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

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The VAR/Agent Comparison

September 12, 2012

At Channel Partners Expo in Orlando for TCA. Our first member networking event last night went very well with a good sized crowd. Today we have the TCA's 6th Channel Chief Summit with guest speaker John Zanni of Parallels.

The top Channel executives and even the bigger Master Agencies are all chasing VAR's. And this show is so cloud themed an agent would be hard pressed to find a telco element, which I think leads to less Agents, but perhaps not more VARs, since they have their own shows, including DreamForce this week.

While taking with one channel head, he mentioned that the numbers guys always want justification to continuing paying on that line item called commissions.



It Isn't Easy Being an Agent

July 31, 2012

Tonight at a networking event I met a former VZ employee - a channel manager for the last 5 years. He told me he was going to be an Agent to put his telecom knowledge to work to fund his life's endeavors. He kept going on about dabbling in the agent thing part-time. Picking up a project here or there.

Good News from CenturyLink Channel

July 10, 2012



Sat in on the CenturyLink Channel Alliance - Get back in the Game Roadshow in Tampa this morning. It was nice to see Stacy Conrad from Microcorp; Josh Anderson and his co-workers from Telephony Partners; Dale Tucker from CCA; and put a face to an old Qwest SE, William Hobbs, now a CCA Emerging Sales Technology Consultant (ETSC) for Florida. Hobbs did a nice job on Why VPDC and The Benefit of Cloud over Colo. The roadshow had 3 parts (Hobbs did part 2):

  • New Savvis-CenturyLink Phase II Rules of Engagment overview;
  • Cloud/Hosting Solutions portfolio;
  • Third Party Data Center Updates/E-Line;

Dale Tucker went over the Rules of Engagement, You definitely need charts and glossaries to follow along the categories and acronymns.

All About Low Price

July 4, 2012

I write about Low Price a lot.

While reading a trade journal, it got me thinking again about why this industry sells on price.

My thoughts:

You go low price because you either don't want to take the effort to sell or you suck at sales.

Agent Exclusivity

June 26, 2012

There is a lot of talk in the Channel about Agent exclusivity to Master Agencies. Most of the talk is from Masters.

Telecom is an industry of short memory. We forget everything.

We forget that MCI left many agents high and dry when they filed the largest BK in history (up to that time).

We forget that telecom companies have a history of BK - Cogent, Above.Net, MCI, XO, Integra, Williams, Global Crossing, Birch, MacLeod, Winstar, Adelphia, Covad and the other DLEC's (see here and here and here).





The New Channel Myth

June 21, 2012

The new myth about the Channel that everyone is spouting is doom and gloom. In Larry Walsh's latest, he talks about VAR's closing, vendors selling direct and other woes.

Here's some news for you: the Channel has ALWAYS competed with Direct for sales - VAR's and Agents. And we always will.

Can some of this stuff be sold via a website?



Transactional Agents Called Names

May 4, 2012

Over at CP, the transactional agents are being called Prostitutes and Zombies in opinion pieces. I find that sad considering that the Zombie comment comes from a guy who whined because he couldn't make huge commissions off call centers any more.

The one thing that most of these opinions neglect is that the World of Telecom is all about Transactions. It is a business based solely on Arbitrage.

Basic Math for TNCI

April 26, 2012

TNCI (Trans National Communications International) filed for Bankruptcy in October of 2011, owing Sprint ($5M), AT&T ($1.66M), Verizon ($1M) and Qwest ($1.9M). VZ and AT&T have liquidated CLEC's before for less than $2M. I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, but realistic. Commpartners was liquidated for less than $2M and AstroTel was forced to sell for less than $1M.

Get Off the Agents' Back

April 12, 2012

These were my thoughts on the 2011 CPZ that I was a panelist on. These are my thoughts as a reaction to the latest CPZ.

Surprisingly, not everyone read my post about how the whole telecom eco-system is shifting. Agents, Masters, Carriers and Cloud Providers are all going to experience a Shift.

An Interview with StartMeeting

March 19, 2012

I had a long talk with Greg Plum, new VP of Channel Development at start-up, SmartMeeting.com at ITEXPO East. He agreed to a short interview.

 

What's the special sauce for StartMeeting?

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