they can be protected. He also provides insight from his years of experience on how to provide a solid security strategy.
With the speed of IT, security, and IoT development, companies and education staff have a difficult time staying current on all aspects of security for a complete network. This is why the prepackaged solutions offered by Kajeet are so successful. The components have a secure history and are maintained at the latest revision levels.
The world will be universally connected and data-driven to support better decisions and ultimately better lives. All people and things will be connected. Kajeet will provide the wireless networks, software and insights that empower companies to use these connections securly.
Kajeet provides optimized IoT connectivity, software and hardware solutions that deliver safe, reliable, and controlled internet access to nearly 3,000 businesses, schools, state, and local governments and IoT solution providers. Kajeet is the only managed IoT connectivity services provider in the industry to offer a scalable, award-winning IoT management platform, Sentinel®, that includes complete visibility into real-time data usage, policy control management, custom content filters for added security and multi-network flexibility.
For more information, go to: https://www.kajeet.net/
Every company, large or small has frontline workers - receptionist, sales, support, shipping and more. The company image and the experience of each customer is in their hands. Without training and constant feedback on their performance, frontline workers may be poisoning the well for future sales.
Aaron Ward
AskNicely CEO Aaron Ward started the company to address this critical company issue. Since 2014, they have been servicing thousands of customers large and small all around the world. With offices in three locations across the globe, AskNicely has evolved as a leader in frontline success. They provide both customer and employee feedback as well as improve workflows, provide recognition, coaching and insights to improve the employee and customer experience.
Listen in and enjoy the fast-paced discussion on how they help companies like yours improve the employee/customer experience, extend employee and customer longevity, and reduce company costs while improving sales and revenue.
Their industry-leading mobile platform delivers personalized coaching and motivation for frontline workers powered by real-time customer feedback and eliminates the need for layers of middle management. AskNicely services over 1,300 companies worldwide and has offices in the United States, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.
For more information, go to: https://www.asknicely.com/
COVID accelerated the transition of businesses from TDM and T1s to hybrid and cloud solutions. Even as COVID comes to an end, business will continue supporting 30% to 60% of their stay and work from home employees.
Layne Levine, President, Windstream Enterprise gives Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, an update on Windstream Enterprises and their fast-paced growth with over 2,000 new SD-WAN sites per month for a rate of 32% per annum.
Layne Levine
Listen in as Layne describes how the industry continues its digital transformation to SD-WAN & UCaaS while it moves to SASE to embrace the newly defined employee work base locations. Also, learn how Windstream is positioned to better serve businesses this year.
About: Businesses trust Windstream Enterprise as their single source for a high-performance network and award-winning suite of connectivity, collaboration, and security solutions. All delivered by a team of technology experts whose success is directly tied to their clients’ complete satisfaction. Their advanced nationwide Cloud Core™ network architecture provides a secure, reliable and flexible foundation to meet the constantly growing and evolving demands of the cloud era.
Windstream Enterprise owns and operates an advanced nationwide network with over 170K fiber route miles and a proprietary, scalable Cloud Core™ architecture. It was designed from the ground up to empower optimal cloud application experiences and to dramatically simplify end-to-end deployment and management of services.
For more information, go to: https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/
Company rolls out products for QuickBooks, Documo and 90 second white label on-boarding
“We have been building a customer experience portal that’s mobile first and second to none,” says Daniel Rosenrauch, Chief Executive Officer. In this podcast, Rosenrauch gives us a look at technology that Viirtue has been rolling out and is about to showcase at two major upcoming events, Channel Partners and ITEXPO. Rosenrauch says the company is wanting to make is easier than ever for partners to get all their needs met in a simple and enjoyable portal. Rosenrauch adds, “We launched full workflow integration with both QuickBooks and ConnectWise in October. We now have billing integration with popular white label eFax vendor Documo coming this month. With our new integration Viibe users can either use our Documo instance or their own via the simple to setup integration.” We also learn about the company’s self-service onboarding process for white label resellers that can have a partner onboard in less than 90 seconds.
Visit www.viirtue.com
“So many of the assets, so many of those PBXs, are still running and working perfectly,” says Tim Kubiak, CEO of Zepol Productions Inc., (ZPI). “Even in the UCaaS world, things may never go fully to the cloud,” adds Kubiak. In this podcast, Kubiak puts a fresh take on a topic that was once a major focus for TR readers: maintenance and understanding maintenance options. In the on-prem network model, maintenance contracts with a major OEM constituted a multibillion-dollar technology market. Third party vendors lined up with alternative packages. As the cloud has grown, that market became less visible, but as we learn, it did not go away. Neither has the equipment it served. Kubiak explains how his company can help with over one hundred brands of equipment in both data and telecom, but with a fresh approach that includes a better understanding of assets, asset utilization, replacement, and proper end of life issues in an era where security and proper disposal are mandated in most firms. Kubiak wants to make end users, carriers and the channel aware of what ZPI can help with the migration of workers to home, the integration of cloud services, but where a lot of traffic continues to “touch” long installed equipment. Getting the maintenance numbers right is a vital part of that bigger picture.
Visit https://zpiaom.com/
“We are both a telco and a software provider,” says Stijn Nijhuis, CEO of Enreach. In the cloud and collaboration era, where silos are disdained and combined experiences expected, Enreach brings expertise in several markets and disciplines to multiple national European markets, to offer a unique partner that simply knows and understands each regional economy and each technology in play. You can work these markets on your own and you can try to bring these technologies together or consider Enreach partnership to leverage hard won knowledge and experience in each. In this podcast Nijhuis makes the case for Enreach, outlining the complexity of the vast EU, European and UK markets, explaining that significant cultural, economic, political and regulatory differences exist, even between neighboring nations. In one nation, the focus might now be entirely mobile, in another the expectation might still be to get a live person on a first attempted call, and in yet another texting and conferencing might be the concern. Despite harmonization across the EU, Enreach is reaching out to the Cloud Communications Community (CCA) with a message that finding a partner such as Enreach is a good idea as a step to success in these markets. Nijhuis sees 2022 as a year when Enreach will be seen as a company that combines many capabilities in a special way and in a market filled with new opportunities. Enreach is also acquiring companies and had success in making those acquisitions work. A cultural fit is as important to the firm as is a monetary justification.
Visit https://enreach.com/en
Company offers four flavors of channel partnership
“Customers are looking for reliability, simplicity and affordability, altogether,” says Amber Newman, Sr. Director of Marketing of Phone.com. Newman outlines how Phone.com has been meeting the new challenges facing smaller organizations and the channel partners who focus on smaller businesses. Always dedicated to the small organization market sector, Phone.com has added experiences to the solutions it provides. In the past the issue might have been saving money on real time communications. Today, it might be enabling a small restaurant to use a sophisticated approach to handling a wave of take-away food orders, creating contact center options for smaller outbound call efforts, or creating improved customer experiences for sole proprietorship practices in law, medicine, real estate and more. Newman argues that many small businesses might want to consider offering contact options beyond their mobile device’s services. She notes that the move to WFA included an uptick in demand for hardware, including desktop phones.
Phone.com today offers channel partners four types of relationships in what Newman describes as a “choose your own adventure” posture. Channel partners can be trusted advisors, expert consultants, offer prepacked technologies or be involved in putting together novel solutions. Newman discusses how Phone.com offers an express on-ramp to offer HIPPA ready solutions and how partners can offer fresh conversations with clients about ramping up texting for many business uses. This podcast features Phone.com as a member of the Cloud Communications Alliance.
Visit www.phone.com
DRaaS, Disaster Recovery as a Service emerges as a new approach to the old problem of business continuity
The widespread adoption of the cloud has transformed the way applications are developed just as much as it has transformed the way they are deployed and consumed. In this podcast we look at how Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) can help developers support the complete application lifecycle by unlocking the value of PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). In this podcast we explore the three key benefits of a cloud environment - flexibility, scalability, and speed - extend quite nicely to app development and have helped developers perpetuate transformative ways of working through concepts such as Agile and DevOps. Garrett Lowell, VP, Ecosystem Partnerships and Jay Turner, VP of Development and Operations, both of Console Connect discuss the revolution of the PaaS model, and the giant trend of buying network services by the use unit verses by the pound. Lowell and Turner discuss the changes occurring in work, and the corresponding changes the IT and UC worlds are making to offer enterprises scalable solution abroad a broad band of product types and newly integrated approaches to once siloed experiences. “Now you have a happier workforce that’s going to be more productive,” notes Lowell.
Turner discusses a term that might be new to reader and listeners of this podcast, DRaaS. “I see a huge untapped market,” says Turner, explaining that cloud delivered DRaaS offers an unprecedented way to recover and continue mission critical enterprise operations that save companies money in the preparatory stages and yet offer a more effective bounce back after disruption when compared to legacy approaches.
Visit https://www.consoleconnect.com/
VCA to host Webinar on 10DLC
Ten-digit long code, 10DLC, could offer terrific opportunities for cloud providers. It also opens the door to liability. “They (the cloud providers) need to find ways that they can still offer these services to their customers and avoid getting hit with penalties and having their customer’s text messages blocked,” said Linda McReynolds, an attorney for the telecom and tech sector and is Of Counsel to Marashlian and Donahue. In this podcast we learn how 10DLC holds the possibility of making long term, numbers that companies have held into renewed and trusted communications tools. Companies will be able to text customers and partners with these numbers, and recipients will be able to call or text back. However, in the name of restricting unwanted spam text messaging, U.S. wireless carriers are requiring businesses to register with The Campaign Registry. Carriers have committed to blocking text messages originating from businesses that are not registered or imposing steep fines for failure to register campaigns and associated numbers. We learn that getting number registered is not free. And we also learn that this all activity occurring in advance of full government regulatory oversight. The Campaign Registry is not a governmental organization; this is an industry-created organization established to vet business text message campaigns. Texting is central to the current era of communications and understanding 10DLC is a first step to success with this development. McReynolds will be participating in an upcoming Cloud Communications Alliance webinar on February 22.
Learn more about the Webinar Learn more about Marashlian and Donahue, The CommLaw Group https://commlawgroup.com/ Learn more about Linda G. McReynolds, Of Counsel
Linda McReynolds
According to Kevin Nethercott, Global VP Sales and Partner Engagement at Mavenir, the recent acquisition of Telestax has enabled Mavenir to go from offering solutions “by the tanker” to solutions “by the drip”. Two hundred and fifty of the world’s largest carriers utilize Mavenir’s gear. Something like 60% of the worlds text messages make their way each day through Mavenir. Now, with the Telestax acquisition, a company known for big scale carrier solutions is also in front of the community with scalable cloud solutions. “We have set up a contact center with over two hundred agents, in three nations… in under 36 hours,” says Tony Pereira, SVP of Enterprise Solutions Strategy and Partnerships. Pereira notes how cloud offers super efficiency, with customers buying what they need, avoiding costly and complex installations and launches, all delivered in an amount of time that was simply impossible outside of a cloud approach. Pereira adds that the CPaaS approach enables the channel to bring together texting and new approaches to the contact center, even while the contact center is a team of agents distributed over a vast area and across time zones. “We’re at a pivot point,” adds Pereira noting that only the cloud approach offers the channel to help their customers modernize, rethink, and recharge their contact centers and other communication tools. Today’s customer and worker have new expectations, and the new Mavenir, combining strengths in two markets, is offering their channel group new opportunities to reinvent what they mean to their customers.
Visit www.mavenir.com
When it comes to texting, few people have been more involved in helping make an evolving and critical technology in a high demand consumer favorite than Paul Ruppert. In this podcast Ruppert walks us through the evolution of text and the parallel evolution of platforms which together are driving changes to the way people and organizations communicate. To Ruppert, CPaaS can be seen as a platform of platforms, allowing for the “lashing” together of different approaches, brands, and technologies into a coherent set of options for individuals and companies. Ruppert tells us that industry estimates place the CPaaS market at over $8.8 billion. Even with that scale and maturity, the market is growing at 40%, stoked by Covid and a historic change in the way the world works. Ruppert offers a view of the medium and long term, connecting the opportunities available from 5G, AI and more. Part of Ruppert’s message is to not get lost in today’s successes while missing the emergence of new and powerful trends. Many channel companies might face a challenge. The revenue engine of today will not be the revenue engine of tomorrow, but that pivot is challenging.
Visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulruppertintl
Jim Tyrrell, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Transaction Network Services (TNS) describes it as perhaps one of the few issues that’s “…neither red state nor blue state.” Robocalling. Robotexting. Americans received 78.9 billion robocalls in 2021, up modestly from 77.2 billion in 2020 but still down considerably from pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to Transaction Network Services (TNS). TNS analyzes more than 1.6 billion daily call events across hundreds of carrier networks to identify emerging robocall trends and scams to produce the most authoritative source on robocall data. 2021 robocall volume was still far below 2019, when it reached 106.9 billion.
In this podcast, Tyrrell takes us through where we are with the effort to curb abuse and offers insights into the future. A major take-away in our discussion is the possibility that, as with email, while the issue of spam continues, mitigation works on a level that has preserved email’s viability. Real-time communications mitigation may in the medium and long term turn out a similar outcome.
TNS’ robocall data expert Tyrrell discusses some of the most compelling 2021 data narratives, including:
Americans aren’t feeling pandemic robocall drop. Despite robocall volume declining significantly since pre-pandemic levels, only 38% of Americans recently surveyed by TNS believe they have received fewer robocalls during the pandemic than before it. Tier 1 carriers stepped up in 2021. The top US carriers made significant progress with STIR/SHAKEN implementation and reducing robocalls last year. In fact, less than 5% of high-risk robocall activity originated on Tier-1 networks in 2021. VoIP is the new robocall battlefield. So where are the unwanted calls now coming from? VoIP providers, which now account for 68% of high-risk calls in 2021. Scammers didn’t stop for the 2021 holidays. The TNS survey found that 48% of Americans received one or more robocalls/robotexts this past Thanksgiving Day. Further, 45% of respondents believe they have been targeted by an Amazon online holiday purchase scam via robocall, robotext, email or weblink in the past.
Visit https://tnsi.com/
Neil Anderson, senior director of Network Solutions at World Wide Technology (WWT) speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about his insights into the channel and what customer needs reflect. Neil has over 30 years of experience in software development, wireless, and networking technologies so he is uniquely qualified and positioned to identify what is shaping up for the future. Topics cover:
Neil Anderson
Mobility - Wi-Fi 6 - 6G - private cellular networks like LTE Cloud Edge – Secure Access Secure Edge – security moved to the edge Infrastructure automation goes mainstream
With these trends in process, they will have an affect on the channel. Listen is to hear what needs to be done to stay ahead of the curve in SASE, SD-WAN, Wi-Fi 6 and more. Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) shared spectrum is also making serious strides in Campus/manufacturing type environments.
About: World Wide Technology (WWT) is a global technology solutions provider with $13.4 billion in annual revenue that combines the power of strategy, execution and partnership to accelerate transformational outcomes for large public and private organizations around the world. Through its Advanced Technology Center, a collaborative ecosystem of the world’s most advanced hardware and software solutions, WWT helps customers and partners conceptualize, test and validate innovative technology solutions for the best business outcomes and then deploys them at scale through its 4 million square feet of global warehousing, distribution and integration space. WWT has over 7,000 employees and more than 55 locations around the world. WWT works to bridge the gap between business and technology to make a new world happen for its customers, partners and communities.
For more information, go to: 4 SASE Use Cases or 5 Criteria for Evaluating SASE Solutions or Private 5G / LTE or Infrastructure Automation or https://www.wwt.com/
OneBill Software has added a newly enhanced shopping cart feature to its billing platform, a change that goes well beyond a method of gathering the parts of an order. Opaque billing, customer issues with not understanding an invoice for services, or worse, being surprised by unanticipated charges, fees, and taxes, has been a long-standing issue in telecom. Meanwhile, the virtual shopping cart became more and more a standard feature across many industries. Shopping carts automatically tally immediate and ongoing expenses, itemize services, and much more that gives the customer a complete view of billing. In this podcast JK Chelladurai, Founder & CEO of OneBill discusses this innovation and what it means to our industry. “It’s all about OneBill enabling the business growth of our customers,” says Chelladurai. “It’s a faster way of acquiring customers,” Chelladurai adds, noting how a shopping cart provides a simple place where a customer can add services, instantly know what the billing or cost impact will be and know exactly what’s being purchased. It also means the time to market, the time to revenue and the time to delivery are all sped up. The customer makes his choices, pays, or begins a recuring billing level, and then takes instant or near instant delivery of those new services. Many of the promises of the cloud being something new, are fulfilled. Chelladurai notes that people like to see the “…breakout, they want to see where these charges are coming from.” The newly enhanced shopping cart is a part of OneBill’s approach, where billing is more than administrative function, but a place to improve sales, customer satisfaction and revenue.
Visit www.onebillsoftware.com
“Operators need to be able to go wherever their customers are working,” says Micah Singer, Managing Director, TeamMate Technology, “… and TeamMate facilitates that.” TeamMate now sells through the Microsoft AppSource Marketplace. This co-sell ready status coupled with certified Microsoft SIP gateways puts TeamMate in exclusive company as a certified and integrated partner with Microsoft. It creates a trusted space, where partners can get the TeamMate solution quickly and easily. A free trial is instantly available from Microsoft’s marketplace to try out integration of an existing PBX to Microsoft Teams. Singer discusses how their availability on the AppSource Marketplace signals a practical milestone in simplifying how easy it becomes to try TeamMate technology. “You can try it before you buy it,” adds Singer noting that the marketplace offers a frictionless simple way to do a test drive, free of charge, and at a time and place of the customer’s or partner’s choosing.
Visit the Microsoft AppSource Marketplace
More at www.teammatetechnology.com
State of Video Conferencing Report by Dialpad surveys people in major industries and turns up surprise findings
Mondays are preferred. Not all video meetings demand video. People like to join meetings without having to download new apps. Real estate has embraced video conferencing. Marketing and advertising like to conference, a lot. These are among the interesting findings of a survey of the video conferencing market by Dialpad. In this podcast Grace Lau, Director of Growth Content at Dialpad discusses some of the very surprising findings of their recent polling of people in industries who have turned to conferencing as a basic communication and meeting tool. You might be thinking too many meetings are the number one complaint. Finding? Issues with bad audio and poor video, not to mention having to fumble around on a phone with an unfamiliar application, are often “bigger points of friction”. Lau takes us on a tour of these findings and then shares thoughts on how we in the UCaaS industry might improve.
See the report at https://www.dialpad.com/blog/video-conferencing-report/
Visit www.dialpad.com
‘We’ve become reliant on instant communication,” says Rusty Scioscia, product line manager at Eaton, noting how penetrated information systems have become in daily life. A vulnerability is power. In January, Eaton introduced its new 5PX G2 uninterruptible power supply (UPS), bringing enhanced connectivity and cybersecurity protection to its legacy backup power solution. In this podcast Scioscia talks about the product and the critical role of power management in providing continuous uptime for telcos, particularly those operating distributed or “edge” IT environments. He’ll provide insights into why enhanced connectivity is essential to enable integration with remote monitoring and management software, and why it’s essential that connected devices be designed with cybersecurity as a top consideration. Scioscia discusses real field applications of the product and explains the opportunities involved in talking to customers about this new product.
Visit www.eaton.com
Provisioning cloud-native direct routing services for Microsoft Teams with Automated Onboarding Workflow via Service Control
“Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft has a feature rich PBX,” says Dean Manzoori, Chief Technology Officer at UniVoIP “It is a good phone system,” Manzoori continues, asserting that the product’s evolution, combined with changes in the level of options for Teams users, all adds up to a powerful case to make Teams into the platform an organization should prefer to deliver real time communications. In this podcast, we learn how UniVoIP is making it easier for Teams users to adopt Teams for their voice or telephony needs. Manzoori discusses how his company simplifies the migration process and then continues to provide ease of use after adoption. We learn about this easier path and the opportunities that this simplification creates. “We help our customers in the on-boarding process,” adds Manzoori noting how his customers can leverage his company’s path, avoiding pitfalls, costly delays and expensive administrative time.
Visit www.univoip.com
“We came to solve the problem of B2B commerce,” says Eran Haggiag, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of ClearX. ClearX, is a blockchain-based clearing and settlement solution that allows for the most complex deals to be made and settles them automatically and securely, without the need for manual labor and mishandling information. ClearX works with many companies in the industry, including Vodafone, T-Mobile, HKT and more, and it strives to help businesses understand how digitizing contract settlements is not enough – but the process must be automated too. In this podcast Haggiag makes the case for blockchain. Haggiag tells us that from the first interactions of a customer where bids are being made to billing, blockchain creates efficiency, improves time to money and provides a better customer experience. “The customer experience is extremely improved,” says Haggiag who notes how the customer not only gets improved information and care, and at the same time the volume of emails and waiting time customers are used to in traditional ordering, is reduced. Companies can deal more confidently with a wider range of customers and buying and selling can occur much more efficiently, with improved confidence in all parties. We learn about ClearX’s approach to blockchain and how the company’s services compliment the type of services many in the telecom community now offer by selling cloud based services.
Visit www.clearx.io
Having extensive experience in the Telecom industry, Chris Felix explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News how he is already applying his years of channel experience to establish a more cohesive regionally based national team for the support of the channel and enterprise users. Ultimately, this will enable Kajeet to provide much more extensive support to the existing educational facilities as well as also providing for easier onboarding of educational facilities and enterprise in the future.
Chris Felix Kajeet’s premium wireless solutions and advanced cloud-based analytics platform enable them to be a value-add to their partners’ portfolios. For educational solutions, the WiFi in buses is a great example of significant enhancement to the student experience.
Listen in as Chris covers additional details of the Kajeet educational and channel strategy.
About: Kajeet provides optimized IoT connectivity, software and hardware solutions that deliver safe, reliable, and controlled internet connectivity to nearly 3,000 businesses, school districts, state, and local governments and IoT solution providers.
Kajeet is the only managed IoT connectivity services provider in the industry to offer a scalable IoT management platform, Sentinel®, that includes complete visibility into real-time data usage, policy control management, custom content filters for added security and multi-network flexibility.
Whether to empower companies to connect and control devices in the field, enable digital access that ensures student success or offer support and a platform to launch a complex mobile solution, Kajeet is trusted by many to make powerful and flexible wireless solutions easy. Kajeet is available for hybrid and multi-network access across all major North American wireless networks, globally in 173 other countries and on multiple licensed and unlicensed networks. Kajeet holds 40 U.S. patents in mobile technologies.
To learn more, visit www.kajeet.com and follow them on Twitter at @Kajeet.
UnitedCloud is dedicated to the channel and committed to providing the highest quality and best user experience possible for both the channel partner and their consumers.
Reo Harb Reo Harb, co-founder of UnitedCloud speaks with Don Witt, of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their solutions. They have evolved into a one stop shop for channel partners offering solution like:
- Business phone
- Microsoft Teams integration
- SIP trunks
- Contact Center
- Voice Analytics
- Mobile Softphones
- Fax solutions
- and more
Listen in as Reo discusses lead generation and how their partners benefit from their solutions. Also why being a Canadian company is important to their partners as well as about Canadian Channel Partners.
White Label Resellers: They assist you in setting up a profitable wholesale Everything-as-a-Service business. You own the client relationship fully. You pick the solutions you offer, sell and support. You set your own prices, contract terms, and receive all monies collected. Remit your wholesale costs with 30-50% gross margins. They provide Tier 2 and 3 implementation and technical support, as well as extensive backend sales and marketing resources to your team.
Agents: Do the things you like and leave the rest up to them! They provide end-client billing, accounting, Tier 1 to 3 technical support, white-glove remote implementation services and much more.
You receive generous one-time lump sum commissions as well as forever-residual commissions each and every month for the life of the client relationship.
See them at: Canadian Channel Partners Conference 2022 –
March 23 & 24, 2020 – Hybrid Event – Toronto, Canada + Virtual
https://canadianchannelpartners.com/
For more information, go to: https://www.unitedcloud.ca/
Today, ConnectMeVoice introduced its new Clarity™ open UCaaS platform and management portal to MSP (Managed Service Provider) partners. In this podcast Scott Seltzer discusses his company’s new proprietary platform which Seltzer describes as taking partner experiences and functionality to a new level. Seltzer, founder and CEO of ConnectMeVoice, describes a portal which brings many interactions together, simplifies processes and dramatically narrows user training. Experiences are more graphical, and easy to understand, while several business processes have been pulled together. The portal offers better insights and is custom made with the channel in mind helping ConnectMeVoice’s partners to improve their customer care, increase revenues through discovery of opportunity and narrow the time used on many interactions. Meanwhile the portal is brandable, reflecting ConnectMeVoice’s commitment to enabling white label services. Naming the platform as the ConnectMeVoice (CMV) Clarity portal reflects how ConnectMeVoice sees the future for their partner community. The commitment to clarity will be critical in enabling partners to remain as trusted advisors to their clients, even as technologies change.
Visit www.connectmevoice.com
What it means to be a Value-Added Distributor
“We really pride ourselves in being industry experts, solution engineers, for our partners,” says John Zador, Chief Revenue Officer at 888VoIP. “Our value-added services really focus on the partners,” adds Zador. 888VoIP was created from the ground up to offer a new generation of channel partner company, a new generation of products and services. Zador tells us that 888VoIP carefully curates their offerings as a value-added distributor to those products and services that will enable channels to stand out and, in turn, offer value and unique experiences their customers can’t find elsewhere. That means offering “best of breed” products. It also means showing up. The company, located in Buffalo, New York, a region known for its technology hub, has added a warehouse in Reno, NV, strategically located to serve the giant west coast and mountain region, and in a location that allows 888VoIP to leverage the Pacific Time shipping deadlines to enable east coast partners to obtain gear at an hour many other sources might be done for the day, or weather impacted. 888VoIP’s commitment to offering partners a qualitative edge, extends to both the new hybrid Work-From-Anywhere market and helping partners identify new opportunities in the on-prem world as well. We learn how 888VoIP is helping partners customize the now critical headset business, as the headset becomes a central piece of gear in a workforce that moves between home and office, seamlessly. We also hear how 888VoIP is helping partners to recognize opportunity on customer sites with security updates and refreshed gear, that will give customers more security without necessarily committing more labor.
Visit www.888voip.com
“We’re always looking for laptops”
“I’ve never had a laptop.” Those were the words of a fellow parent at a high school sports event that startled Sarah Damaskos, Marketing Strategist at Guardian Data Destruction. With those words, Damaskos swung into action, co-founding Laptop Upcycle, an organization that sources out typically out of use laptops, sees through a complete recommissioning, including a proper data wiping process, and then individually gets these machines into the hands of students. The organization also makes sure that students can maintain their machines. Linux is part of a larger picture that thoughtfully keeps the machines truly “free”, never obliging students or parents to have to commit to fees, subscriptions and so on.
In an era where high school students need a laptop to do everything from homework assignments, writing papers, math to access to source materials, many students are left trying to perform these tasks on a phone. In this podcast we learn that the special program goes beyond narrow IT issues to address hum barriers to technology acquisition, making sure that student and parent understand the laptops are simply tools to help the students reach their goals. Damaskos outlines how TR readers, ASCDI members and the whole IT community, both as individuals and as industry leaders, can help match up technology that’s literally sitting in a closet, a garage or storage, into a working asset in a student’s education.
“We’re always looking for laptops,” says Damaskos. “If you can’t fit it into a box, we’ll accept a pallet.”
Visit https://www.laptopupcycle.org/ to learn more about this charity
Visit https://guardiandatadestruction.com/ to learn more about Guardia Data Destruction
Poly UC Strategy and Research Sees Workforce and Workplace Trends as Lasting and Profound
“Now is the time to ‘up-level’ says David Danto, Director of UC Strategy and Research at Poly. Danto is one of the industry’s trusted leaders when it comes to understanding how long-term trends impact near term needs. In this podcast we hear about a wide range of critical shifts in both the workforce and the workplace, that IT decision makers need to understand. Danto explains that work is becoming what people do more than it’s a place to go. “Work is what you do,” says Danto. He sees that change of how we look at work impacting both workers who have the flexibility in their occupation, to work from anywhere, and workers whose tasks must be carried out at a specific physical location. Instead of waiting to see what comes next in the pandemic, Danto urges listeners to recognize how the future has already arrived and to begin to plan to meet the IT needs of a workplace that might have devolved from some or all the place in workplace and a new, refreshed, and empowered workforce that expect equity and access, and who welcome technology as a tool for better experiences. “The purpose of the office has changed from being a place of individual work to being a place of group work,” says Danto. Danto predicts that this change will “cascade” into a more equitable experience. Technology will play a major role, meaning an era of change, opportunity and maybe, new beginnings.
Visit https://www.poly.com/us/en
Can you imagine if places that were impossible to connect could be fully networked? What if you could bring computing power to your employee’s fingertips, equipment and assets, no matter how inaccessible your business site? That’s where Mobile Private Networks (MPN) are unlocking new possibilities for next-generation businesses.
The interest in MPN has and will continue to increase as organizations seek a combination of real-time control, deterministic performance and security across complex sites, or where public network infrastructure is limited. In this episode, Vodafone US CEO David Joosten discusses Vodafone Business’ work with MPN, why it matters, its benefits, challenges, and how MPN is transforming business. We explore Vodafone’s application of MPN across a variety of industries, including automotive, healthcare and manufacturing.
Vodafone is the largest mobile and fixed network operator in Europe and a leading global IoT connectivity provider. The company operates mobile and fixed networks in 21 countries and partners with mobile networks in 52 more.
For more information, visit www.vodafone.com/business, follow Vodafone on Twitter at @VodafoneBiz or connect on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/vodafone-business.
With a $50 million dollar investment in the bank, 1NCE looks to:
Open a direct market in the USA Expansion of the European market Establish the Go To market in Asia
Ivo Rook
Ivo Rook, COO at 1NCE explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about 1NCE future features:
More capabilities for sensors deployed Energy Saving software Authentication Software Localization Services
Listen in as Ivo discusses how they will provide IoT connectivity for $1 per year. He goes on to categorize the types of IoT devices and 1NCE plans to provide network localization with low latency and high bandwidth.
1NCE is the global Tier-1 IoT Carrier specialized in providing managed connectivity services for low bandwidth IoT applications such as Asset Tracking, Tank Monitoring, Vehicle Telematics, Smart Metering and Waste Management.
1NCE cooperates with the leading operators in order to guarantee Tier-1 carrier grade connectivity services across Europe as well as in North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
1NCE has a team of over 100 employees in 9 countries all over the world and is headquartered in Cologne, Germany, where it was founded in 2017.
For more information, go to: https://1nce.com/en
Every day we are hearing of different DDoS attacks on Telcos, Enterprise, Health care and others which are sometimes for ransom. Forty percent of DDoS were against Telcos in the 3rd quarter in 2021. If you find yourself in this situation, you can turn to Ribbon for help.
Dan Teichman
Dan Teichman, Director of Solutions Marketing for Ribbon Communications speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the increase in the attacks. What are the DDoS trends?
Smaller packet size - driving higher packet rates overwhelming systems Adaptive - based on response – they will morph – and morph again Multi layered - attacks on IP and Application layer at once, as an example Coordinated - multiple attacks on multiple targets at the same time
All is not lost, there are many things that you can do to improve your defenses against the DDoS attacks without spending a fortune. Listen in as Dan will provide a list that can help you fight against the next wave of attacks.
About: Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN) delivers communications software, IP and optical networking solutions to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors globally. They engage deeply with their customers, helping them modernize their networks for improved competitive positioning and business outcomes in today's smart, always-on and data-hungry world. Their innovative, end-to-end solutions portfolio delivers unparalleled scale, performance, and agility, including core to edge software-centric solutions, cloud-native offers, leading-edge security and analytics tools, along with IP and optical networking solutions for 5G.
For more information, go to: https://ribboncommunications.com
Mike Mulica, Chief Executive Officer at Alef, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the race to the edge and the Alef advantages. With technology that has been in the works for some time, Alef is rolling out their technology and building a strong channel of Velocity Partners including Resellers, Integrators and Global Integrators.
Mike Mulica
The Alef API allows for rapid integration and deployment of their technology which utilizes the CBRS shared service band recently made available from the military. With the integration, enterprise can build their own private network eliminating significant costs of a traditional communications network.
Listen in as Mike provides a very good overview of the Alef solution.
About: Alef is a global edge connectivity platform company
that empowers enterprises and developers to rapidly launch their own private networks and develop innovative mobile applications through their flagship Private Edge Platform.
At Alef, they simplify the complexity of 5G and edge computing
through a suite of APIs and tools that allow for more control and security with less overhead, while operating at a fraction of the cost of legacy mobile network providers.
Leading systems integrators, distributors, and technology partners trust them
to help power the edge economy and enable companies and communities to connect with a purpose.
For more information, go to www.alefedge.com, call +1 (973) 532-6530 or visit @alefedgeNYC.
With the power given back to the consumer, the ISP now has the capability to identify the source of problems on the internet for Web Application outages. This was the case with the recent Facebook outage.
Amir Kotler
Amir Kotler, CEO and Co-Founder provides some insight to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the upcoming years and the Veego growth.
Lastly, as we enter 2022, Amir highlights future innovations that Veego will be introducing, especially to improve the customer experience.
About: ISPs may be responsible for the connection package, but when it comes to knowing the frequency, habits, and profile of the home users, they are largely in the dark.
Every home has its own fingerprint in terms of the individual user profile, internet usage in terms of device and app consumption.
Using their proprietary technology with a combination of app ID, device fingerprinting and Quality of Experience (QoE) scoring, they provide essential data-driven insights into the quality of their connected home experience and customer journey. Their hardcore expertise is their ability to identify apps, classify them, categorize them and provide a performance score, giving operators crucial knowledge to keep their subscribers happy.
For more information, go to: https://veego.io/
Veego enables the consumer to monitor the quality of service being provided from the service provider and all of the equipment connected to the network. Amir Kotler, CEO and Co-Founder goes into great detail on the process and provides some very interesting insights to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
Amir Kotler
Listen in as Amir covers some of the Veego technology advancements over the last year. He also addresses the current state of the ISP and MSP and how his software will have a major impact on providers in the future. It is technology that is a must for both the provider and the user.
About: They are a cutting-edge SaaS based AI tech that classifies the apps and devices running in the home to provide real-time insights about customer quality of experience.
They perfect the internet experience in millions of homes They enhance the quality of experience in the connected home They utilize data to generate insights for internet operators so they can enable perfect user experiences They connect data for connected user experiences
For more information, go to: https://veego.io/
TorchLight has some outstanding security products that enable enterprise organizations to breathe easy during pandemic remote worker network expansion. Bo Wheeler, Chief Revenue Officer of TorchLight speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about their technology which includes Managed Security Services, Professional Security Services, and Security Hardware and Software.
Bo Wheeler
There are numerous components to each and Bo touches on a number of the key elements. The Ransomware Defense Architecture, Incident Response & Forensics and Vulnerability Management are a few that caught my attention. Listen in as Bo speaks about a company where he really enjoys working.
About: In business, cybersecurity has to do more than just keep up with your IT. It must lead.
The company designs and manages cybersecurity to defend against business risks. TorchLight is a complete security solution provider (CSSP), offering cybersecurity consulting, VAR and MSSP services. Torchlight offers managed detection and response (MDR) and ransomware detection, services providing 24/7 cyber risk management to ensure no business is left in the dark.
At TorchLight, they design, manage, and optimize cybersecurity to bring every new opportunity to light.
For more information, go to: https://torchlight.io/
To JK Chelladurai, Founder & CEO of OneBill Software, billing is much more than an administrative function. In this podcast we learn that billing can be a creative operation that can drive sales, grow revenue, improve customer-care and lower customer churn. JK says that billing should be thought of as a revenue management platform and that this platform should be doing several things that are well beyond mailing a lonely monthly statement. JK points out that a good revenue management platform provides welcome communication with the customer, improves customer loyalty by leveraging the billing point of contact as a regular way to create value for the customer and a place for the customer to remain up to date on products and services. We also learn that an old-fashioned paper invoice can be surprisingly expensive. Costs rise when we consider how much time a company’s contact center is spending on inbound calls regarding billing. Not only does a better billing platform identify new opportunities, but the platform also helps make proposals match promised and delivered services. The customer sees that what he was expecting is being delivered and that what was proposed as cost is exactly what’s being invoiced. That type of tight integration creates customer loyalty, brand integrity, lowers expensive customer complaints and opens the door to doing more. JK gives an overview of the OneBill approach, with includes real time reporting of trends and emerging issues. Good billing means growth and simply better management.
Visit www.onebillsoftware.com
Glen Brynteson, Board President of Train Our Troops spoke to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, at the recent Channel Partners and discussed their operation. Being a Marine, it was easy to recognize the great service that this 501-c3 is providing to the military community.
Glen Brynteson
They are helping train discharged military for civilian careers. Many of these careers are communications, networking, security, and logistics in nature. They are precisely the specialties that companies across the country and around the world are searching for to add to their own companies.
Listen is as Glen describes this awesome program. Better yet, donate to their program. You cannot get more value for your dollar than giving someone a lifelong career. Supporting Organizations
About: To honor and empower U.S. veterans, and their spouses, by providing career assessments, online and in-person training and certification, and interview preparation.
The vision of TrainOurTroops is to provide each U.S. veteran, and their spouse, with skill sets that will enable them competitive advantages in the crowded marketplace, whether they want to start a brand-new career, or simply add additional skill sets to their existing resume of experience to make themselves more valuable.
Their purpose:
To provide valuable online training and certification for the most relevant business solutions that are in-demand by organizations To prepare each veteran for the actual job interviewing process To provide a higher quality of life for U.S. veterans, and their spouses, by training and preparing them for higher quality positions within organizations To raise awareness of U.S. veterans and enlist the public's aid for employment in our various campaigns
For more information, go to: https://trainourtroops.org/
Fusion Connect is a leading-edge managed service provider for SD-WAN, Unified Threat Management and secured networks while delivering connectivity and business voice to large multi-location enterprise.
Rick Ribas, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News about his new challenge and frictionless goals with FC and their large enterprise clients. It is all about the experience and at FC, account managers are assigned to large orders as they are received at the company. The account manager provides all the inside work with a company team to keep the enterprise informed and up to date while he shepherds the order through the internal and installation process providing a frictionless experience for the large enterprise consumer.
Rick Ribas
FC has a, just make it happen the correct way to maintain the customer service at the highest possible quality, – company attitude. This is a key differentiator for the company and is backed up by their new service guarantee. Listen in as this 30-year channel veteran applies his experience on his new job at Fusion Connect.
About: Fusion Connect manages, orchestrates, and secures the critical internet technology that keeps your business connected. Whether your business has multiple office locations or virtual remote teams, Fusion Connect tailors their secure cloud communication, collaboration, security, and network management platforms to meet your unique business needs. Their AI-based management systems, along with their highly skilled technicians, ensure world-class application performance under any conditions.
For more information, go to: www.fusionconnect.com or call them at 866-829-4318.
Deployments of private networks are on the rise. Earlier this month, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), announced AWS Private 5G, a new managed service that makes it easier for enterprises to set up and scale private 5G mobile networks in their facilities in days instead of months. Bejoy Pankajakshan, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Mavenir, offers his perspective on the AWS Private 5G announcement and the impact on 5G in this podcast. Pankajakshan discusses Mavenir’s own private 5G solutions, as well as Mavenir’s recent announcement with NVIDIA around AI technology for 5G that provides additional open software solutions for private network deployments. Pankajakshan goes on to explore the role of Open RAN, packet-core and more—as well as why Mavenir’s ability to run software on virtually any cloud, supporting “any generation” technology, is so important.
Visit www.mavenir.com
Last week, D&H announced it is expanding its peer-to-peer partner engagement community offerings, creating a comprehensive partner organization called “D&H Partnerfi.” The Partnerfi Community will receive exclusive advantages such as an enhanced “SuccessPath Premier” enablement program, D&H discounts and incentives, access to subject-matter experts and keynote panelists from the field, exclusive member pricing on D&H services, enhanced credit offerings, best practices development, leadership development, peer networking opportunities, and more. In this podcast, Jason Bystrak, D&H’s VP of Cloud and Services, joins us and tells us about the program. The program will consist of two networks: an education network comprised of partners primarily selling into the K-12 vertical, and a “Core” network comprised of a combination of D&H’s more traditional VAR and MSP partners.
“We wanted to invest in our partners and help them understand market opportunities," says Bystrak. In the podcast Bystrak outlines how D&H is moving to make the partner experience more customized and to offer partners very practical tools from enhancing their ability to market and sell, to access to credit in an industry that Bystrak describes as, “cash is king”. There will be specific help available to make it easier to transition to cloud and collaboration sales, and the program aims to help people as they sell into a business community that’s changing the way and where, work occurs. Bystrak explains how the two networks, education and a “core” network, will operate and how the core program is designed to help partners form more of a community, and increase the space where they share information and ideas. In a new year, that might be one day seen as the first year of a new communications era, Bystrak reports that D&H is investing in its partners to realize growth and opportunity.
Visit www.dandh.com.
With a portfolio of over 2,000 large enterprise accounts, Fuze is in the middle of the digitization of the corporate global world. Chris Jones, Chief Revenue Officer at Fuze describes their response to the demands placed on telecommunications and collaboration from enterprise to accommodate the realigned hybrid work force. This included expansion of the security provided.
Chris Jones
Chris goes on the tell Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication that there has been an accelerated move to the cloud providing more flexibility and reduction cost.
Communications today needs to be integrated into the business echo system no mater what the industry. Whether one is talking about health care, manufacturing, finance or others, the communication system and collaboration technology needs to be tied to their internal operational applications. The CRM or contact center and other integrations are key to successful relationship with enterprise. Listen in as those key points are discussed.
About: At Fuze, they’re obsessed with the future of work and what is to come over the next decade. Technology is generating significant opportunities for the modern workforce and enterprises alike. Workers are demanding that the technology they use at work match what they use in their personal lives, with greater flexibility on where, when, and how they work.
That’s where Fuze fits in. They believe that when you change the way people communicate in the workplace, people can do their best work. They’re in the business to help enterprises become more productive and collaborative, no matter where their workers are based. After all, when communication and collaboration is easy, you can let work flow.
For more information, go to: https://www.fuze.com/
According to Shashi Kiran, CMO of Aryaka, new opportunities and new ideas are in the offing of 2022. In this podcast, we review two recent announcements from Aryaka. Recently, the company launched All-in-One” SD-WAN and SASE offerings for the cloud, first enterprise and hybrid workplace deployments and upped their game in their partner program. “We’ve always been this premier player for managed SD-WAN,” says Kiran. “What we have now brought about is a new Layer-3 private core, that sits in the same architecture, not like traditional telcos…”. Kiran showcases Aryaka FlexCore which allows customers to map their sites to the private core of choice, based on performance or cost considerations, as well as criticality of sites and applications. Kiran also tells us about AppAssure™, a software capability that delivers deep deterministic visibility, observability, and control to 3500+ applications. FlexCore and AppAssure are available at no additional cost to customers. Aryaka Prime EZ, Aryaka SmartConnect Pro, and Aryaka SmartConnect EZ are among the announced news offerings. We also hear about Aryaka’s new streamlined partner program. Enterprise or channel partner, this podcast offers some interesting ideas for 2022.
Visit www.aryaka.com
If there’s one giant trend in our market, it must be the migration to Teams. In this podcast we explore one big question with Micah Singer, Managing Director of TeamMate: how to succeed with Teams. Enterprise, MSP or channel, we discuss how to make Teams a successful part of the picture in the new year. Singer outlines how his company is helping people make Teams work, while holding on to the original functionality of their complex PBX, or offering their customers those same options, while integrating with Teams and going well beyond. “It seems like there’s a ton of demand,” says Singer, reflecting on seeing demand from both large and modest size organizations. “Our special sauce is that we sell through channels, so we sell through service providers and service providers each have their own take on what they want to do, what they want to sell… so that requires customization.” We learn how TeamMate helps their customers offer a differentiated brand and service by delivering very customized features and functionality to their respective Teams using customers. “We’re focused on user experience and we want service providers to have a good product to put in front of their users,” adds Singer.
Visit https://www.teammatetechnology.com/
Everyone in the industry knows the answer to the question is not “if the network will go down,” but “when will the network go down.” Just like the pandemic, you must prepare for the worst-case scenario.
Bryan Keepers (Opengear Director of Channel Sales Americas) and Todd Rychecky (Opengear Vice President Sales Americas) speak with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their support of the channel and how they make it very easy for partners to earn money with Opengear.
Todd Rychecky
Bryan Keepers
Todd Rychecky sums up Opengears positioning for their products and the Resilient network requirement as "if there is no network – there is no business.” How true. Many organizations moving to the cloud overlook the additional requirement to make sure they can provide the same access to the remote networks as they could on their internal local network which also needs the out-of-band access.
Bryan Keepers, delves into the channel and how they work closely with their partners. Once an attendee at Channel Partners sees what Opengear technology can do, Opengear becomes an immediate must have for their future installations and also for all past installations.
Opengear brings network resilience to IT organizations, ensuring business continuity through Smart Out-of-Band management solutions. Over their fifteen-year history, they have led the evolution from simple terminal servers to complex console servers with the development of centralized management software, embedded 4G-LTE cellular access and NetOps-ready appliances.
Opengear helps you to manage, monitor and remediate your network remotely, even when the primary network is down, or the production network is too congested to respond. Their network resilience platform provides an independent management network, giving you secure access to provision, configure and troubleshoot critical IT infrastructure without sending someone to site – minimizing downtime, protecting SLAs, and saving you money.
Innovations include the NetOps Console Server, the only appliance that combines Out-of-Band management and Network Automation in a single unit, using open architecture tools.
For more information, go to: https://opengear.com/
A recent Hakkoda report indicates that data sprawl is a “compounding and costly issue” that’s “likely to worsen with today’s proliferation of tools and scarcity of talent.” These findings certainly aren’t surprising; the more tools that are needed to support virtual work environments, the more data there is to process and analyze. So how can business leaders consolidate the data they need to make better decisions for their organization? Karen Litz, Director of Product and Compliance for Product Development at Tangoe, says holistic reporting is the key. Litz helped spearhead Unified Analytics for Tangoe One, an application that provides a bird’s-eye view of telecom, mobile, and cloud expenses and inventory - all the information required today to make the right decisions tomorrow.
Visit www.tangoe.com
There has been a lot of Inteliquent news activity recently with their voice services now being offered through the channel to enterprise and SMBs. Dave Pruse, Sr. Dir. Enhanced Services at Inteliquent speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about the real opportunity for VARs, MSPs and resellers to join the Inteliquent Channel. Partners program. While they have historically been wholesaleing, a year and a half ago they started their voice service to enterprise and SMBs.
Dave Pruse
Dave also provided some statistics which were very impressive. Twenty- eight billion minutes of service is provided each month to 110 phone numbers. Impressive!
Lastly, things are getting cozy with Sinch based in Stockholm, Sweden as the move forward with acquisition plans. Listen in for more details.
They empower communications to make you successful with the best people delivering the best service over the best network. Their expansive tier 1 network is the highest quality and the largest independent communications platform in the U.S.
The breadth and scope of their communication services gives you endless capabilities to grow with flexibility to meet evolving needs. Their deeply interconnected carrier-grade tier 1 network is fully redundant and geo-diverse to guarantee the highest quality available for your communications services. Everyone on their team is dedicated to providing you the best possible service and support so you’re successful. They’re there to help you.
For more information, go to: https://www.inteliquent.com/
“We are a scrappy, agile company that is quick to iterate,” says Daniel Rosenrauch, Chief Executive Officer of Viirtue. “Viirtue was founded upon this premise of advocating for the channel partner - so while other vendors continue to disable the channel, we are continuing to invent new ways to enable partners to not only compete with the big players, but to consistently win that business,” says Rosenrauch. In this podcast, we take in an eventful year where Viirtue launched full workflow integration with both QuickBooks and ConnectWise. “We now have billing integration with popular white label eFax vendor DoCoMo coming this month,” adds Rosenrauch. We learn how tight these integrations are and how users are reporting ease of use. “I think new users to Viibe will be impressed with how intuitive and simple the integration is to setup.” Looking into 2022, Rosenrauch tells us that more innovation is to come and that the fast-growing company is adding team members.
Visit www.viirtue.com
Data centers and the expression, a people business, usually do not appear in the same sentence. Digital Fortress, a regional data center company has expanded into national and international markets by taking the personal approach, valuing small and large customers alike. In this podcast, Digital Fortress Chief Sales Officer, Jhoan Checo, Chanel Chief, Stephen Verp and Sales Operations Manager, John Filippone, discuss a year of expansion and change, fueled by a one customer at a time level of engagement. We learn that on the technology side, Digital Fortress has been adding offerings so that customers can find what they need, all in one place. We also learn that a data center business values personal relationships. The company works closely with customers and channel partners of all sizes and strives to prioritize based on needs, verse scale of engagement. As the company grows, Digital Fortress has also developed a diversified workforce, with many people bringing with them a perspective and a point of view as varied as the markets Digital Fortress has been entering. Fresh off a successful Channel Partner event, the firm looks to continue to expand with a balance of competitive offerings and customized services.
Visit www.dfcolo.com
Wildix is 100% committed to the Channel. They are looking for traditional VARs, Systems Integrators and Resellers that take pride in the telephony sale while also installing the system for their customer adding value to the total solution.
Robert Cooper
Robert Cooper, Managing Director of Wildix, talks about Wildix and the new billing system launched at Channel Partners. It allows the Channel Partners to have more direct control over their pricing and client ownership. Using the billing system will also allow partners to provide monthly updates on their service to their clients. Lastly, the Wildix solution is secure starting with its original design and allows the user to access the system form anywhere with any device.
Check out their website, they have a boat load of supporting applications.
Wildix doesn’t work with distributors, but rather with a network of certified regional business partners.
That’s because the value of the product is fed by the professionalism of our selected installers, who help the customer in the growth of their business.
Wildix brings value to companies around the world, with offices in Europe and the United States. The Center for Research and Development in Odessa, Ukraine has been in operation since 2007, deploying and supporting products.
All the functionalities that offices require, integrated with company software through custom-designed cloud solutions based on WebRTC technology and clear, transparent contracts.
Only Wildix helps companies grow with 100% secure products that put the latest technology at their service.
For more information, go to: https://www.wildix.com/
Created from the acquisition of AT&T phone switching facilities, Evoque has created a modern state of the art 21st century global data center matrix that can service the largest enterprises in the world. Monica Walton, Vice President of Channel Sales at Evoque Data Center Solutions speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their enterprise ready infrastructure facilities.
Monica Walton
Leverage Evoque’s seamless mix of colocation, interconnection, and cloud expertise to reduce costs and liberate workloads from lock-in. Companies and technology like Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, AWS, Salesforce and Oracle are supported.
Targeting Infrastructure Resellers and Brokers, Evoque has implemented a new partner bonus program. Listen in to the podcast and hear Monica describe their program in more detail ass well as their Foghorn support staff that can help you design the best infrastructure solution for your organization.
Evoque empowers forward-thinking IT executives to create and implement a Multi-Generational Infrastructure™ (MGI) strategy to future protect and optimize their workload deployments. Evoque is on a mission to take your multi-generational infrastructure strategy to the next level through operational experience, smart interconnectivity, and constant innovation. The priorities that drive our operating practices
Technology innovations, expanding markets, and the 24-hour nature of business add complexity to modern processes. At Evoque, relationships remain at the heart of good business practices.
For more information, go to: https://www.evoquedcs.com/
LogMeIn energizes their Channel with new Partner Program. Patrick McCue, Global Channel Vice President at LogMeIn discusses the features and benefits of the program with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication. With the addition of tiering, partners are now able to earn more benefits for the sales such as:
More investments More rebates More MDF
Patrick McCue
Additionally, instead of reselling one or two items from LogMeIn, Partners are new eligible to sell the entire portfolio of products which currently includes 11 products, many of which are the leaders in their product class.
Listen in on Patrick as he provides more insight into the LogMeIn Channel Partner program and the Resource Center.
In 2003, LogMeIn began pioneering remote work technology. Their mission was to help people and businesses do their best work, simply and securely—on any device, from any location, and at any time.
Powered by category-defining products like GoTo, LastPass, Rescue, Central and more, LogMeIn has become one of the world’s largest SaaS companies with tens of millions of active users, more than 3,500 global employees, over $1.3 billion in annual revenue and approximately 2 million customers in over 190 countries.
For more information, go to: https://www.logmein.com/
Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams delivers PSTN voice access to Teams users to deliver an enhanced customer experience. In addition, Operator Connect improves integration between networks streamlining provisioning and management of users and enhanced support models that will augment the quality of service.
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, CallTower has been voice enabling Microsoft 365 solutions for years. With the addition of Operator Connect, CallTower is in a unique position in the marketplace with three Teams voice enablement solutions to enhance productivity and efficiency for customers: Direct Routing and Operator Connect for Teams, and within Microsoft 365 GCC High.
William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer for CallTower says, “With us (CallTower), we are native.” Rubio points out that CallTower is only one of ten companies to be chosen as a core provider to Teams. When customers make changes in Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams, and with CallTower, they are making those changes at a level not available from many other sources. Rubio explains that with CallTower’s Teams offering, users gain more control, speed as well as a more straightforward approach. Rubio makes the case that leveraging CallTower’s approach to Teams simply is a stronger path than direct routing.
Visit www.calltower.com
Launched in July, the partner program has already assembled over 500 Managed Service Providers, System Integrators and a range of additional partners. Jason Beal, SVP Global Channel and Partner Ecosystems at AvePoint speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their success thus far. It took about a year to prepare for the launch including reorganizing sales and the go to market strategy.
Jason Beal
In addition to launching the channel, they have expanded the sales and technical support operations around the world. Investments have been made in partner and Distribution marketing. Listen in for more information on their aggressive channel effort.
A five-time winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award, AvePoint offers the only full suite of SaaS solutions to migrate, manage and protect data in Microsoft 365. More than 8 million cloud users rely on their solutions to make organizations more productive, compliant, and secure.
Their SaaS solutions are also available to managed service providers, so they can better support and manage their small and mid-sized business customers. Their multi-tenant solutions are available from over a dozen distributors in more than 100 cloud marketplaces worldwide.
AvePoint, Inc. is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey and maintains its primary operations center in Richmond, Virginia. AvePoint has approximately 1,500 employees located in 14 countries.
For more information, go to: https://www.avepoint.com/
AI has not been seen as the agent’s friend. Historically, agents have viewed AI as another intrusive technology that might compete with humans for needed work, and possibly make conditions in contact centers worse by alienating inbound customers before they ever have a chance to talk to a live person. In this podcast, Jason Roos, CEO and founder of Cirrus, reveals research that shows that the way we think about AI might be changing. Now, AI is being seen by a surprising 94% of agents as a means of avoiding repetitive tasks, saving their time for higher level work. In the new world of the Great Resignation, AI might hold a path to lessening fatiguing days filled with calls from irritated customers. Roos discusses the possibilities and opportunities to create a needed and welcome change.
Visit https://www.cirrusresponse.com/
Kajeet, true to their mission, provides secure safe wireless internet access to schools and universities as well as apply the same technology to enterprise. Anthony Shimkin, SVP of Marketing for Kajeet, speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication about their unique approach as a Managed Service Provider.
Anthony Shimkin
Kajeet IoT Concierge service offers:
Device sourcing and procurement Service provisioning and hardware configuration Onboarding and implementation Managed and professional services Ongoing technical support
In 2003, a group of Dads started Kajeet to make mobile services safer for kids. Today, educators, administrators, and organizations from startups to Fortune 500 companies turn to Kajeet to connect, control, and deploy their wireless solutions quickly and easily. Whether it’s enabling digital access to ensure students’ success, empowering companies to connect and manage devices in the field, or offering the support and platform needed to launch a mobile solution, Kajeet makes powerful wireless solutions easy.
Kajeet is available across all the major North American wireless networks and globally in 24 other countries. Headquartered in McLean, VA, Kajeet has regional offices in 11 cities across the U.S.
View their Patents page.
For more information, go to: https://www.kajeet.net/
Industry veteran and next-gen communications expert Scott Wharton has joined Alianza’s Board of Directors. Wharton, who serves as Vice President and General Manager of Logitech’s Video Collaboration Group, brings more than two decades of leadership experience driving and managing rapid and substantial growth at leading-edge communications technology companies. Scott’s rare combination of communications market expertise and real-world experience, combined with his successful development and growth of next-gen communications technologies, make him an ideal match for Alianza’s Board of Directors.
In this podcast, hear from Scott and Alianza CEO, Brian Beutler, on the evolution of cloud communication platforms, Alianza’s contribution to the market, and how Scott’s role will contribute to the next chapter of Alianza.
Visit www.alianza.com
Fresh from a very successful Channel Partner Conference, Paul Redding, VP Partner Engagement & Cybersecurity at Compliancy Group, thinks that HIPAA, or rather, being able to master HIPAA’s regulatory structure, is a key opportunity as well as a must-do thing for 2022. “Eventually all of the MSPs are going to have to achieve some form of regulatory compliance,” says Redding. Achieving that now means creating a differentiator to thrive and grow. Redding points out that healthcare is our largest industry, and it might already involve customers MSPs did not see as being connected to HIPAA. In this podcast, Redding opens the door to making this an achievable thing in the new year. Redding also urges the channel community to take a bigger view of the landscape. If many parts of the US economy have been shown to be vulnerable in recent times, then reaching out to customers to button down those security issues can be a place to begin productive conversations in the new year. Redding believes this is the moment to act.
Visit https://compliancy-group.com/
Avant has been leading the channel with its partner relationships and the tools that help their partners succeed. Their Trusted Advisor Academy and certification courses, Pathfinder, demo sites and other tools provide for a better experience, a well trained channel, shorter sales cycles and faster growth.
Jen Greco
In an effort to keep Avant growth moving fast, while expanding the partner channel , Jen Greco was brought on board to provide a new channel marketing promotional vision. Having been Vice President of Marketing at Avant for 10 months, Jen Greco speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, and provides some insight into Avant future marketing programs and activities.
The velocity of innovation in technology today is driving an equally rapid evolution of the IT marketplace. More and more, IT departments are relying on Trusted Advisors to help them manage change and plan for the future. Their mission is to build a platform that navigates the relentless pace of change for Trusted Advisors and their Enterprise customers, enabling business transformation. They power you forward.
Trusted Advisors are a growing breed of IT professional services providers that act as an extension of an Enterprise’s IT staff. They add experience, expertise, and value to your IT projects. Avant has assembled a distribution ecosystem for Trusted Advisors to leverage including:
Market-leading service providers Technology solutions Tools Resource
For more information, go to : https://goavant.net/
Incentive Solutions, a channel incentives and technology leader, partnered with Channeltivity, a partner relationship management solution provider, to drive expanded services and enhance the customer experience. Connecting solutions from the two organizations delivers a smoother, more comprehensive user experience for clients looking to manage their partner relationships and incentivize their channel partners through rewards programs. The combination of incentive programs and partner relationship management (PRM) can create powerful sales incentive programs.
About the Speakers: Mark Herbert, CEO of Incentive Solutions, and Jason Jacobs, CEO of Channeltivity, speak with Telecom Reseller’s Doug Green on how this partnership provides a streamlined solution for the channel and explain how incentive programs and PRM solutions work together to stimulate sales activity for business in the channel. Herbert and Jacobs dig into the role of incentive programs in sales and provide recommendation on the upcoming 2022 trends in the channel partner marketing space.
Learn more about Incentive Solutions at: https://www.incentivesolutions.com/
Learn more about Channeltivity at: https://www.channeltivity.com/
Federated Wireless has been in the forefront of the Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) movement since 2012. They have led the formation of standards and development of required equipment for deployment of the edge technology.
They were the first to install the ESC network in the continental U.S. They leveraged their experience in the U.S. to start deploying networks in other parts of the world and most recently, Puerto Rico.
Becky Bobzien-Simms
Becky Bobzien-Simms, SVP of Operations at Federated Wireless discusses with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication , the recent deployment and how it was accelerated taking just 6 months from start to finish. Along with other companies and countries, Puerto Rico was looking for low latency, uncongested networks that can easily deploy, are cost effective and efficient. Listen in to the energetic uplifting discussion.
Founded in 2012, Federated Wireless has long led the industry in development of shared spectrum CBRS capabilities, taking a lead role in the formation of the CBRS Alliance, being the first to complete a wide range of trials with its Spectrum Controller, and deploying the industry’s first nationwide ESC network. The company’s partner ecosystem includes more than 40 device manufacturers and edge partners, all of which are dedicated to collaboration to advance development and proliferation of CBRS services. Federated Wireless’ customer base includes companies spanning the telecommunications, energy, hospitality, education, retail, office space, municipal and residential verticals, with use cases ranging from network densification and mobile offload to Private LTE and Industrial IoT.
For more information, go to: https://www.federatedwireless.com/
ZiftONE is perfect for a start-up, SMB, or Enterprise. If you need a channel for your companies sales, this package will help you enter, market, partner, accelerate and monitor your progress. Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer at ZiftSolutions, provides an enthusiastic overview to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.
Heather Tenuto
This software is a must for channel-oriented companies. Save time, money, reduce expenses, and monitor your success and the success of your channel partners.
Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions has grown from a channel marketing software start-up to a global organization focused entirely on channel success. In working with thousands of the world’s leading companies selling through indirect channels, they saw the need to move beyond siloed solutions. Sure, their customers needed powerful channel-focused technology and they have and continue to deliver the most comprehensive cloud-based solutions for channel marketing, sales and operations. But they know there is more to channel success than software.
Today’s channel leaders need strategic guidance to help their partner programs thrive. They need seamless integration with the tools they (and their partners) are already using every day. They need flexible service options to support a wealth of activities — and partners working around the globe. And they need new, broader channel-focused capabilities to expand their reach, revenue and ROI. That’s where ZiftONE fits in.
For more information, go to: https://ziftsolutions.com/
In 2021, enterprises have embraced multi-cloud as a key business strategy. This trend has been driven by the need to deliver better customer experiences, build platforms for innovation and agility, and generate new competitive advantages, enterprises in every industry are on a multi-cloud journey.
Today we’re speaking with Mehul Patel, head of customer insights for Prosimo - a multi-cloud networking company. Prosimo has just launched its second Application eXperience Infrastructure Study (AXIS) of more than 400 IT leaders across the United States and United Kingdom, examining the performance of applications across global cloud service provider (CSP) regions. Overall, the survey found that 62% of IT decision makers state that finding a consistent network approach across CSPs is the top cloud networking challenge. It also found 62% of enterprises have plans for mature multi-cloud within two years, which grows to 91% after two years - indicative that most enterprises are struggling to get beyond the initial stage of multi-cloud as organizations lack a comprehensive multi-cloud networking strategy.
Visit https://prosimo.io/ Visit the press release on this study
It is all about the experience and when you deliver that quality experience to the user through the channel, you have a lot of pride in your company and partners.
Jeremy Jones, Chief Commercial Officer at IntelePeer, speaks to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, A TR publication about the IntelePeer markets that they serve and who their customers are. He will also review:
Jeremy Jones
How IntelePeer is helping create the new customer experience The benefits IntelePeer products/services provide IntelePeer's CPaaS platform and how it empowers the enterprise How the speed of deployment to organizations who are adopting UCaaS, CPaaS and cloud solutions is so important
How IntelePeer fulfills that need
How you can join their reseller team
About IntelePeer: IntelePeer delivers rapidly deployable communications solutions for an always connected world. Powered with AI and analytics their omnichannel platform instantly improves your customers’ communications experience. IntelePeer provides industry leading time-to-value with automated communications solutions that work seamlessly with existing business software and infrastructure. Their no code templates, low code, co-creation, and developer API options provide customers with simple, easy-to-use tools that can be utilized by anyone and are also accessible through developer APIs.
For more information, go to: https://intelepeer.com/
The UN has set a target to increase e-waste recycling to 30% by 2023 – an important objective as toxic substances (such as mercury, BFR, and CFS) are found in many types of electronics and pose severe risk to human health. To put this into context, one iPhone 12 Pro 512GB has carbon emissions of 242.5 lb over its lifetime with only 13% of the emissions coming from actual usage, and the remaining footprint coming from manufacture, packaging and transportation. Enterprises and the channel have a key role to play: a Blancco study last year found that 3/4 of the world's largest enterprises are not recycling their end-of-life IT equipment.
Alan Bentley
Christina Walker
In this podcast, Blancco's President of Global Strategy, Alan Bentley, and Blancco's Christina Walker, Global Director, Channel, provide an overview of the global e-waste challenge, the link between more sustainable data management practices and the reduction of e-waste, and why the IT channel is poised to play a major role in supporting their customers’ efforts to build more sustainable businesses.
Blancco, the standard in data erasure and mobile lifecycle solutions, helps businesses adopt environmentally conscious approaches to managing end-of-life IT assets. Blancco's data sanitization solutions eliminate the need for physical destruction of used devices that contain sensitive data. According to Blancco's recently released ESG report, the company has securely sanitized 54.5 million electronic devices at global enterprises using its software in FY21-- this translates to saving 150 million lb in e-waste and 12.4 billion lb in carbon.
Listen to this lively discussion on how your organization can support sustainability and ESG objectives with regards to end-of-life IT assets and compliance with data security standards.
Blancco Links & Resources:
Website: https://www.blancco.com
Research studies (ewaste and more): https://www.blancco.com/resources/
FY'21 ESG report: https://www.blancco.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/blancco-ESG-report-2021.pdf
Channel partner program: https://www.blancco.com/partners/blancco-partner-ecosystem/
“Conferencing has radically changed,” says Peter Gasparro, Regional Sales Director at Konftel. “You can work from anywhere (WFA) with wide integration.” We have entered a new era in the workplace: hybrid work, and with this new era comes new needs. Meanwhile the level of choices in video conferencing has exploded to where, Konftel CMO Stefan Eriksson describes it as a “Video conferencing jungle.”
In this podcast Eriksson and Gasparro tell us how hybrid work is creating a need for more collaborative office technology that addresses every actuality. How can offices determine what they need and where? How can channel installers advise based on their customers’ needs? Stefan and Peter weigh in on this very relevant topic.
Visit www.konftel.com
Basically 150 years of nothing and now everything is changing in communications - VoIP, SIP, Wi-Fi, CBRS, 5G and more. The old POTS lines are just too expensive to maintain and consumer pricing for the service is going through the roof.
Chris Burgy
The FCC has issued Order 10-72A1 stating that all POTS lines need to be replaced by October 2023. Chris Burgy, VP of Corporate Development with Ooma, speaks with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about the urgency of the issue. Since there are over 2 million twisted pair lines deployed all over the country, it will take some time to replace them.
But first you need a solution like AirDial. Rather than attempting to put the solution together yourself, Ooma can provide the technology that will make any reseller proud to deploy at any of their clint’s sites. It’s a fact that, unless the reseller brings up the issue, the end user may be scrambling when they turn out the lights.
Listen in as Chris provides a complete overview of the opportunity and technology.
Ooma AirDial gives you reliable phone service over a dedicated wireless network to provide emergency calling and other capabilities for: Security Alarm Panels, Fire Alarm Panels, Elevator phones, Public Safety Phones, Building Entry Phones, Essential Phone Lines, Fax Lines, Point of Sale Systems, & more.
For more information, go to: https://www.ooma.com/ or https://www.ooma.com/business/airdial-pots-line-replacement/