Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

channel

Where's ACC Business Going?

March 12, 2009

ACC Business is a subsidiary of AT&T. It uses the AT&T network to provide voice, data and Internet services to small and medium business via agents only. ACC Biz does not have a direct sales force. Tech support and billing through ACC Biz is actually more customer friendly than using AT&T.

Correction on Airband

March 11, 2009

AT&T Striking and Hiding

March 11, 2009

It looks like AT&T is heading for a strike. Most people at AT&T I know have already been cross trained (I use that term loosely) to handle union jobs. A wholesale account manager will be heading to Michigan to be a T1 installer. Nice. Glad I don't have any AT&T orders in the system.

Also, it looks like AT&T is keeping its sales meetings quiet.

What Would You Do?

March 9, 2009

When the Agent Contract is Broken

March 9, 2009

At the Channel Partners Expo in Vegas last week, I helped man the booth for the newly formed Technology Channel Association, a non-profit agent association that was formed to create a community for best practices, a code of ethics, and solid training of the indirect channel.

Regrettably, the TCA received two separate pleas for help from agents. Both agents were no longer receiving commissions from a carrier.

In one case, the agent was wearing a shirt to advertise the lost commissions. The word I heard was that he had failed to meet quota for a few months.



Airband Says Bye-Bye to Channel

March 7, 2009

Working Channel Partners in Vegas

March 3, 2009

 When you attend the Channel Partners Expo in Vegas, you have to bring your A game. (Rich Tehrani who is doing Channel Partners and CompTel is in a whole other league!)  There are meetings from morning till evening. Parties and dinners. Gambling and shows. It puts your legs to the test, especially when Starbucks at the Rio is so full its SRO (standing room only).

An Excel-lent SUTUS Bundle for SMB's

March 2, 2009

SUTUS, the maker's of the Business Central 200 office-in-a-box, have announced inter-operability with Excel SIP Trunking.  The real news for the marketplace is that Excel and SUTUS (along with Polycom) are bundling a system for small business.

The Business Central 200 is developed specifically for businesses of up to 25 employees, Sutus Business Centralâ„¢ comprises a wide array of advanced telephony, data and networking functions. It includes a business-class phone system, file server, email server, router, firewall, wireless access point, VPN remote access server, and automated backups. It has the ability to simultaneously support both standard phone line and VoIP connections and comes with an array of business productivity features.

SAAS for Agents

February 25, 2009

The first SAAS vendor I remember seeing at Channel Partners was nGenX, a subsidiary  of Lightwave Group. nGenX was offering Microsoft Office on-demand as a white label product for agents to sell for commission.

Next up for agents and VARs is GreenAppx.
With branded SaaS marketplaces, telecom agents and VARs can help small to mid-size customers eliminate capital expenditures and licensing agreements. SMBs can access critical business applications such as Microsoft Hosted Exchange Server, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, GoodLink Mobile Email, McAfee Security, WebEx Conferencing, and IBM Data Back Up and Recovery.



SMB Nation VoIP Survey

February 24, 2009

"SMB Nation is a community of over 35,000 small and medium business (SMB) technology consultants, channel partners, sponsors and resellers. With an impressive 10-year history serving as a trusted advisor and mentor to the SMB consulting and  reseller channel, SMB Nation has been able to consistently reinvent itself based upon changing market conditions." SMB Nation did a VoIP survey with NGT. 260 responded (results here).

These are the services they currently provide:

  • Networking infrastructure (91.1%)
  • Mobility sales, services, support (52.7%)
  • VoIP-specific sales, services, support (44.2%)
  • Telephony sales, services, and support (35.3%)
  • Line of business applications (35.7%)
  • Database development/programming/development (32.6%)
  • Web hosting (27.5%)
  • Host e-mail (26.7%)
These are the services they will add:

  • VoIP sales, service, support (56.2%)
  • Security (36.6%)
  • Telephony sales, services, and support (28.1%)
  • Web hosting, hosted services (25.5%)
It's interesting that Telecom Agents sell circuits and very few want to sell non-telecom services, but VAR's and MSP's are marching in to take over the Agent Arena.







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