BroadSoft Adds PaaS to Cloud Portfolio. Funny, I thought that BroadCloud was their version of PaaS. NoJitter blames this launch on the acquisition of VoIP Logic, a white-label customer that Broadsoft bought for $13M in 2016. As one BSFT client stated it, "BSFT will force every customer to be on their cloud platform at some point." Yeah, it wasn't what they signed up for but BSFT has to feed the Wall Street beast.
RC did have some wins last quarter: RC "closed six deals with TCV north of $1 million dollars up from five in Q4. One of these wins was at Hyatt Hotels Corporation. Hyatt will be replacing legacy Avaya system at their headquarters with RingCentral Office."
Some factors that are shaking things up: Avaya bankruptcy; 8x8 and Shoretel hiring bankers for strategy; and Toshiba leaving the North American market.
RC states: "For each dollar invested in sales and marketing, we continue to see $9 of revenue and $7 of gross profit over the projected life of an Office customer. " A number of UC providers should take note of that stat.
In the last 15 years, 52% of the S&P 500 have disappeared.
According to the CDC, "more than half of Americans have cut their traditional phone line and now only get wireless phone service." The other half is paying more and more for POTS service.
Verizon sold its data centers. It also sold its cloud services unit to IBM .
CenturyLink sold its data centers to a coalition of PE firms that also bought a collection of cyber-security firms. The new company will go by the name Cyxtera Technologies and it will be run by the former CEO of Terremark.
Gary Testa left Polycom last March to become President of Star2Star. That lasted 11 months, then he quietly exited telecom. Michelle Accardi has his position now. I am guessing the IPO is on hold.
John Oliver took on the new FCC Chair (former VZ lawyer btw) and net neutrality again. Want to comment on the FCC proceeding ironically named Restoring Internet Freedom (Docket 17-108) head over to the domain www.gofccyourself.com
I tried to explain this to several security people. Thankfully now there is a study. "More than 70 percent of SMB IT managers say budget considerations have forced them to compromise on security features when purchasing endpoint security," according to a survey by VIPRE.
All these Rapid Expansion press releases are funny. Yeah, you are following the Long Channel Strategy of signing up everyone you can. No idea how that pans out for most since it is a million dollar cash deal. Each of those master agencies will need co-marketing dollars just like the multitude of vendors that signed up with the likes of Jenne, Tech Data and other VADs. At some point, the cost to get a sale may be too high.
VZW has a co-sale model for One Talk. AT&T has co-selling. But RingCentral is taking this further. There is the partner, a channel manager and a SME from RC involved in each sale - from 1 seat to a million according to the release. All three getting 100% of commission. That will get expensive quick.
I would like to stop seeing ridiculous numbers in the press releases: "over 2,200 sales partners are now offering our services" and "we have more than 4,000 partners" and "300 Master Agents signed up" and the best: "8 Master Agents, providing 200,000 sub-agents". STOP!
