WPP is one of the largest advertising and marketing firms in the world. They are a conglomerate of a number of acquisitions of agencies globally. WPP was hit with a ransonware hack that disabled its network (see HERE and HERE). It shut them down.
No one think it will happen to them, but the ease at which hackers are able to assault ANY computer or Internet-connected device makes EVERYONE susceptible. This gets exacerbated by 4 things that are easy but users are too lazy to do: (1) have a strong password policy; (2) update operating systems as well as anti-virus software and RUN it weekly; (3) back-up data; and (4) stop opening attachments!
You should be on top of your customers today pushing those 3 things: password policy; Managed IT or at the least anti-virus software; and cloud backup. Go make some money while this is still fresh. Or go help your customers so they aren't helpless tomorrow!
BTW, this would qualify as Disaster Recovery
]]>In cable news, you get a site survey done supposedly before quoting. You get the quote; give it to the customer who says Yes. You get paperwork; customer signs paperwork. Then three days after the paperwork is submitted, the site survey comes back. "Subject: Construction required. Comments: A site survey was completed that determine there is a total construction cost of $71,972 for construction to bring service. Your organization can pay the contribution of $69,687 or we can amend the contract to 36 months and increase total MRC to $2,400." Mind you , that $2400 per month is for cable broadband - 150x10. This happens TOO often. It makes no sense to me at all.
There are new acronyms to know in Security. According to 451 Research, "Managed security services (MSS) is an emerging sector of the security and managed services market. As new security threats evolve, many organizations find they lack the expertise to protect against increasingly complex attacks and meet compliance requirements. Security is one of the IT functions that can be managed by a service provider." MSS providers are MSSPs. If the MSSP develops and delivers security technologies and services, it is a security service technology provider (SSTP). If the MSSP focuses on delivering security services, but does not develop their own technology, then these MSSPs are "pure play". There are also Hybrids that mix the two. Fun, right?
Businesses buy a lot of software. Office365, Google for Work, email and web hosting just being the start. CRM, UC, conferencing, digital marketing technology, Business Intelligence (BI), Virtualization, Data Storage and Database and ERP. 451 Research survey suggests that spending will be up for software in 2017.
"SAN-based Storage (67%) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Arrays (59%) are currently the most widely used storage systems by companies, followed by Backup/Recovery Software and Disk Backup Appliances (44%)," according to 451 Research. "Respondents were asked which storage systems and related products, including upgrades/refreshes, they plan to purchase in 2017, and SAN-based Storage Arrays (48%) tops the list, followed by Third-party Cloud Storage Services (34%) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Array (34%)."
This leads me to suggest that you ask your customers about software and storage. There is money to be made there and you are leaving it on the table.
Broadsoft has bought another company. No more internal innovation (still no Slack or Skype integration either!), just inorganic moves - Transera, Lenoid and PBXL. This time BSFT buys "Intellinote, an enterprise messaging-based team communication and collaboration software application built for the increasingly mobile and millennial workforce," says the press release. I am guessing this is their answer to Slack.
Or to put int another way: All your mobility and collab in one place idea. It might work, but playing catch up to Slack (like Microsoft is doing by re-vamping Sharepoint) is so telecom! Me-too! Me-too! Me-too! No one innovates.
"According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research, the global VoIP services market was valued at US$ 85.9 Bn in 2015 and is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 9.5% over 2016 - 2024, to reach US$ 194.5 Bn by 2024," per the press release.
Maybe the inorganic growth will spur organic growth. Maybe at some point VoIP growth will actually catch up to predictions, but if you take out SIP Trunking, does it?
Adoption is the key. User experience. Productivity. We'll see.
Meanwhile, hardware PBXs are still be installed.
8x8 is working on world domination plans, which is great except they haven't really taken a bite out of the Apple (NYC) let alone most of America yet. At 600K devices, there are 25 million businesses in the US. With even 80K billing businesses, that isn't even cracking 1%. Take into account 325K from RC and another 80K from VB is about 2% of the addressable SMB market space. Yeah, I guess you should go global.
Adoption is a far cry from what was predicted. The smart home space is seeing the same issue.
"Despite the hype growing around smart homes - from fridges that can tell you what items you've run out of, to controlling your lights from a smartphone - the majority of people don't have much interest in the new technology, new research reveals." [source]
Consolidation and Adoption are just two issues to overcome.
Carbonite buys Seagate EVault cloud backup, DR for $14M, which is a deal, but even this little bit of consolidation does add up to much of the market - against Google Drive, MS Onedrive, Apple iCloud, Amazon S3, Dropbox and Box. Ransonware esurance is what this sector needs. Or some other way to tell the story of lost files, photos, etc.
While talking about needing a better story, here are 2 Slack commercials (one-zoo and two-spaceship) that are off-beat to say the least.
]]>I cannot keep up with all the merger and acquisition activity happening right now. Here is some of it.
A big one for me is that Accenture acquired Cloud Sherpas. Sherpas was one of the largest Google integrators. Now they do other stuff - with 1100 employees you would have to. They are being acquired by a large consulting firm that does system integration work. Can you say clash of culture?
Barracuda to Acquire Intronis. Barracuda fame is from the days of appliances for email filtering and backup. I see their ads at airports. They have moved into security and storage. Barracuda is buying Intronis, an MSP's data storage and backup system. Intronis has moved into the data protection space. It will probably make for a good team up.
LogMeIn Acquires LastPass for $110 Million. Last Pass is single sign-on and password management service provider.
ConnectWise acquired ScreenConnect in 1Q2015. ConnectWise is a platform for MSPs to run their business, including a clunky CRM, remote management and some other functionality. CW, based here in Tampa, also owns LabTech and Quosal. ScreenConnect will integrate free of charge with LabTech adding remote control functions to the existing platform. There is a battle going on for the wallet of the MSP. CW doesn't have customers; they have tribe members.
Symantec spun off Veritas, a backup and DR provider, to PE firm, Carlyle Group for $8 billion! The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with $193 billion of assets under management, including Syniverse.
Dell has never been shy about acquiring companies in the IT space to expand its portfolio in managed services in order to completely replace all the hardware - PCs, servers, laptops - revenue that it used to have. Luckily, they are private so they don't have to show how it is going quarterly.
" In addition to Quest, other key acquisitions include services company Perot Systems, storage companies EqualLogic and Compellent, cloud company Boomi, systems management company Kace, virtual desktop company Wyse Technologies, networking company Force10 Networks and security company SecureWorks." [pcworld]
The move for Dell to buy EMC (and gain control of VMware) for $67 BILLION is bold. It probably won't work. I hope those folks at Silver Lake realize that adding $50B in debt is a hole that you may not crawl out of. The only deal as big was the HP-Compaq deal worth $34B (that Presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina tried to execute).
In any business - big or small - there are cultures, people, leadership, management styles, talent, processes, domain knowledge that go into making a company successful. In smaller deals, there is a good chance that these factors will be assimilated. In bigger deals, there is less chance of that. In my 16 years of paying attention to telco/tech deals, not one has worked out the way anyone thought it would. Not AOL-TW. Not SBC-AT&T. Not BellSouth-SBC. Not Frontier buying AT&T/SNET or VZ assets. Fairpoint. HP-Compaq.
Heck, like Yahoo, Google and Dell, large companies do not always reap the benefits of the acquisition. How many companies has Yahoo bought and closed? Or Google? As Rob Powell says, when was the last time you saw Force10? How is Wyse doing?
These mergers will make a few people happy - many shareholders and bankers. I feel sorry for the employees and customers.
There was noise this week about Polycom merging with MITEL because Elliott Holdings wants to make a big splash. No one I talked to thinks this makes any sense. MITEL+aastra+Polycom = a mess of debt. That means it is 75% likely to happen!
]]>This is a funny study by GfK: 29% US Internet users don't see any value in cloud storage; 27% consider it essential.
]]>CenturyLink grabbed Cognilytics
After 4 years of partnering with C-Link (Savvis) for DR-as-a-service, CenturyLink decided to acquire DataGardens. DG also white-labels its DRaaS to BCM and others. DG's CEO, Geoff Hayward, blogged about it here.
There were 3 other transactions in the cloud data storage and backup space. That sector was in some need of consolidation since the last two years saw some big failures. Interesting to note that these transactions involve companies with a specific target market. They wrote a bestseller.
eFolder acquired Cloudfinder [slide deck]. eFolder was founded in 2002 as a folder syncing service, sold primarily via channel partners. "Cloudfinder products provide backup, instant full-text search, restoration and reporting for business-to-business (B2B) cloud services, including Office 365, Google Apps and Salesforce." That is its differentiation. (You have to have one - or a lot of customers.)
"Cloudfinder is the only company that provides a unified backup and instant full-text search of cloud data across differing cloud services. From one user interface, businesses can backup, search, restore and get a data overview across multiple cloud services." [press release]
EMC bought Spanning and 2 other companies to add to its cloud portfolio, according to this press release. "Spanning is a leading provider of subscription-based backup and recovery for "born in the cloud" applications and data. Spanning solutions prevent business interruption due to data loss in Google Apps and Salesforce.com (a solution for Microsoft Office 365 will be available in the first half of 2015)." Lots of jockeying to add backup and data protection to what seems to be the big 3 business cloud services - Google Apps, Salesforce and Office365.
Carbonite will acquire MailStore for about $20 million. This acquisition provides Carbonite two things: (1) global expansion assitsance; and (2) email archiving and indexing solutions. This is a like adding fries to a hot dog for Carbonite (being the hot dog). Backup is generic, but the actual data to backup spans many areas - services, desktops, laptops, mobile devices, email servers, cloud apps, etc. I haven't heard of one service that handles it all.
According to CP Online, "Datto on Dec. 11 may have ignited that trend with the acquisition of Massachusetts-based Backupify." Like Carbonite, Datto is a hybrid backup and disaster recovery platform. Backupify is claiming that this will create the first total protection platform. A reminder from them that "data protection plans must be as fluid as the information flowing in and out of the companies that rely on them. As more critical data continues to move to the cloud, companies will demand more diversity as they decide which workloads to protect and where."
"With more than 2 million business customers and nearly 4 petabytes of data under management, Backupify is the largest automated data protection solution for the most popular online services including Salesforce, Google Apps, Smartsheet, Facebook, Twitter and more." It's unique advantage being the SaaS data protection - and its size.
]]>Today, at I/O, Google brings out the big guns -- unlimited storage for $10 per month and Office editing. [Betanews headline].
This makes it tough for anyone to make money in storage -- like say Dropbox or Box.net. Box.net was thinking about IPO until you look at the financials and see that customer acquisition is expensive and the hyper-competition is having an affect. It means you need to pivot. Pivot to HIPAA or Enterprise or Education or some other vertical. But pivot you must.
Most companies can't beat cable on price; and most can't beat MS, GOOG or AMAZ on price either. Efficiency of scale does sometimes work. Almost monopoly power does too.
In speaking with TMC's Paula Bernier, it became clear (finally) that Panterra's launch of SmartBox as a loss leader marketing tool was pretty cool. Get agents to offer SmartBox to everyone. The user gets free storage and secure file-sharing, plus a chat and peer-to-peer voice app - and if they ever upgrade, the agent makes commission. (Agents should be installing this app everywhere!)
The channel isn't making big money selling Office365 or Google Apps. Dropbox started a channel program (but I have no idea how successful it is). All storage runs into some issues with government compliance (Can you say HIPAA?) I don't know if this is another niche channel market - like contact center - or if the channel is actually actively driving revenue in data storage. If they are, now the key will be how channel partners distinguish between plain ole file storage like GOOG/MS Drives and true back-up applications. Or will they even bother?
]]>Telesphere and BroadSoft are unveiling a massive 8-foot-tall, 3,200 pound aquarium developed by the creative team of Acrylic Tank Manufacturing from Animal Planet's hit show, "Tanked." Representatives of Telesphere tooke part in filming an episode of "Tanked" that will air on the Animal Planet Network in April. So telecom hits reality TV.
from left to right: Brett Raymer, ATM; Wayde King, ATM; Clark Peterson, CEO Telesphere; Irwin Raymer, ATM.
In what looks like a pivot but is just a way to get traction, Panterra launched SmartBox, which is like combining Dropbox and WhatsApp into one interface for users [90 sec video]. The bonus is that it is secure (encrypted according to Panterra). You can't say that about too many apps.
Two other features: (1) 2GB of storage is free but Unlimited storage is just $15 - and it pays the partner on that $15 (plus spiffs currently). And (2) if partners sign businesses up for SmartBox, it tags that business to that partner like dealer registration. If that biz upgrades through the SmartBox app to UC, the partner gets paid. Nice program, right?
]]>Ring Central saw a bump in the stock price in Wall Street's response to RC's earnings report. Quarterly revenue increased 37% year-over-year to $45.3 million. Total revenue was $160.5 million for the full year of 2013, up 40% from the full year of 2012.
CEO Vlad Schmunis announced that "TELUS, a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, has selected RingCentral's cloud-based services to deliver advanced communication solutions for its business customers." RC has a similar deal with AT&T. The deal with AT&T could explain the growth of revenue and specifically the Office product.
Another announcement is RingCentral Meetings, a multi-point HD video and web conferencing product built for smartphones, tablets and PCs. I guess everyone is getting in the HD video conferencing space.
In news I missed. J2, owner of Efax, has been on an acquisition spree. J2 purchased publisher Ziff-Davis to start a digital media unit. J2 also acquired LiveDrive, a UK-based online backup company. J2's annual revenue from online backup is now $40M under Keep It Safe service.
J2 also grabbed UK's City Numbers, a provider of inbound local, national and international toll free phone numbers in more than 80 countries. I guess the toll-free number business is all well and good - and global.
We've seen 8x8's results. Pedestrian growth? NOt really. 24% year over year.
Vonage, on the other hand, has seen revenue shrink from Q1 2012: $216 million to Q3 2013: $204 million, despite assurances from the CEO and CFO that a $10 million quarterly spend would add $100 million in revenue. Annual rev for 2008 was $900 M and in 2012 it was $849 mill. Vonage only completed the acquisition of Vocalocity in November of 2013, so it won't have an affect on numbers until 1Q. Vocalocity had an annual run rate of about $55 million. (That's not $100M and it cost VG $130 million, including $105 million in cash.)
Ah, the VoIP world.
]]>Microsoft hired from within for its new CEO, picking Satya Nadella. Will he be able to get Microsoft innovating again and find some way to win the mobile war? Or will Microsoft become like HP with a revolving door of useless CEO's?
UC shop, Arkadin acquired Implement.com just as Arkadin is acquired by NTT.
I do have to make a retraction here about this post: MegaPath contacted me to say that the merger with Cbeyond was a rumor. Their CEO was unable to attend ITEXPO due to town hall meetings in the Northwest. So maybe that rumor of the MegaPath-Cbeyond merger isn't true. Although I won't be shocked if I hear the announcement in 2 months. MegaPath would have to get a lot of financing to buy CBEY.
File Sharing
PanTerra has pivoted into the file sharing/cloud storage space with a freemium file sharing service with 2GB of space called SmartBox. Agents spread the word and if someone they referred ever signs up for a paid service, they get a commission. The file sharing comes with the UC service integrated so that users can IM and talk to other users. Forbes had a great headline: Because There's Not Nearly Enough Choice Among File Sync Vendors - Panterra Adds Unified Communications To The Mix.
In this review of YouSendIt, a cloud company can learn a thing or two about customer service. On the other hand, $300 per year doesn't really cover hardware and network costs for a file service passing 1 GB files. It has to scale to a million users.
]]>BYOD means supporting a myriad array of devices (laptops, tablets, phones) on a number of platforms (Win7, Win8, iOS, Android, Blackberry) across time zones. Oh, and accomplish that without a training budget or any additional headcount.
For years, the promise of the future depended heavily on the inter-exchange of data between various legacy systems in the organization. This hasn't changed. The migration to the cloud involves taking a data set in one form and moving it into another computer system and data form, securing, backing it up, and allowing it to inter-exchange with other systems and users (securely and in compliance). Big Issue - bigger than Big Data.
The whole point of API's was to make applications talk to each other, but having an API doesn't necessary mean that the apps will talk to each other as needed or in a meaningful way. Just one more reason developers are in short supply.
If you can help alleviate any staffing problems or support issues for an Enterprise, then you have a prospect.
It may seem that the CIO list is buzz term heavy, but these issues became buzz terms because the problem is so far-reaching. Solve them to make money.
]]>I am surprised that it closed instead of selling it to any of the many other companies offering backup. There were quite a few who jumped into to tell Symantec partners that they were available to take over the service.
There isn't a lack of cloud backup services. In fact, there are many - that all do about the same thing in the same exact way without much in the way of differentiation or marketing. A photographer pal of mine has been telling me about his troubles finding a reasonable service to backup all of his photos. It has been a nightmare.
Cloud backup is a lot like cloud communications: the marketing sucks so it becomes a price war.
When you have terabytes of data to backup, it can take weeks - even 3.2 months - to make one initial backup. That sounds crazy to the average buyer. Then there is the growing monthly cost for storage. Backup is good that way for partners: it doesn't shrink; it grows.
But some of the older data should be stored a different way. Maybe stuff older than 2 years is on DVD or flash drives or something that can be stored offsite but able to be retrieved with a phone call or service request. Something that tells a story about service and not just automation.
The initial backup is long. There are ways to do it, like Green Cloud, to make it quicker and easier on the customer. However, it seems like cloud backup wants to be this passive robot service that provides little customer touch while collecting payments. Dumb move for an industry. No wonder some are starting to close.
Makes it harder for others because as more backup services close, customers get anxious about moving their data to the cloud. This will result in more closures and more prospects thinking twice. Nice cycle. (And notice I didn't joke about the NSA reading all the data in the cloud?)
The ones really scrambling are channel partners. It's their face and reputation - and yes even their revenue - on the line when a company like Symantec pulls the plug.
]]>Green Cloud Technologies will ship you a NAS and secure hard drives. First, you attach the NAS to your LAN where it will backup the data (or hard drives) that you need backed up. Once the NAS is set, the secure drives are attached to duplicate the NAS. Then the drives are sent to the data center, where it will be hooked up and used as the backup drive for the seed for the service.
After de-duplication and compression, only incremental backups from there.
That's the easy way to do the big backups.
]]>There are at least a thousand hosted VoIP providers in the US. There has to be several hundred data storage companies in the US as well. That's too many to survive in the marketplace.
On the one hand, how do you compete for storage with Amazon? Seriously. One company tweeted back to me with their special offer for anyone on Nirvanix. Yeah, that's the Problem! Too many companies that give it away.
It's like the BTOP and BIP broadband projects (including VT.net). Federal funds to build out infrastructure without a clear plan for a sustainable business model to keep the network spinning.
Customer Acquisition costs are just good to know; they are a must know.
How about the costs to maintain and delivery service (cost of goods)? Not a figure you want to guess at or fudge.
Churn is a statistic that will make you ill, but is a good indicator of many things like customer satisfaction and incoming revenue as well as how many sales you need to maintain revenue or grow.
More cloud companies will close down services. Many don't have a focus; they offer everything, like the Cheesecake Factory. If you look at the services you offer, you can find which ones are most profitable and focus on them.
It might be that your loss leading service is the jump on point for customers. But you won't know that without CRM, website analytics and customer surveys.
For the UCaaS providers who have added video, conferencing, blah, blah, if you can't track usage, how will you know if you even need to continue to supply those rather expensive components?
Run the numbers to make smart business decisions.
]]>Two Tampa companies merge "to create a Hybrid SuperVAR" (whatever that is). Vology acquired Bayshore Technologies. Vology is a hardware reseller. Bayshore Tech is systems integrator and will provide professional services for the combined company.
AVIS is acquiring ZipCar because (1) the economy is slowing and car-sharing seems like a bright spot, especially for the number ; and (2) Zipcar was a great entrepreneurial idea but a poor public company idea. Hertz is acquiring Dollar/Thrifty and Enterprise owns Alamo. This move will capitalize on the gradual decline of car ownership, especially in metro areas. Zipcar's technology will allow Avis to get rid of more people to be replaced by kiosks (like Alamo has). The VC's - including Steve Case's Revolution LLC which made $96M on this deal - are happy. Next up at the plate: Cars2Go, Flexcar, City Car and Car Share.
Imation buys storage systems provider Nexsan for $120 million. Storage is huge. Are you getting your piece of the pie by selling data storage??
HP has truly lost its way. Meg Whitman is right up there with Sprint's Hesse in CEO thinking. HP suing GM over executives that went to work at GM. Follow up litigation over R&D with this announcement: HP threatens to axe units that fail to meet targets. That will certainly motivate employees - NOT! HP used to be an innovation center. Now it just keeps throwing away assets. Poor management and an even poorer board of directors. Why isn't The Law Firm of Wohl & Fruchter looking into this level of fiduciary negligence by corporate managers?
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