The products that have been launched recently sit in big buckets titled IOT, Cyber-Security, Managed Services, SD-WAN and of course UC (UCaaS, UCC, WCC).
Rich Tehrani has a nice read about AI and analytics transforming companies like Vodafone.
COLOTRAQ has a new IT Risk/Cyber-security Assessment and Planning Service. They even brought in some talent to delivery it in Victor Zamora.
MetTel launched a single SIM for IOT. One VAR I spoke with said that they are going to run with this to the end-user because it is a niche that is almost without competition.
Level3 consistently emails me about selling cyber-security, especially their DDoS Mitigation service.
EarthLink is still around? They launched a secure public Wi-Fi connections with Norton WiFi Privacy (basically VPN). Considering how often businesses use Starbucks, hotel, airport and other public wi-fi, this should be a no-brainer sale.
Panterra rolled out Streams, an ode to Slack, but integrated into a secure, encrypted full unified comms platform.
VZW has One Talk, one of the few mobile UC plays out there.
When TelePacific re-branded as TPx, the highlighted products were managed IT, security, UCaaS and SD-WAN.
Aryaka just rolled out a clientless SD-WAN: "SmartACCESS - the first-to-market SD-WAN for remote access, with built-in dynamic CDN." In the US, Content Delivery Networks are how a majority of users get their Netflix chill on.
Verizon announced that they are selling more MPLS due to SD-WAN. CenturyLink has said that SD-WAN is not a quick fix. So there is a lot of room for expertise and advising in these projects still.
AT&T says that enterprise clients want a hybrid solution to managed services. (Nothing new here). Some of the services will be outsourced to the likes of AT&T and some will remain in-house. That is the way it is for cloud as well - HYBRID, according to an Evolve IP survey. Private for mission-critical, Public (AWS, Azure, SaaS) for mass market stuff and VPS for DevOps. Pulling that together requires some expert help. Is that you?
All of these vendors are just waiting for Channel Partners to pickup the ball and run with it.
It will take more than the Twitter approach to launch. Twitter put there platform out there and waited to see what people would do with it. Years later, Twitter still has no idea what the business case or financial model is. Don't be Twitter!
It isn't about just throwing your toy into the yard so someone will stumble along to play with it.
We want to be spoon fed who IS buying it; why are they buying it; etc. (As I have written about ad nauseum.) It is all about the Stories! Ignoring this means that we will leave that toy alone on the ground over there.
I understand that channel partners have to innovate, change, transition, etc.
With network revenues steadily declining and telecom being a broken mess, partners spend all day selling bandwidth at lower rates - and lower commissions - and then having to navigate the many layers of Dante's Hell that is a carrier today to get it installed (and then fixed - yes I am talking to you ACC Business and GTT!)
In the midst of this mess, on-going consolidation and the accompanying musical chairs is making a partner's job harder, not easier.
Much of these products require new knowledge and some training. That is not time that is always available to partners. I know, Go Make Some Time before you become Extinct. You see, we'll have time when we are extinct.
Besides compelling stories, buyer profiles and the WHY, we will also need new sales skills. Selling dial-tone or network is replacement. Selling Cyber-Security or AI requires a different sales approach.
MSPs understand how to sell managed IT but some VARs do not. (Hence why they are still VARs!)
While many of these products allow a Partner to enter a green field with little competition, maybe the business model for the partner has to be demonstrated as well.
And maybe instead of launching more services, you figure out how to deliver on the ones you have. If you can't deliver the easy stuff (Network), I will never give you a shot at the complex!
Just some food for thought while you wait on the Channel.
]]>"AWS is the biggest area Amazon is scaling up with more than 5600 jobs, which translates to about 33% of all the open listings." Hey, kids, here's where future jobs lie!
Retail isn't the future for Amazon growth I guess, despite Prime's customer stickiness; it's building of warehouses; and its foray into brick-and-mortar stores.
For us, "The company is also making more diversified investments into logistics, cloud apps, and media: Amazon's recent forays into logistics and media foreshadow areas of new business interest. Amazon tends to invest mainly where it can make strategic partnerships. India-based Housejoy will help expand its reach in the region, and Twilio has partnerships with AWS." [source]
Amazon has a secretive R&D skunk work called Lab126, which is behind hardware hits like the Echo and Kindle (and Fire smartphone). Dabble Lab and Occam are independent skunk works that companies can hire. This type of innovative and creative thinking is needed especially in telecom.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote a letter to shareholders that talks about Day 2 like it was death. Yet the letter gives a small insight into Bezos' decision making. Focus on results and don't let the process (or policy) become the thing to focus on. Make decisions quickly. Even if you disagree with a decision, commit to the project. Every day is Day 1. Think fresh. Look outside the company for ideas, concepts, practices and trends. Embrace them.
You can read the letter on Recode. And you should.
NYU Professor Scott Galloway breaks down how Amazon is dismantling retail. Although he notes it isn't just Amazon. We have too many malls. There is a trend in consumer spending on restaurants and experiences rather than things.
Why should telecom care about retail or even Amazon?
Amazon is going to be a big player in telecom outside of AWS and S3, with Chime and Connect and tools and whatever it cooks up with twilio.
The other reason to examine retail: see the demise so that it doesn't happen to your business.
Bezos and Elon Musk - in my book - are the two best CEOs in America right now. Learning more about how they make decisions can be helpful.
]]>The real buzz came from Amazon that launched Amazon Connect - Customer Contact Center in the Cloud. GE Appliances is one of Amazon Connect's initial customers (and shared the stage at EC17 with them). Last week, they launched contact center tools. Before that, they launched Chime, a web conferencing app.
"Amazon Connect is a self-service, cloud-based contact center service that makes it easy for any business to deliver better customer service at lower cost," according to the website. It got a lot of coverage (telecomp and techcrunch, to link but 2).
Chime was launched in conjunction with Vonage who will be handling the consumer and small business market. Level3 partnered with Amazon on Chime for Enterprise, which partners will get to sell soon.
In both cases, Amazon is entering a crowded field with a self-service, low priced offering that hangs off of their massive computing infrastructure. It is mainly price disruptive, but that doesn't mean it won't shake up Wall Street which will re-adjust valuations for the likes of Cisco, Citrix, Genesys and Avaya.
GENBAND partnered with IBM Watson for AI chatbots in its Kandy wrappers. The Kandy wrappers are pre-packed programs like a customer service chatbot that can answer FAQs and detect when the caller is getting agitated. It then takes the call transcript and sends it to a live rep, who if all the back-end works would be able to take over the call in continuum. The demo was great. Implementation will be difficult, but I would like to see Florida Blue jump on board and give it a try because they have horrible customer service systems (maybe on purpose).
West showcased the new version of Spark with Hybrid Voice.
Sprint had a robot running around their booth but I don't know why.
Counterpath demonstrated its new capabilities for what was once just a softphone. Now there is a good amount of reporting and analytics on users and calls. One user experience across multiple platforms (phone, tablet, laptop, Mac, Android, PC). It layers on top of existing UC, so Broadsoft providers can get better reporting, analytics and user experience without having to upgrade their investment. Counterpath also added a Salesforce plug-in so that interactions inside the Bria app can be captured in a CRM record. And you get screen pops!
BTW, "Voice is still a customer's number one choice when dealing with a customer service issue." [twitter]
"Cloud computing: Are these the hurdles that trip you up? More companies are using cloud-powered services, but it's not without pain. Here are some of the common complaints." Interesting read on ZD.
One thing that seemed to be a theme: User and Customer Experiences Matter.
]]>Price compression on network, bandwidth and voice has become so bad that it prompted all of the consolidation. Cogent and HE certainly fuel the price erosion but agents selling the lowest price all the time on everything is only speeding it along.
Yesterday, I saw an ad for Broadview UC down to $17.95 per seat (lower if you have 75 seats or more). Folks, that is not a lot of money to do a lot of work.
There are over 2000 companies offering some version of Hosted VoIP/Hosted PBX or UC. There are companies selling it for less than $10 a line if that is what you want to do. Google it. You can find them. But 20 percent of $10 is not worth the cost of the time to sell it.
And all the calls you will get from the customer due to poor quality.
No one wants to walk away from an opportunity. Many provider vice presidents don't know how to say NO to a crappy deal either, because they just want revenue -- even crappy revenue.
I guess Windstream finally realizing that much of its small business revenue was unprofitable wasn't enough of a wake up call for company execs and Agents.
Robotics and AI are coming. They will replace any transactional sales agent. Ordering on price: the customer could do that on Amazon -- or on GeoQuote.
Agents have to re-think where they bring the value because like newspapers, taxi drivers, and a host of other jobs, AI is going to destroy it.
My slides from my talk yesterday at TelePacific, who will be announcing the new brand in Vegas at CP!
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