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

December 2016

You are browsing the archive for December 2016.

Happy New Year!

December 30, 2016

What Can You Learn from Pharma Sales?

December 29, 2016

Pharmaceutical sales (drug sales) are similar to telecom. Drug reps sell to the hospitals, fighting to get their drug in the formulary. The formulary is theup-to-date list of approved pharmaceuticals that doctors can prescribe. (If it isn't in the formulary, it can't get billed or fulfilled.)

More Retail Stores Going Broke

December 28, 2016

The Limited is just the latest retail chain to go bankrupt. Sports Authority closed earlier this year. Many others are on the slide down into BK.

There is a lesson or two to be learned from retail.

VeloCloud Responds

December 22, 2016

After my latest SD-WAN article posted, I received an email from VeloCloud's VP of Marketing, Mike Wood. We jumped on a call to discuss his concerns.

Wood corrected that Velocloud decided not to sell direct but to use a variety of service providers as sales partners. These partners could be VARs or MSPs or LECs. Many providers formerly known as CLECs, like TelePacific, Mettel, EarthLink and Global Capacity, have chosen VeloCloud. So has AT&T.

Who is Your Target Audience?

December 21, 2016

If you answered everyone, you are wrong.

If you answered 1-1000 employee companies, you are misguided.

I had a panel last ITEXPO of sales vice presidents of PBX companies. They blamed all deployment problems on the sales team.

Hacking and Identity Theft

December 20, 2016

I find the news of the two major hacks on Yahoo! to be bigger than most people. These hacks were unrecognized for years (supposedly happened in 2013 and 2014).

Many people use the same password on multiple sites - even banking.

With cloud and app usage increasing, more and more personal data is available to hackers, from credit card numbers at any online store to medical records.

Is SD-WAN the new UC?

December 19, 2016

In 2003, Broadsoft was selling its softswitch to anyone who would buy it. Today, they are trying to sell direct. All in all, it is technology that is still struggling to find its voice.

Today, VeloCloud is selling its SD-WAN software to anyone who will buy it.

UCaaS Growth Forecasts

December 14, 2016

Per a TMR study, "the global market is expected to reach a value of US$61.9 bn by the end of 2018 from US$22.8 bn in 2011. The market is estimated to exhibit a strong 15.70% CAGR between 2012 and 2018. The rising mobile workforce and increasing enterprise mobility are the primary factors expected to augment the growth of the global unified communications market in the forecast period."

The TMR report looks at these "Key players operating in the unified communications market across the globe": Avaya, Microsoft, Polycom, IBM, NEC, Cisco, Siemens Enterprise Comm., and Alcatel-Lucent.

A Look Back at 2016 News

December 14, 2016

I am not going to be discussing M&A in this post. Those were big stories but I written enough on the mergers.

One big story was Google Fiber laying off and the CEO quitting. I tend to agree with Beranek on this: Google didn't want to be a network operator.

It is All Distribution Now

December 13, 2016

Yesterday I saw AVNET advertise 172,000 partners globally. Tech Data has mentioned 62K+. Sandler Partners said they had more than 4,000 sales partners. TCG serves more than 1500 agents.

RingCentral's channel head penned a post about the strategy to hit all the large master agencies.

Cologix and Equinix Make Moves

December 5, 2016

The data center space is fluid right now. Cologix is up for sale according to Ramblings blog and WSJ. Chris Palermo, CEO of master agency Global Communication Networks said, "Cologix is a quality provider that has run an agent friendly channel, for years. Ten acquisitions later, they have grown into an interesting candidate for several data center providers [to buy]." The expected buyer yesterday was Equinix.

Advice for Partners for 2017 [podcast]

December 5, 2016

Jeff Ponts of Datatel; Emmett Tydings of AB&T Telecom; and Chris Palermo of GCN joined the podcast this week to talk about the M&A in the industry and what partners can do to mitigate risk in 2017.

It has been a turbulent year with a lot of mergers and acquisitions. It makes people anxious.

Jon Arnold is a fellow blogger who recently saw Guy Kawasaki keynote Nextiva's event.

Fairpoint Merging!

December 5, 2016

Three pieces of news in the industry today. One involves Cisco Partner. [Presidio is filing for an IPO. MSPs rejoice. It could be valued at $3B.] One is a data center player.

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