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Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

June 2013

You are browsing the archive for June 2013.

Different Channel Partners Means Varying Obstacles

June 30, 2013

Whether I am working with an ITSP (Hosted VoIP provider) or a cloud video conferencing company, the one thing I can count on is that the channel partners will all have different business models.

You can put them in buckets generally, but the fact is that each business model is a different problem or obstacle.

The telecom channel is based on the agent model. Sell our stuff, we pay you a commission, we bill and support the client.

1K of Space

June 30, 2013

A Brand is a 1K memory slot in a brain. It is the accumulation of everything they know, heard, experienced, think about your company, product, services, employees.

Sometimes that 1K is empty. Sometimes that 1K is full.

Channel Sales Enablement: Part 2

June 30, 2013

Every channel wants a lot of feet on the street. I just saw a master agent in New England with 160 providers in its catalog. It isn't unusual for a master agent (pick any of the big ones) to have 100 providers on its roster. Let's examine that.

What's the Deal with WebRTC?

June 27, 2013

Day 3 at WebRTC Expo and for the most part everyone is still asking the monetization question. How will we monetize WebRTC? Well, you won't.

WebRTC is just a tool; it is a programming package like HTML5.

So You Want an A Team

June 24, 2013

Lots of talk about hiring A Players. Companies have extensive lists of requirements now for every position - to the point that the candidate doesn't exist in real life.

Let's try to remember that many of the talents, skills and even positions available today did not exist even 7 years ago!

That said, you realize that to build an A Team, you have to become a coach and manager?

Musical Chairs Won't Ungum the Works

June 24, 2013

There are always personnel changes but lately it looks like it has accelerated.

Level3 and its channel head, Mike Jerich, parted company.

MegaPath and its channel head, Eric Beller, parted company. Beller is at Sandler Partners.

Sheldon's Robot is Available for Purchase

June 20, 2013

Is it In the Cloud or For the Cloud?

June 17, 2013

Every company from ADP to your hosting company is calling themselves cloud now. The question is: Was the service built for cloud or just stuffed into cloud?

Did the cloud services provider design the service to be in the cloud? Or are they shoveling gear in a data center and calling it "in the cloud"?

What the heck is Channel Sales Enablement?

June 17, 2013

It's one thing to get a whole bunch of channel partners to sign your indirect sales agreement. It's a whole other thing to have channel partners who are driving sales to you regularly and keep your funnel full.

Channel Sales Enablement is one of my skill sets. I was a VAR, then an Agent, then a consultant and a sales trainer - the many aspects necessary to understand how a channel works and how to make it work.

What's a VAR to do?

June 17, 2013

Value-added Resellers (VARs) have a business model dependent on hardware sales. The big ticket items bring in cash in a lump sum to allow the business to pay bills (like payroll). The business usually is associated with a major vendor - like Dell, HP, Cisco - that presents a quota to maintain gold level support status and discounts. The vendor provides co-marketing dollars, training funds and other incentives for sales.

Get Ready Channel... Go Hosted!

June 16, 2013

Evolution of the White Board

June 13, 2013

I am at INFOCOMM this week, which is the big audio/video show. It is interesting to see the way white boards have evolved.

Clary makes a white board called Icon that is a 32" 60" TV with touch screen, a cart, a camera, speakers, and it runs win7. It is a PC, a TV monitor, a white board, and a video conferencing unit all on wheels.

Birch is Buying Ernest

June 10, 2013

The Master Model for Hardware

June 10, 2013

Microcorp and Tech Data. Ingram Micro and CenturyLink. Ingram and TWC.

CDW is the hardware distributor with a full service telecom agency. Tech Data comes close with its long standing deal with XO and its TDMobility that is a cellular master agency.

And now ScanSource has partnered up with Intelisys (a master agency).

7 Reasons for Cloud Video

June 10, 2013

I just started a consulting gig with Vidtel for channel sales enablement. It is my first real jump into video. I get to work with Alex Doyle and Scott Wharton, so this is an exciting gig. Off to INFOCOMM tomorrow in Orlando - a week long international conference for all things A/V.

Will the NSA Hurt US Cloud Revenue?

June 10, 2013

The whistleblower / traitor was revealed in the NSA scandal: Edward Snowden. I have been reading a lot about this whole situation.

Apparently, this story was broken last year, but no one paid attention. "William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the secretive agency, and one of the best codebreakers in NSA history" was interviewed by the NY Times.

The NSA Spying Scandal isn't New

June 7, 2013

Remember back in 2003 when a whistleblower from AT&T pointed out Room 641A that the NSA used to spy on all AT&T long distance calls and Internet traffic? Verizon and Qwest denied they did, too.

Put on your foil hat because I am going to make some crazy points.

The FCC only wants to deal with a few companies, not thousands of them.

9 Years Ago

June 5, 2013

In May of 2004, Seth Godin asked a question:

Five years from now... Assume that: Hard drive space is free. Wifi like connections are everywhere. Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster.

Channel Conflict on the Rise

June 4, 2013

All the changes happening in the IT World is also causing trouble in the Channel, as anyone in the channel can attest to. CompTIA released its Third Annual State of the Channel Study: Channel Conflict and Deal Registration Trends, an online survey of 350 U.S. IT company executives conducted in February 2013.

the study found that "Eight in 10 say conflict has affected their business negatively, including 21 percent that described the impact as "major."

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