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.
]]>Google Fiber stopped over-building fiber to the home (FTTH) to give fixed gigabit wireless a chance. This isn't even 5G. This is current non-millimeter tech.
AT&T is trying to get BPL (broadband over power lines) to work with Project AirGig. Will it work this time? The power infrastructure is still pretty old/antiquated, ut technology has gotten better.
API isn't talked about like that. Integrations are. UCaaS as a stand-alone platform is not that impactful to the employee work day. Integrated with CRM, email and other work day applications is. [All About API is at ITEXPO.]
Intelepeer just announced a platform that integrates with Cisco Spark. Hope they demo that at ITEXPO.
The IDEA Showcase is Thursday evening. I always get amped at startup events because there is great energy (hope, promise, excitement) that we kind of lack in telecom.
If you like startup stuff, the week of Feb. 13 is Startup Week! Techstars runs that globally.
Channel Vision Expo is collocated with ITEXPO again. This is the first channel partners event of the year. And it is collocated with MSP Expo. Should be interesting because more and more referrals and indirect sales are making a difference for cloud providers. 8x8 notes, "New monthly recurring revenue (MRR) sold to mid-market and enterprise customers and by channel sales teams accounted for 60% of total new MRR booked in the quarter."
I don't understand Blockchain. (There I said it!) Maybe I will get a chance to see what that is about on the show floor next week as well at the Blockchain Event.
WebRTC is still a thing, according to Andy Abramson. We'll see as Real Time Web Solutions has a section of the ITEXPO as well.
Most of the noise in my email is about HPBX/UCaaS, SD-WAN or IOT. The IOT Evolution is happening at the same time in Ft Lauderdale but it is a separate show. Verizon, Amazon, Gogo, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cisco (but no AT&T) are speaking and/or exhibiting.
That is a lot of tech to take in at one time, but it also in one place. Where can you get that much info/demo/prezo in one place?
Some interesting stats from 451 Research Group.
Overall IT Spending vs. Cloud Spending. Cloud spending remains strong, and the growth rate continues to outpace overall IT spending. A total of 44% of cloud users expect spending to increase over the next 90 days, while 4% expect a decrease. In comparison, 38% expect an increase in their overall IT spending vs. 11% expecting a decrease.
Cloud Adoption. SaaS (64%, up 1-pt) remains the most popular type of cloud computing in use, followed by Infrastructure as a Service (43%, up 4-pts) and On-Premises Private Cloud (34%, down 2-pts).
On-Premises Private Cloud Vendors. The most popular vendor for on-premises private cloud is VMware vCloud (65%), with Cisco (33%) and Microsoft Cloud OS (30%) a more distant second and third.
Key Attributes. The most important attributes for on-premises private cloud vendors are Platform Reliability (66%), followed by Value for Money/Cost (47%) and Technical Expertise (36%).
If you are in Ft Lauderdale next week, let's grab coffee! Or join us for dinner on 2/7 HERE.
]]>This wasn't your fraternity reunion. This wasn't a bachelor party. People - men and women - spent their time and money to do commerce. Thanks for spoiling that.
People that don't know our industry - like say executives at certain VADs - I wonder what they think? We look like an unprofessional bunch of drunks. Who would want to do business with us?!
Maybe the emphasis of the show shouldn't be drinking early. Sunday it started at 4, Monday at 3 and Tuesday at Noon!!! Will AA have a booth at the next show? Or will Budweiser be a sponsor soon?
Granted the show had a ton of vendors and master agents, but the actual agent in the wild, the street pounding, circuit selling partners were missing. Frustration and booze breed testosterone, which leads to some awful behavior.
Is membership the Women in the Channel fueled by our frat boy behavior?
Honestly, as a partner, is asking for sexual favors for an order considered okay behavior?
Groping a woman in the industry, slapping someone's butt, pulling a woman into your room - these are just the few instances that happened at THIS show! These acts happen to women in our business every show!!!
Granted, the falling down drunkenness probably adds to the frat boy atmosphere, but shouldn't our industry be passed this by now?
People have long memories. We play musical chairs. The butt you slap today may be your boss next week. The guy you fell on while drunk may be the partner you wanted. There is a ripple effect because, like National Harbor, our industry is a fish bowl. It is small. People talk. It didn't go unnoticed. And it wasn't funny.
I am left to wonder: Is this who we are?
]]>All anyone is fighting for right now is attention. And I mean Fighting.
Look at me. Look at me. (It just amounts to a bunch of NOISE)
Another master agent. Another data center. Oh, geez, another UCaaS player. And this one is yammering about SD-WAN.
Everyone wants attention. But they want it now. On their terms. In the most annoying way because they think the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Put your money where your mouth is has turned into a SPIFF war, sometimes in conjunction with a price war.
Wearing bright colors and interrupting people with noise doesn't separate you from the pack. It actually makes you part of the pack.
Get creative! Be Different. Explain the reason you are different.
And remember that this is still a relationship business.
]]>I want to thank Velocloud, Edgewater Networks and Ecessa for joining the Blab to discuss SD-WAN and the channel.
One question I asked was how would a channel partner get his/her feet wet in SD-WAN.
SD-WAN consists a number of features, such as packet-shaping, QoS, load balancing, WAN optimization, WAN bonding, application acceleration, monitoring, analytics, IP-VPN and more. Not every vendors offers ever feature (a la UCaaS); and not every customer will need or want all features. These features do identify a pain point that SD-WAN can solve.
]]>I have written about the massive amount of personnel shifting going on in the industry. I would like to think that all this change would mean, well, change. But it doesn't. It means a lot more of the same.
When chairs are being removed, who is going to take a risk? Not many. Most will hunker down, hire friends who will help cover their backside, and aim for the center of the road, playing follow the leader.
I see it with features, product lines, messaging, compensation (SPIFFs) and partner agreements. The sameness is like drowning in a pool of vanilla yogurt.
As we head to two back to back channel shows, I am packing with no visible enthusiasm because for the most part, there isn't anything to get excited about. The sameness is deafening.
There will be "newness" in the form of the re-branding of merged entities. And there will be a new term bantered about: SD-WAN.
There will be some new faces in familiar logos and familiar faces in new logos. There will be parties. (It looks like drinking is the main reason to hit DC this August - and I don't mean because of the presidential candidates).
This industry that is hoping and praying and dreaming of moving to cloud services is in major need of a colonic.
In the UCaaS space, premise based PBX has not disappeared. The handset / desk phone has not gone away either. Cisco and Intel are still shipping boxes and chips. Laptops are still being bought (more of them by Apple than the old PC guard). The laptops come with hard drives and O/S still, not dummy cloud terminals yet. Virtual Desktop or Desktop as a Service is not on fire in North America. All those analyst predictions were WRONG!
Most discounted one big thing: No one wants change AND selling Change is Hard! Cloud is change. And it isn't even assured change. If you have ever been involved in software deployment, you know that most of the time the desired outcome is far out of reach. In short, software deployment falls short. That doesn't bode well for a transition from a controlled environment (NOC, servers) to a rental model (SAAS).
Are people moving to cloud? Absolutely. If you want to include Salesforce, Office365, dial-tone replacement sold as Hosted VoIP and SIP trunking as cloud services.
Telecom spend is down from 2014 to 2015. A lot of that is due to price compression. Cable voice is about $10. Some Hosted VoIP providers are selling seats at $10. This happens for two really different reasons. Cable gets to raise bundle ARPU by $10 to give you voice. It is a win for cable. Triple play sales plus $10 extra. For the VoIP player, it is revenue, any revenue. Please someone buy my services!!!!
One Broadsoft provider dropped about $3M to get to 12,000 seats. The high end is Vonage and 8x8 with just over 500K seats each. Not even a million seats after 10 years! Meanwhile Windstream has 1 million SIP trunks on its Broadsoft platform - and XO has 2 million.
It used to be that voice went to the ILEC. Then IXCs came along to rob some LD minutes and then some toll-free minutes. Then CLECs got into the game. Even at its heyday, no CLEC had more than 60K customers, except maybe some UNE-P players before they crashed. Today, voice is replaced cellphones, cable voice, SIP trunks from OTT and CLECs, Hosted VoIP by ITSPs and apps of every variety. Everyone is fighting over a voice pie that is going to ZERO.
This is the main reason why when selling UCaaS, you have to look at the whole system and not that you are selling voice. Businesses have to be omni-channel now. That is why cloud contact center is hot. That is why CPaaS is hot (twilio IPO and Vonage-Nexmo deal and my podcast with Zilkr.)
While this shift is happening, it seems no one is noticing because the talk is the same. We push products at people who don't care because it is all the same. It is transactional. At least everyone knows the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper.
If you think a new SPIFF for your HPBX offering is going to swing the tide, it better be larger than 7X MRC because that is the new table stakes now.
Well, two conferences of vanilla pudding coming up with a noise level that should have me drinking by noon. Let's meet for coffee. It's easy just get on my schedule.
If you want to be green jello in the midst of all that vanilla pudding or even better, a brownie or piece of cake, give me a shout. I have a bunch of thoughts on the subject.
PS
Next year at this time SD-WAN providers - meaning just about every LEC - will be in the same boat as the UCaaS folks unless something changes, besides the people keeping a chair warm.
]]>Throughout all of this I have to WHY?
Why is it so me-too?
On a webinar, the slide showed 13 vendors for Office365. How do you decide who to go with?
There are so many VoIP Providers that I have never heard of half of them (and the websites are lacking). This is a small fraction of the VoIP Providers available to the average partner.
There are two channel shows in the next three weeks. To anyone manning a booth at these shows, be prepared to answer: Why You?
If you can't answer that, you better have a coupon for 6x SPIFF to handout.
In case you were wondering, a VAD is a value added distributor like SYNNEX, Ingram, Tech Data, Jenne.
]]>The music industry died in 5 years. Blame it on Napster, but it was more about the Kingpins not wanted to change. Movies and TV are facing this, but seem to be adjusting better than the music industry did.
Newspapers blame Google and so much else on the fact that they just didn't want to figure out a service model. What they need is a newspaper subscription service like Rhapsody for Music or Amazon Prime for News. Micro-payments that get you into a dozen or so news outlets. Not enough people are going to subscribe to one newspaper, especially when the news is free on another site. If a bunch of newspapers got together, they could make it work. The Tribune Co or the Garnett company or Ziff-Davis or Time-Warner just haven't gotten out of the old product line thinking. It isn't about Time magazine. It is about the entire catalog. Just a thought.
CB Insights has this article about the 62 start-ups picking apart the hotel industry. AirBnB is Number 1. But once the hotels loose conventions, then it is over for hotels. Sites like eVenues and more events taking place at non-hotel locations will have an impact. [And when you pay $38 topark for a night in Atlanta, you start re-thinking that whole downtown hotel thing.]
Much of it is arbitrage. Uber and AirBnb are effective because (a) people need to earn more money and (b) people want to save money, even in the face of the uncertainty. That is arbitrage. It killed the long distance business.
Craigslist's free ads killed the classified business. Arbitrage.
When I mention innovation, I don't mean buy LinkedIn. I mean, adjust to the new sharing economy.
When Slack comes along and hits 2 million users daily in 24 months, any responsible executive in the UCaaS space HAS to investigate that. Use it. Try it. Incorporate some of that into your next version. Or lose.
The big problem that most software faces is that it is not as easy or as good as the iOS. That was what prompted Consumerization of IT and BYOD. This created havoc in the business world. All because most software deployments suck, fail, and are not adopted by users.
In this autopsy of the failure of Coin, Product Risk is big, which is why you need a Product Manager, someone who owns the product and is driving it to be competitive, relevant to its users, easy to use and more. Most products lack a Product Manager.
Newspapers lack more than a Product Manager. They lack a business model. They lack utilizing technology. Why is there a single front page? When I login why isn't it more like Amazon or Google News - and by that I mean relevant to me? Why aren't they curating stories along with social media like Storify? The St. Pete Times does an epic job when chasing a Pulitzer - like here, just a beautiful Medium-like layout for the story.
It seems we are all in a race for revenue, but forgot that to make and keep a customer, you have to offer a product that they want, trust and use.
]]>Did you see that Apple had a revenue problem? Not as many iPhones are selling. "Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) says the mobile wave, which is split between mobile phones (voice/SMS) and smartphones, is coming to an end, and the next obvious market for growth is cars." Ben's blog is here and the slide deck is here.
The Autonomous car has big investment from everyone from GM to Apple to Google to Tesla to hundreds of other companies. It is where we are heading. (It is just another robot!)
Robotics. Global investment in robotics doubled from 2014 to 2015 to almost $600M, according to Financial Times. Robotics is going to replace a ton of workers.
Life Science (or biotech) is still healthy. From cancer treatments to testing, investment in this sector is still good, largely because R&D spending at Big Pharma has shrunk in total dollars due to consolidation. Also, Big Pharma drug pipelines are lean; they tend to buy new drugs, treatments and tests these days.
The ancillary to this is the IoT Healthcare sector which saw a rise of 20% in 2015 investment, according to CB Insights. One problem being faced is clinical efficiency, which is tracking treatments to boost the effectiveness of healthcare providers as well as to improve the delivery of healthcare in hospitals and clinics via connected devices/objects. That takes us into wearables, ingestables, brain sensors, home monitoring and more. A lot of cool stuff in this space, especially happening here in Tampa Bay.
In Colorado and California, cannabis startups are the rage. Legal marijuana sales are tracking at 3x Coke's bottle water sales.
Education technology is also seeing investment, but our education system sucks, so I am ignoring it for now.
CHATBOTS, PERSONAL ASSISTANT and Other forms of AI
Matt Swanson, Paula Bernier and others think that "chatbots will cause a near-term disruption in how businesses interact with consumers, and a long-term paradigm shift in how people interact with machines." See Matt's article on VB.
Paula writes about Facebook, chatbots and customer service here. Thomas Howe wrote, "As alternatives to websites and to mobile apps, Chat bots, digital assistants and intelligent agents are the quick and efficient way to connect your employees and customers to your business." Companies like BizTexter and KISST are already shipping services (and they did it before Facebook!)
Financial Technology is looking good. When there is a best of list of conferences for a sector, you know there is money there. The Fintech startup scene, according to CB Insights, has been healthy for a while. Pretty much the way Craigslist sucked a lot of revenue out of newspapers, banking startups will suck some profitable lines of business from Wells Fargo and other large banks. Hopefully.
BTW, Payments startups saw a shift in the last two quarters. Digital wallets like Apple Pay are here. Investments will slow as winners start to emerge (like in the ride sharing space).
SIDE NOTE:
Latency Arbitrage is why latency matters to anyone in financial. Listen to why. ]]>He says that as Charter is set to eat two cablecos to become almost as large as Comcast. After AT&T just bought DirecTV. After Level3 and Zayo have gobbled up most of the smaller players - and as Verizon is buying XO. Competition you say?!
AT&T, Verizon and Qwest had $235 billion in revenues at the end of 2008, up from $73.3 billion in 1984, when AT&T was broken up. As I have written before, all of the other carriers' combined revenue doesn't match a quarter of revenue for Ma and Pa Bell. Comcast is only one-third the size of either carrier.
If you talk consumer competition in broadband, well, the FCC's Broadband Report says, "approximately 19 million Americans--6 percent of the population--still lack access to fixed broadband service at threshold speeds. In rural areas, nearly one-fourth of the population --14.5 million people--lack access to this service. In tribal areas, nearly one-third of the population lacks access. Even in areas where broadband is available, approximately 100 million Americans still do not subscribe." Even "8 percent of urban Americans lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband." And that is without talking about the price per MB of broadband or caps.
FYI... Cable television companies provided Internet access to 43 percent of households, although it was available to 88 percent of the population....DSL from telcos is available to about 89 percent of the population in 2013, according to Dept. of Commerce report.
In the B2B side, cable is winning this war. Comcast's CLEC business is approaching $6 Billion (since just 2006). That dwarfs almost all of the competition except Level3, WIND and C-Link. Zayo only pulls in $1.2B in annual revenue. XO and EarthLink are around $1B.
Google Fiber has about 110K subscribers! So the competition makes a lot of noise, but isn't winning the hearts and minds of customers.
The Special Access pricing docket is still alive and well. The real problem here is that cable and telco are regulated differently - and cable doesn't have to wholesale. Also, the definition of wholesale needs to be explained, because wholesale pricing - like volume pricing - is lower than retail in every instance but telco.
After at least $1 Trillion in spending via BTOP, BIP, CAF, CAF II, USF, RUS and private investment, there still is fiber to every neighborhood. Best estimate on lit buildings is 50% have fiber. The other 50% are still on copper, which is fine if they are within 7000 feet of a CO or have clear line of site to a tower.
One problem is that the few larger CLECs, while visible via PR, do not make their voice heard at the FCC. The voice for lobbying is done by associations like Incompas, CCA, CTIA, NTCA, WISPA and NCTC -- all up against USTelecom - and all with almost competing agendas.
Healthy competition is important for the Channel because without it, we may be squeezed out of a job.
The USTelecom and the Top 10 ISPs hold big sway in DC and at state capitols. They win big battles. They can sway legislation - and they have deep pockets to sue the FCC every chance they get. The rest of the pack: notsomuch.
How do you win?
Let's look at the first game of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs last night. They were calling a lot of penalties last night - 18 of them. Plus the cheap shots and the fights. The Lightning won? How? By scoring. Focus on winning. Protect yourself but have a plan, execute the play and go score some goals. Same for the Competition.
You can whine to the refs (the FCC). You can hope for penalties to be called so you have your competitor short handed, but even short-handed, you still have to score a goal.
Most people go to a show to meet customers, to make deals. More of that. Want to help your members? Bring in more prospects and customers.
We need competition. We need the smaller providers to be financially healthy. We all need to be closing business.
SIDE NOTE:
One problem the telcos have is mentality. CLECs are used to resale, not owning or operating anything.They sell on price not value or brand. The ILECs can't comprehend competition. They think -- but I am the ILEC!!!!! It make it difficult to shift away from network to sell cloud or managed services. And we have examples of how tough it can be.
The other mental issue is nostalgia. So many are hung up on how much better it was from 1995-2003. No kidding! But get over it and realize those days are gone, learn some lessons from then and apply them to today as you get back to the hustle!
]]>Cisco demonstrated Spark, which I thought was for SMB, but is being pitched to Enterprise especially with its big hook into Salesforce. The demo that I got at the booth was rather disappointing. Not very visual. Looked like a console.
"Cisco Spark delivers cloud-based business communications that enables customers to message, meet and call anyone, whether it be on their mobile device, desktop or meeting room end-points." [PR] Isn't this what all the UC&C platforms promise? And keep in mind that this is re-branded Squared.
Not that Slack is the end-ll-be-all, but if you can't at least offer that type of look and feel and functionality (what I refer to as UX and CX or simply user or customer experience) then what are you doing? With two million daily users in 2 years, there is something they like about it besides the way it decreases internal email that people like.
Atlassian HipChat has a similar UX. The room or container or locker or folder or whatever you want to call the holding space for documents, conversations, recordings and notes around an event - sales call, project, meeting - is about organization and working on it when I want to or can as well as a depository for everything about the event in one easy to use, share, store space. This is a long time coming - and it still needs some improvement but it is getting better.
I still am waiting for a single inbox for email, texts/SMS, IM, etc. One place for all my comms. Maybe some day. Right after SSO (single sign on), which we haven't heard about since FOWA 2007.
I did hear more talk about APIs, SDKs, and integrations. Zapier and IFTTT weren't there but maybe in spirit.
Genband had some news. It has re-organized its product portfolio under Kandy. Now fring and other products that are monthly recurring revenue are under Kandy. Genband is in a patent dispute with Metaswitch that some have speculated leads to a merger. Genband is also doing co-marketing for its customers - see here.
And XO touted that it is using GenBand for advanced real time communications. When XO becomes Verizon in 2017 that means Alex Doyle will have one more platform to deal with!
ThinkingPhones came out as Fuze at this show with a marketing campaign playing on Unified.
NETSCOUT has a platform to measure service delivery issues in a multi-vendor environment. This platform looks at Voice and video media performance; Call signaling and UC server performance; as well as Network and enablers' infrastructure performance.
One big announcement came out before the show: Switch.co re-branded as Dialpad. Craig Walker was a keynote speaker at the show. Dialpad was in the Sprint booth talking about mobility and enterprise. (They gave away nice jackets.)
Another big deal was Avaya launching Zang.io, in what at first glance looks a little like Kandy's logo (and font and colors) and at second glance looks like they are trying to put one up on twilio. It is kind of a mixture of the two. "Zang connects popular collaboration apps like Google Hangouts with business solutions like Salesforce.com or SAP for a seamless user experience. Zang comes with simple SDKs, sample apps and the ability to use other third-party communications apps, which speed adoption and value creation." (You can read the rest here.)
This either works for Avaya and they move beyond premise PBX - or it fails and they file BK. Those are the only 2 options because while telcos like Windstream still sell Avaya, from what Avaya partners tell me, it is more about old logos, not new logos. And there is too much competition in the Enterprise space. Lot of big booths (20x20 and larger) at the #EC16.
One cool toy came from Oblong. "The result of more than 20 years of research at MIT Media Lab, OblongĀ“s flagship product, Mezzanine, is an immersive visual collaboration solution defining the next era of computing: multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device, multi-location." It was a total immersion telepresence system that could be controlled by something like a Wii game controller or an IOS device. It was a nifty toy that brings Minority Report to life.
Voxbone was serving up international DIDs, right alongside Belgian chocolates and expresso! Thanks!
Yesterday (3/8) was International Women's Day, so here are some forgotten women in tech history.
Today's GapingVoid cartoon is about silos in organizations and collaboration. Ha!
]]>Even companies that left the channel came back to it. (I am talking to you InterNAP!) Why? Sales. It always comes down to sales.
Layoffs may have been a result of low sales or missing the revenue goal. In some cases, like XO or TWC, it takes so long - over 2 weeks - for a service inquiry (let alone a quote), that more efficient carriers - for example, ACC Business - can handle in 24-48 hours. These types of operational hurdles WILL impact revenue. People migrate to where it is easiest to do business.
We live in a time of the iPhone and SAAS, where customers can hit a website and be live in less than 24 hours. No one is waiting around for a quote any more, because if it takes that long for a quote WHAT WILL THE ORDER BE LIKE and WHAT WILL TECH SUPPORT BE LIKE?
According to a comment from Windstream, the next gen partner is what they are looking for. What the heck is that?
WIND's program dates back to Nuvox and T1 slinging. All of a sudden, WIND wants to go upstream with a $1250 minimum sale. That will be hard to do for a number of reasons. (1) Their current active partners are with you for $300 T1s. (2) Culture of operational messiness cannot be fixed with an infographic. (3) At the $1250 space, there are numerous other providers who carrier a cache brand that live in this space - AT&T and VZ just being 2 of them. (4) Comcast Enterprise will now be competing in this space.
Another reason for layoffs is a new corporate strategy - like WIND going upstream. We used to see this about once a quarter at BellSouth. "Today, you must sell this. Stop selling that." As if any partner could shift strategy that quickly.
The conflict that most channel programs are experiencing comes from the trauma of wanting to sell stuff that the market isn't ready for. The hype of UC is louder than the ability of the UC players to sell it. While most carriers want to sell multi-location deals, a majority of businesses are single location.
It would be nice if a partner could sell the entire catalog to a business customer, but typically that catalog is so large and vast that not even direct reps know half the products! And partners need to be comfortable that the carrier can deliver on it. That is hard to do when the carrier has trouble delivering on network services - quoting, ordering, installing, billing and servicing properly, timely and satisfactorily.
How do you put a customer in front of a carrier that can barely supply network and hope that they do a better job on cloud services? Cloud services is something with more moving parts and a number of deployment flags. It is why some partners pick best of breed providers for each service and bundle that with the network provider that is available in that area. Is that the Next Gen Partner that WIND was talking about? Or did they mean the partner who goes upstream with them?
The strategies for the carriers is changing. Just look at AT&T, VZ and Comcast. AT&T bought DirecTV. Granted that netted them bundling in LATAM and saved them $15 per sub on U-Verse, but TV is like wireline. VZ bought AOL and launched an online video service - chasing eyeballs, Hulu and Netflix. Meanwhile, after losing its bid for TWC, Comcast is launching an Enterprise division and looking at an MVNO with VZW. Similar but different.
The Channel needs to start thinking about specializing. I say this because in healthcare now, specialists are still making money, while general practitioners are getting squeezed financially. I see this happening in the channel as well.
It isn't that you won't make a living; it is just that your income will decrease and you will have to transact more and more deals to maintain. Inside a specialty, price gets a little less pressing; you know the lingo; you are perceived as an expert; you can move beyond network to other services to get stickier and raise ARPU.
More and more service providers are looking for channel partners. Many are just migrating to master agents. Master agents are looking like Tech Data.
Channel shows are more numerous - CVX, CP, UBM, CRN, Penton, TD and the master agents. The co-marketing dollars cannot extend much further. Someone has to lose.
Shows that RFID tag your badge: You are the Product!!! Think about that. It should change how you feel about (a) the industry; (2) the show producer; and (3) the vendors/sponsors. It should also make you feel like a piece of meat or a commodity. How do you change THAT perspective?
The vendors, masters, providers and distributors stopped thinking of us as partners a long time ago. It is readily apparent today.
Even when they say it isn't a numbers game - it is. Pareto was almost right: it isn't 80/20; it is 95/5. They chase 100s to get 5. Are you one of the 5 - or one of the 95?
]]>The data center space is hot right now. Deals are happening frequently including the WIND-Tierpoint deal yesterday and the Digital Realty-TELX deal. Rumor has it that Terremark is up for sale.
8x8 landed 2 big customers: Regus and NetSuite. Regus, the global, flexible workplace provider, will deploy 8x8's cloud communications platform to 140 sites at first. "Regus was unable to offer a business phone service with key features such as mobility, multi-channel communications and presence-enabled directories. By selecting 8x8, Regus has ensured its customers have access to the most advanced enterprise communications tools to increase their business flexibility and productivity." At least Regus sees the flexibility benefit of Cloud Comm. Too often, our industry forgets that cloud is about change.
"Following an extensive multi-vendor, technical review and proof of concept (POC) process, NetSuite selected 8x8 as its new cloud communications solutions provider and 8x8's flagship Virtual Office business telephony solution to address its evolving global communications requirements. With more than 4,500 employees worldwide, 8x8 worked with NetSuite to onboard the first 2,400 employees by the end of August across nine locations - delivering a record-breaking six-week deployment in the final seven sites. The initial deployment spans three countries, including large offices in the Philippines. The remaining offices are expected to be fully deployed by 2016." [source]
These are big wins that will raise both 8x8's ARPU and seat count (and revenue). Who says desk phones are disappearing?
Edgewater Networks, Metaswitch and Jon Arnold did a study of 1200+ SMBs and VoIP in North America. You can get a copy of the analysis here.
"SMBs remain entrenched in a legacy environment, with 70 to 80% of businesses currently using TDM." So VoIP really has only penetrated about 25% -- sad really but there are factors, like how to cost effectively deliver under 8 SIP trunks with quality of service. The Duopoly serve 75% of the SMB market. Lack of features is biggest reason to move to cloud comm (see Regus).
Equinox Info Systems became employee owned after 29 years, David West told me at the show today. Equinox re-signed a number of bigger customers, including Fairpoint. Equinox offers call analytics, FCC reporting, VoIP fraud monitoring and help with robocalls and toll fraud.
UNITEL offers many lines of insurance and risk management for service providers. It now offers OSHA training on-demand as well as other HR compliance webinars. UNITEL is pushing further into its customers with HR specialists that know specific state and federal laws. At some point, you have to go deeper into your clients instead of looking for more and more clients.
]]>Some gems of advice for agents here, including how sticky cloud services are. Still relevant after 5 years despite 3 of the 4 companies represented being acquired.
There are 4 parts.
]]>While all that tech is cool, with 2000+ providers offering VoIP in the US, Marketing should be paramount. Unless you have some technical secret sauce (and really I haven't seen any) to go-to-market with, you should be worried about your story.
Today, would-be customers recognize the Duopoly, 8x8, RingCentral and Vonage. A few OTT VoIP players do a fairly decent job of PPC-PPM campaigns, so they pop up during web searches. Then there is the rest.
The would-be customers have 2 problems: too much choice and not enough reason to change.
In CHOICE: Do they go Microsoft, Cisco, premise PBX (like they always have before) or some version of Broadsoft (if they even ever heard that name) or one of the other 2000 Hosted VoIP solutions?
You have to have an answer: Why You instead of MS, Cisco, PBX, the other guys.
For cloud communications to really change the company, the business processes at the company will have to change. No one likes change. No one wants to champion change internally. Who is going to tell Mary that the phone she has used for 15 years is going to work different? Or she won't have a phone at all?
You have 2 problems: the buyers don't know who you are! and you suck at selling. So Sales and Marketing. Yet you spend all your time under the hood of the tech (because you are comfortable there). You think marketing is overrated and think salespeople get paid too much to produce too little. Oh and your website is from 2005.
Come to Genband, make an appointment with me, and let's see if we can't point you to the pathway to success.
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