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The advent of the internet, SIP trunking, intense competition and the economic downturn has contributed to changing the channel partner market forever and if you are doing the same things you always did as a channel partner you may get wiped off the earth in the next few years. You need to change. How? Well I would spoil it if I told you and didn't allow you to listen to the podcast which is complete and dare I say elaborate. It is worth a listen if you are in any segment of the telecom or technology spaces and the lessons you can learn here are applicable to other segments of the market.

If you look at TMC from the outside and find yourself asking how you can get a job as an intern at this global integrated media company which builds communities online, in print and in person while gaining marketshare regardless of economic climate, I have some great news to share. We are looking for a small army of interns who want to learn what it's like to take on major multibillion dollar media companies with infinite resources and consistently win.

We will teach you how to sell collaboratively - how to listen and to be loved by your customers (well most of them anyway).

We will teach you integrated marketing and online marketing - not theory but ever-evolving practice.

If you love media and want to work at the company that is light years ahead online, contact us ASAP. We are very picky so if you aren't a super-hard worker and collaboration and hat-wearing are not your middle names, let's end our relationship now as friends (it's not you it's me).

One last thought about TMC - our culture is unusual - we have the financial stability of a 37 year-old company with the energy and enthusiasm of a start-up.

Let's just say if you're thinking of contacting us, please don't delay


Here's more:

The Sales & Marketing internship position at TMC is designed to provide hands-on experience that will be mutually beneficial for both the intern and the organization. The internship position is designed to challenge students and provide them with practical experience in the advertising and media industry.

TMC is looking for a dynamic, creative, enthusiastic, high energy professional to support the Sales organization, to help build advertising and marketing presentations for prospects and clients.

• Work with sales & marketing team to assist in the implementation of various campaigns
• Contribute to the creative input in building campaigns and support the campaigns
• Copyediting and proofreading
• Communicate with customers and peers
• Minimum Qualifications:
• Working towards completion of a college degree program in business, marketing or communication
• Excellent communication skills verbal and written
• Proficient in Microsoft Office suite, specifically PowerPoint and Excel
• Excellent communication skills
• Detail Oriented
• Initiative and proactive thinking
• Team player
• Ability to multi-task and work in a fast paced environment meeting deadlines

Many people in the communications space have asked me recently what TMC's secret is. After all, we are in the toughest media environment of our lifetimes and we produced our best show ever and have more paying customers online than at virtually any other time in our history.

The answer may lie in a bit of luck and some skill. The lucky part is we built our first online community for a customer about a decade ago. And since this time we have invested a small fortune in building our own proprietary technology which allows us to build highly-ranked, viral, news-driven communities for customers. Well over 100 of these sponsored communities live on TMCnet and generally consist of the tabs at the top and down the left of most of our pages.

Moreover TMCnet now houses millions of pages of content which gives the site tremendous prominence. And we have ranked very high on search engines for many years which has generated a tremendous amount of links to the 100+ articles we write a day and other content such as blog entries on the site.

The community product is called a GOC or "gock" and stands for Global Online Community. When we launched the program the term "organic search results" was probably not common but now, these communities help our customers rank extremely high for a variety of keywords which are important to them.

I know what you are going to say. Rich, that is what those click ads are for. Well to be honest the value of an organic search result is much higher to the searcher because it is not blatantly paid for and moreover it is not in a sea of other ads. Most importantly, research shows less that 20% of people even click on search ads. What about the other 80%?

TMC's communities answer the request we have been hearing -- How do you recreate the best part of tradeshows online?(shots from last ITEXPO East February 2009 in Miami)

Finally, unlike search ads, these communities help your own site(s) rank high organically by providing links. Moreover they help companies build their brand and thought leadership.

In addition, as a news-driven entity, GOCs draw traffic from other pages on TMCnet, newsletters, the TMCnet home page, news search engines and traditional search services. They are multimedia in nature, allowing companies to interface with customers via audio, video and of course text.

Example of an IP-PBX GOC (click to see full screen image)

Many of you have told me over the years that there needs to be a way to combine the best part of trade shows online. The GOC program is exactly this as it brings in your potential customers from around the world and gives them a reason to come back and see your message as the news is constantly updated. It is a very busy 24x7 community consisting of the most targeted people available on the web. And it is targeted by the news you find important.

In addition, it is measurable, and includes a wealth of metrics which can be used to analyze your spend and justify it up the chain of command.

For the reader the benefit is clear. They come to the GOC and bookmark it so they can keep up to date on the latest happenings in the space. How many people come? Well our record is over 650,000 pages viewed on a GOC in one month but typical results are between 250,000-500,000 per month. Generally, each GOC will average about 100,000 unique visitors per month - and they are targeted exclusively by content. In other words, you can use this program to build a community of people interested in subjects such as colocation, IP communications, HD voice, next generation communications, fixed mobile convergence or anything else in virtually any field. Click on any of these above links to see how the design is different and mirrors the look and feel of the sponsor.

If you are interested in learning more, here is an updated (4/14/2009) video which describes the program. Feel free to drop me an email for more.

If you are interested in the stories and headlines I find useful, I invite you to bookmark my Google Reader feed which I update fairly regularly. I occasionally will add comments as well. In fact, since I started using this page, I have found myself blogging less. I hope you find this resource useful.

Are companies really cutting their investments in customer acquisition and retention in this economic climate?

I have known the management of Spanlink Communications for years but haven't covered them in a while. Today I got a chance to speak with the company's relatively new President and CEO, Scott Christian (pictured) and he walked me through what the company is up to and also engaged in a great dialogue regarding how the organization has really focused on adding value to Cisco solutions.

You may remember the past CEO and founder of the company was Brett Shockley.

One of the more interesting parts of our audio interview revolved around our discussion of how companies are looking at spending more or less on customer acquisition and retention.
 

This is a good interview to listen to if you are interested in learning a bit more about the state of the contact center and UC market from at least one company's perspective. In addition there are some tips here focusing on increased productivity and customer retention which should suit every company well in these times.

According to Bruce Chatterley the President and CEO of Speakeasy, his company is a full service broadband communications company building solution for the SMB space. The company focuses on the smaller end of this group at under 100 employees and in fact 75% of customers have 25 or less employees.

Speakeasy offers T1 and Ethernet broadband as well as hosted VoIP solutions, SIP trunking and more. SIP trunking is a new addition and to date it is certified with solutions from IP PBX companies, Digium, Fonality and Adtran.

To learn how Speakeasy can solve you company's voice and data needs, be sure to check out this audio interview with Bruce which also details how you can leverage the best of Speakeasy service combined with solutions from Best Buy who incidentally is Speakeasy's parent company.

The question I am sure is on your mind is whether these companies will team up to to throw in a flat-screen TV with Speakeasy's quintuple play service. Be sure to listen for the answer.

At TMC's ITEXPO earlier this month I had a chance to briefly chat with voice 2.0/mashup guru Thomas Howe. At the show he told me there was big news coming and he was soon going to become CEO of a major service provider in Texas. Of course I wanted to know more and Thomas didn't disappoint. Here is a detailed interview - his first since taking the CEO spot at Jaduka. There is also an audio file which is different than what you will read below - so if you want to know more or like to listen to interviews while you walk the dog, etc - check it out.

1.    Why are you making the move to Jaduka and what is next for The Thomas Howe Company?

The time is right for companies like Jaduka. Jaduka has years of experience with the Web as a development platform. Jaduka also has the most mature API and platform in the industry. Companies use the API a million times daily, and there are 350 methods.  Developed over a decade, the platform is rock solid and we're uniquely positioned in terms of maturity and capacity to really scale our API efforts.  So I am leaving my consulting business aside and I've joined as CEO of Jaduka and that's my full-time job.

2.    Can you describe the Business Process Optimization (BPO) and Telco 2.0 marketplaces and opportunities for Jaduka?

Business process optimization is best understood as being a sub-section of the IT outsourcing market. It's slated to grow to around $250 billion dollars in activity this year, which is perhaps 20-25% of the IT outsourcing market. The BPO market focuses on creating value by engineering processes either for quality, speed or efficiency.  Voice integrated with business processes has a great ability to provide improved functionality especially as it relates to customer service and logistics. If you work for a company it's really easy for you to tell people who work for you how to do their jobs. But, if you have processes that interact with your customers or their employees, it's more difficult to train them on your processes; in fact, they don't want to hear it. What voice allows you to do is loop customers and employees into a business process in a reasonable and scalable way.  That's really one of the foundational pieces of Telco 2.0, which is essentially using web services likes those offered by Jaduka to remove friction in the digital economy.  We can make a large impact in the BPO and Telco 2.0 marketplaces, so that's how it all goes together.

3.    Why is Jaduka a leader in this marketplace?

I think there are several reasons. To my understanding there is no other Voice API that is pinged millions of times a day other than Jaduka. So just in terms of API traffic, they are the leaders as far as I can tell. The second is that Jaduka is sitting on top of NetworkIP infrastructure, which is very mature and robust, currently passing 6 billion minutes a year and with a good size revenue base. Unlike our obvious competitors, we have a good base to grow from. But also I think the real place for Voice API's is going to be in the enterprise. That is the focus for Jaduka more so than any other company. So I think those things that really tag Jaduka as having a leg up on the competition.

4.    What are the pain points within the enterprise these days, and how does Jaduka address them?

One major pain point for the enterprise at the moment, especially for the mature business is in process optimization. If your business is not growing 200%, then you're focused on how to derive greater efficiencies especially in a down market. That's one of the reasons many leaders believe in the ascendancy of business process optimization. What Jaduka will do uniquely is allow designers and integrators to blend in real-time communications as one tool for making more efficient and more effective processes. 

5.    Your mission with Jaduka is allowing computers and processes to communicate with people.  How can companies can achieve this, and why?

The actual methods are voice and messaging and it could either be that we are delivering a voice message in support of a process or we are collecting a voice message from a participant.

6.    You have said that when a process has to communicate to a human (for notification, support, etc.), the enablement of that communication path is what Jaduka does.

Jaduka enables the individuals who design business processes to integrate human input or human output as easily as they would any other computer element. For instance if you were designing a process where typically you would send an email to a manager telling him something that happened, you could just as easily blend in the ability to phone the manager telling him what happened. The reason why that might be important is because it's faster than email, for example. Using voice message is often more immediate and much more universal. So the mechanism itself is voice, and the idea is to bring this toolset into the designer's hands. The architecture that we work on is Web services architecture. Our model is communications as a service and it is focused on letting our customers trade capex for opex spending.

7.    Talk about your product mix (Click-and-Connect, Conferencing, Diary, Notification) and how Jaduka delivers its services to the marketplace.
  
Through my work in the Thomas Howe Company I've came to realize that there is a set of basic tools that can be used and combined to create greater efficiencies in the enterprise.  Those four basic functionalities are Notification, which is delivering a voice message to a person; Diary which is the reverse, I'm going to call somebody up and get their input and feedback on his recent transaction; Web initiated dialing or Click-and-Connect, which allows me to connect to people based on whatever I can think of,  time of day, skill-set, role, or event, and then finally, Conferencing, which is bringing in groups of people together to communicate. Once you have those four basic services then you have really addressed the bulk of the functionalities required for CEBP implementations and they can be combined together to create very interesting sorts of applications.

For instance one combined application might identify who a person is. Imagine a Homeland Security application where you want to identify somebody standing in front of you. To do it, you'd combine click and connect and the diary functions together by assuring you could call into that person. You would be assured of the right person because his phone would ring and so you would identify a user ID, then collect a predetermined password from that person using the diary function--therefore verifying that same person who answered the phone was the same person who set up the account in the first place.

8.    Cloud computing has tremendous advantages for lowering capex spending.  Taking advantage of your services requires no capital outlay, no equipment to install. Your services can be accessed via the Jaduka API. Jaduka is taking a hosted services/cloud computing approach to helping companies integrate communications with business processes. Why?

It's a real fundamental of economics. If you're familiar with Nicholas Carr's latest book, The Big Switch, he makes a fantastic argument about how bringing functions like we provide into the cloud makes basic economic sense in that companies don't have to pay for the equipment or the people to run and maintain that equipment. And then of course there is a risk in time to market. If you really want to get something up and running quickly, going out and specifying a vendor selection will take you months. Getting things tested will take many months versus taking advantage of a cloud computing model where a company can point to and use our API, which might take you all of five minutes. So the benefit is really around reducing time to market, risk, and then of course trading capex profits.

9.    Describe Jaduka's relationships with Serena and IBM.

Serena is really a brilliant company that makes tools for IT departments to manage either application life cycle or general business processes. Serena uses Jaduka voice services for the Serena Emergency Response application. This includes notifications and tools for improving emergency response communications. What we're able to do in the case of an emergency to call the person responsible for handling a particular situation and bring together the entire management chain by phone virtually instantly.

Our IBM relationship is fairly extensive. We received an award from IBM a year or two ago for our use of their Informix database technology for managing a million API calls a day from our customers and something like 24 million database dips a day and the ability to service a billion user accounts.  So we have done some really great work in transaction processing and account management that has given us that advanced technology recognition from IBM.  We expect to be expanding our relationship with IBM over time, especially as it relates to CEBP.

10.    Jaduka's parent company, NetworkIP, was among the first telecom companies to introduce a SaaS model...in their case for the prepaid voice industry. How did their experience influence your approach with Jaduka?

One of the founders and the CEO of NetworkIP, Pete Pattullo, envisioned over 10 years ago the development of a SaaS platform architecture for the telephone industry. He executed that flawlessly at NetworkIP. Pete understood the potential for voice as a service in our industry, and I find that really incredible. What we get from NetworkIP is not only understanding of what operational challenges might exist in providing an SaaS offering in the telecom space -- you simply can't run 6 billion minutes a year and not learn how to do that well -- but we also derive deep knowledge from the business issues that surround SaaS.  What has also made NetworkIP successful as their competitors have dropped to the side, are their advanced analytics functions and tools. NetworkIP customers now rely on analytics to get their jobs done. I think that can't be overstated as it's an integral part of the value chain. That's what we derive from NetworkIP and what they've learned in providing software as a service, first to the prepaid industry and now, through Jaduka, to the larger enterprise.

11.    How do you characterize Jaduka as the first true Telco 2.0 organization?

Telco 2.0 is defined by SDL Partners in England as Telco acting as an entity that reduces friction in the digital economy; they provide several business models in which that can happen. I talk about Jaduka being the first true Telco 2.0 organization. We really think that we can provide that role for our customers. We think that given our backgrounds in transaction processing, our reach into the 500,000 points of sale that we have in the United States, our mature API that runs at scale and our toolset which is appropriate for integration into the enterprise, we can make it our main business to reduce the friction for our enterprise partners in terms of communications and the transaction processing that supports that.

13.    Speak to the value of Jaduka web services to Enterprise software frameworks (from Oracle, Serena, Microsoft) for example.

We believe and we're not alone, that the major points of differentiation in enterprise software work in the next ten years are going to be in making business processes optimization work. Our APIs and the partnerships we have and we're growing with enterprise software vendors provide a very important set of functionality that the enterprise software developer can use with confidence and with ease. For partners in the enterprise software space, we provide a one-stop shop that they can rely that is free from the considerations of hosted solutions. Avaya is a leader in providing that kind of functionality into the enterprise, but they do it using a platform model where it's behind the firewall instead of our cloud-based approach. And by providing that tight integration, we really radically shorten the development times required for extending existing applications using a service. So for our enterprise software framework customers what we provide them is the ability to have the best in class offering for this very important segment of their customer base.

14.    Speak to the value of Jaduka web services to integrators like EDS, Accenture, etc.

This is a great thing for them because we really allow them to have two wins here. The first win is we open new practice areas for them. Most of the system integrators today have fairly narrow practice sets, where their very good at one particular thing, but as time goes on and they're looking to grow and looking to have higher margins, many of them are looking for business process optimization opportunities. What Jaduka web services does in the first case is it gives them larger contracts and more opportunities to work with their customers by giving them a tool that allows them to credibly save these enterprises lots of money, increase processes and improve customer service. The second win is we actually have business relationships with system integrators that allow them to share in our revenue, such that when the system integrators finish the project they don't stop getting paid. They get paid after the fact when people use our service. So it changes their model from a pay-by-the-hour business approach to an additional recurring revenue model after that. That's very attractive to a lot of system integrators, because they don't have the recurring revenue model now. We take care of all the back end stuff for them, operationally it's no different for them--we just send them checks.

15.     Talk about Jaduka Analytics and how this helps clients.

We're going to announce in the near future how Jaduka analytics is going to serve our customers. At NetworkIP, we're able to show a prepaid voice communications customer, at any particular point in time exactly which one of their routes is profitable and by how much, which are the most popular routes and how they're changing over time. If you are one of our prepaid customers all you have to do is come into our Web site, log in, and you can see if you're making money, how much money you're making and why, where's it happening and what are the trends over time. Really, it's a dashboard for your entire business. We are taking the same approach for the Jaduka offerings in that our system integrator partners will be able to understand and know the business benefits that they're creating for their customers and we think it's going to be a very powerful asset for them.

Great news for readers of TMCnet blogs. As you know we now have 40 bloggers and continue to innovate with technology and integration additions to our blogs which allow you to use your social networking login to comment on our blog entries. But that was so yesterday.

Through the hard work of the development team here at TMC, we now have deep integration with a variety of social networking sites. For example, we can now have Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates directly imported into our blogs. Moreover, I will scan about 2,000 headlines in a given day and I flag many of them for later coverage. Many times I assign these articles to members on my editorial/blogger team.

Now however I can share news items directly from my Google Reader which brings in news from thousands of sources and all these items will show up on the Recent Activity area on the right of my blog under the search box.

If you want to bookmark my social media feeds, here are links:

• Rich Tehrani Twitter Feed
• Rich Tehrani Facebook Status
• Rich Tehrani Google Reader Feed

Please note that I will no longer update my status on Twitter but instead use Facebook. My Facebook status updates will be automatically copied to twitter and then my blog - at least that is the theory.  I set all this up a few minutes ago and am now testing.

Andy Abramson has a brilliant entry supporting events and why you need to go to them. Here are some salient points:

That's the difference. I'm a player. Not a spectator. Even during my era in sports, I was in the business of sports, playing the business game to win everyday. While I wasn't on the ice or on the basketball court (though I did play junior box lacrosse for two years when working for a pro lacrosse team) I quickly realized that either you're a part of the game or your simply a spectator.

So if you're a real player in an industry, get off your butt and get to where the action is. It's sure not in the office. And to those of you who racked up frequent flier miles in the past, and hotel points on your companies dime, how about going to the travel manager and offering to use those points to make it to the show your new travel restrictions won't permit. Real players play through pain and injury. Wussies hide in the locker room and never get off the bench. Creative type professionals find a way to be where the action is, not cast far away glances and trash talk what they're missing.

Perhaps he has the influence to get people on planes quickly because ITEXPO is doing amazingly well. It has a ton of people and the quality is amazing from what I have seen so far. It also continues to attract people from virtually every continent. Historically about 115 countries are represented each year between the west and east events.

I can tell you the attendance and energy of this event is more like 1999 than what you would expect in 2009. I haven't felt this in a while. There is excitement, enthusiasm and passion. Let's face it - you can't sugar coat the economic environment and the reality is all companies are laying off or will do so soon. Some will have continuing layoffs.

But all this means is the remaining people have to do more work and get the job done. Because if they don't, bye bye company.

Today's communications tools are the best way to maximize productivity and efficiency and they are needed immediately in every company - and needed now.

This is likely why this show is so darn busy. See the photos for yourself. Hope to see you here soon.