On Rad's Radar? - disaster recovery Archives

Are Outages The New Normal?

2013-04-24T04:12:15Z

This is a guest column from Peter Eisengrein, SVP Network Operations & Design, Evolve IP

Last week one of the nation's largest carriers experienced an outage that affected tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Voice over IP users, maybe more. At least one carrier employee dubbed the outage "catastrophic" yet the news media shrugged. While not exactly a reliable news source, even social media, which is at least a quick indicator of newsworthy events, hardly noticed.

How can it be that a "catastrophic" outage that is so far reaching never made the news? Perhaps it is because it was a busy news week covering an actual catastrophe, the tragic Boston Marathon bombing. If this had been Google or Facebook or Twitter, however, it probably would've made headlines. People that were impacted by the outage certainly noticed, though. Maybe we've just become jaded to "typical" outages that are not caused by nefarious acts of hacking, and maybe vast network outages are the new normal.

The unofficial cause of the outage (the official reason for outage (RFO) has not been released, at the time this is being written) was "the result of a DNS issue" which prevented calls from the carrier's PSTN gateways from completing for nearly two hours. The same source that called the outage "catastrophic" also suggested that this DNS issue may have actually been a denial of service attack; it seems unlikely, even if this is true - and at the moment it is pure hearsay - that it will be included in the RFO. Why? If you were to Google that carrier + DDOS you would find that there is a complete business practice focused on DDOS protection.

DNS is a particularly curious cause since some (many?) of the carrier's customers and service providers connect via IP addresses, not hostnames, and therefore DNS services are not needed. So, perhaps this had more to do with routing of calls within the carrier's network as opposed to access routes to competitive VoIP providers and enterprises. Whatever the root cause is determined to be, it is clear that there is still work to be done to prevent these kinds of problems. Is this the new normal? I don't think so. While it is still not infallible and problems with core components and services, such as DNS, can have a significant impact, a distributed VoIP network offers a greater level of fault tolerance than traditional services ever could. And it will only get better as we learn from these outages.

Cloudy Math

2012-12-11T03:10:14Z

There is a lot of talk about the big money that Agents and VAR's can make if they just switch over to sell Managed Services and Cloud Services. Here are some facts about cloud.

M5 had the highest ARPU (average invoice per customer) when ShoreTel bought them - at $2000. Most other cloud communications providers hint at lower ARPU - maybe around $1000 per customer. However, 8x8 and Cbeyond are public and their cloud ARPU sits at between $200 and $250.

When you examine the "cloud services" of many carriers, it is just Hosted Exchange, Sharepoint and maybe some backup. That's $9 + $10 + $20 = $39 per user per month. Add in a Hosted PBX seat at $30 and you are now at $69 per month. For 20 employees, that's not a bad billing invoice for Agents, but it is also an unlikely sale. What small business will pay $1380 per month for phone and email? A PRI at $550 plus maybe $100 for the PBX lease and $50 per YEAR for Google has you covered. Add in some Dropbox and Bingo!

This isn't to discourage you. It's to put a pin in the hype balloon, which is starting to annoy me.

You will have to sell upmarket. There are 83K businesses in the US with 100-499 employees, according to the 2009 US Census (the last year data is available). With 1000 cloud service providers in the US that will be a fun Red Ocean to swim in.

There are only 17,500 business with more than 500 employees. That 's the spot you would like to sell in but you would need to be connected or a white elephant hunter.

That leaves Agents chasing 20-99 employees - since that is a majority of the businesses in the US. Let's call the average 40. If you sell that business the full boat: Internet, Hosted voice, email and backup - the ARPU is worth it. The sales cycle will be longer. The deployment will require more input and project management than Agents are used to. (In fact, it is more than most carriers have ever had to do!!!) Post-sales support will also be required. So overall, it is a lot more work for a stickier client with more ARPU than you are used to. Are you up for that challenge?

Let's go back to the 8x8 example at $256 of ARPU. That's about a 9 employee shop. So you sell them 8x8 voice, cable modem AND another broadband service (like DSL or 4G or fixed wireless). You offer them Google Apps for SMB via NeoNova for some small change. Add in some Mozy Pro back-up (or Carbonite or other backup service that pays you). Next you try to get the cell phones - there has to be a couple that are corporate owned -- for a few more dollars. Don't forget the 4G data plan.

So you wrapped up the Internet Access, mobility, voice, some DR (disaster recovery), backup, email and office suite. After that, what software do they use? How about Conferencing? Do you see? You have to grab the whole wallet (or you can't make much money).

It has to become a lot like McD's. What do they do? A call center hits you first in the drive-thru with, "Would you like to try our ______ special today?" No. "okay. Order when you are ready." But don't forget "Do you want fries with that? or can we Super Size that for you?" It sounds cheesy but you are going to have to do it.

CenturyLink, XO, MegaPath and quite a few other carriers offer transit, Hosted voice and cloud services. It will all be on one bill, with one carrier to blame, with one throat to choke. It makes it easier to sell --- check boxes on an order form or site survey.

You better hurry because the MSP's like MindShift and others are already out there doing this.

When you consider that Parallels AS platform allows hosting companies - like Intermedia.Net - to sell, bill and deploy these services (Hosted PBX, email, storage, office) with a click on an online order page, spend this month - the last month of 2012 - deciding what your plan is going to be for 2013. While I hate the hype, many of your competitors are already targeting your customers. Selling them a T1 will be easy after they sell them VDI or backup or Hosted PBX. Then what do you do?

Again, you have to do it but I wanted you to have a realistic view of what it was going to be like. You have vacuum up the services - all of them - heck, sell them office supplies if someone will pay you for it! Managed Print anyone ;)

Will Sandy Rain on Cloud Adoption?

2012-11-01T17:09:19Z

Storm Sandy has flooded NYC and taken out power, which has resulted in quite a few data centers to have operational issues (i.e., stop working). The data centers experiencing outages include 75 Broad Street; 33 Whitehall (Cogent); 882 3rd Ave (nLayer, XO, Cogent, Verizon, Sidera and AT&T); 111 8th Ave (Voxel, Internap); and 121 Varick. [Paetec/Windstream are having outages but no idea what data center these use. Info about outages from slashdot, CNN and here.]

This is a massive outage - and I have to wonder why the lessons of both 9/11 in NYC and Katrin in New Orleans have yet to be applied.

That said, will this disaster cause people to more likely adopt cloud or shy away from it?

Some responses from the VoIP community:

"It could encourage companies to pay attention to their Operations team and build geographically diverse POP's that can handle a disaster in another in a different region." Shouldn't they have learned that in 9/11/2001 and again in 2005 for Katrina?

"Overall I predict a huge uptick in cloud migration. The people whose buildings and servers are under water or cut off from the world will see the value of having that off-site." That may lead to collocation sales, not cloud sales.

"The cloud companies who only had one data center and are now flooded will be out of business shortly. Just like the VoIP companies that are in that situation." Good point.

"People will be attuned to the conceptual irony of the fact that clouds are bad for cloud computing?" Which was one of the survey results from Citrix - consumers think cloudy days affect cloud services. well, 75 mph winds and high tide certainly do! Hard to believe in 2012 that data centers still have required gear in the basement!

The irony is that some of the companies with outages sell disaster recovery!

Cloud Outages

2012-07-31T20:46:21Z

I have seen this headline a couple of times in the last month: Cloud Customers at the Mercy of Providers! It's just ridiculous. We left a five-nine world a while ago. Redundancy does not fix everything. And to put it into perspective, to run redundancy on your own Hosted Exchange server would be expensive from a labor and hardware standpoint. It would also be complex and not automatic.

Even when youtry to build in redundancy (like Netflix did by utilizing different sectors of AWS), it sometimes fails. We have seen outages this year by Google, Yahoo, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, twitter, Rackspace, Salesforce and probably others I am unaware of. I don't think this will slow down cloud adoption. People choose cloud for reasons that have nothing to do with redundancy. Cloud is financially efficient (as Savvis puts it), flexible, and available from any authorized and enabled device. It also removes a required skill set off the books. In other words, businesses can focus on their own business and not on tech or IT. In addition, the remote/virtual/mobile workforce grows every year, driving more cloud adoption. There is no going back.

Think about doing it yourself. You would need the following:

data center room or NOC;
generator that has to be tested and maintained;
battery backup - tested, maintained and environmentally sound;
servers, switches, routers, fiber-channel, power channels;
duplicate gear;
fire suppression system;
compliance certificates;
licensing for any software;
client software or apps for every O/S - mobile and desk;
Internet capacity for remote access;
redundant Internet pipe;
VPN or other security device with RADIUS for access authorization;
staff that knows how to handle all of this stuff, 24x7;
power usage;
air conditioning;

The CAPEX would be large (which is one reason buyers choose cloud) and the labor costs - hiring, retaining, training, benefits, etc. - would be high - and in some cases scarce. And despite the outlay of capital - human and otherwise - there is no guarantee that you can keep it up 99.99% of the time - which means about 1 hour of downtime per year.

I'm not defending the outages, just saying that this will be expected behavior, just like dropped cellphone calls and faxes that required three or more retries.

Good News from CenturyLink Channel

2012-07-10T18:21:05Z

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. Basically, colocation, managed hosting, virtual private data center (VPDC), public cloud, private cloud, and managed servcies (like Hosted Microsoft Exchange) are all available to the Channel to sell at full commission - unless you engage an account exec - then it is HALF!

For agents used to working with AE's, this will be a bummer. However, half is better than zero. Also, with the ETSC as your godfather inside the C-Link-Qwest-Savvis beast, you won't need the AE.

A lot of colo and data center business comes from the Channel.

And for those that do not know how to sell Colocation and Data Center, the TCA has done quite a few webinars, including Getting Your Arms Around the Cloud by Allan Watkins of Total Telecom Management n Atlanta and Let's Talk Colo, moderated by Khali Henderson of Channel Partners magazine and featuring Dany Bouchedid of COLOTRAQ and Chris Palermo of GCN.

Tucker did mention that Savvis is working on a sales certification for colo and hosting. This silo will be a huge focus for C-Link it seems, especially with 54 data centers

Hobbs spoke about not talking about the technology of cloud, but about the business side of cloud, especially cloud services like VPDC and Compute-on-demand. It's about right sizing the data center. It's about OPEX versus CAPEX. It's about DR/BC. It's about getting out of the IT business and back to their own business focus.

C-Link also has an initiative to light up data centers with C-Link network - wave, IP-VPN, MPLS and Internet Bandwidth. There are 154 data centers now. In Jacksonville, FL, C-Link is putting in a ring to connect CSX, Peak10, Colo5 and the C-Link data center on a metro fiber ring. C-Link is also connecting 4 data centers in Charlotte on a metro ring. AboveNet did something similar in Atlanta by connecting almost all the data centers on a metro fiber ring. Agents can easily sell ELine, IQ Port, Private Port and WAVE into these 154 lit buildings.

Hobbs pointed out that the integration is going well with CenturyLink-Qwest-Savvis.

Dell Gets WYSE

2012-04-02T16:30:19Z

Dell announced that it is acquiring WYSE today. WYSE is known for its dummy terminals, particularly for POS (point-of-sale). WYSE also has gotten into desktop virtualization - not that strong a leap. Wyse has shipped more than 20 million units and has over 180 patents, according to the press release. This acquisition "extends Dell's desktop virtualization capabilities and drives attachment of enterprise solutions, including servers, networking, storage and services."

The other piece is that WYSE has 3000 partners. Too bad a CLEC didn't think to buy it just for that new channel.

Dell is an interesting company because while it is known for hardware - PC's, tablets, gadgets and servers - Dell is making the move to cloud.

__PLACEHOLDER__

Going back to December 2010 when "Dell announces the acquisition of the cloud-based medical archiving leader InSite One to help healthcare organizations simplify retention of healthcare data." The PR says, "Additionally, like Dell's recent acquisition of Boomi, this acquisition builds on our strategy to help customers take advantage of the economics and scalability of the cloud in the way that best fits the requirements of their industry and the needs of their business." So while Dell chases the Cloud, it seems to be doing it in a hardware-services model. In other words, VAR's are used to selling hardware and wrapping one service around it. Dell is still doing it. InSite One was image archiving for medical - basically, managed storage.

Storage - like InSite One, Compellent and EqualLogic.

Networking: Force10 Networks and SonicWall. Both also spill over into Security in the managed security segment, which falls in with Dell's SecureWorks and KACE divisions. Security is supposed to be a big game to be in. Dell is buying into that space. I wonder how many VAR's it picked up with Force10 and SonicWall... 1000?

Next, AppAssure backup and recovery was an obvious move to become more of a managed services provider -- or to empower its VAR's to become MSP's. That might be the strategy: empower its VAR's to become MSP's all through Dell services (and hardware).

This puts Dell directly in competition with the VAD's - Ingram, Tech Data and SYNNEX. Who will get the attention of the VAR?

And to tie that strategy of a VAR becoming an MSP is the announcement that Dell Offers Partners 'Cloud Services & Solutions Certification'. That ties the MSP bow up.

What Else Are You Going to Sell?

2012-03-04T23:44:40Z

TDM is running out of runway. Agents have already switched to selling Ethernet, MPLS and SIP Trunking. What else can they be selling?

Back-up, like Conferencing, is a cash cow that Agents just don't sell. From archiving email per federal regulations to backing up laptops, smartphones, databases, customer records, billing and more "in the Cloud", online backup service isn't much different from Google (see Chrome ad) or Apple iCloud. Access to everything you need through an authorized device attached to the Internet is the beauty to Cloud services, but backing up data is vital to business continuity. How long can a business run without billing records or a customer database? Not very long. Think how flummoxed you are when you lose your contacts in your smartphone. Imagine that contact list was your business. That's why backup is important (to your customers). VAR's are already selling different versions of online backup: their own; a white-label from Remote Backup, DriveHQ or LiveDrive; and a resell of Carbonite (who is hugging Agents right now) or Intronis (who loves the Channel) or Anxient or many others. There are some like SugarSync or Mozy that backup your smartphone and your laptop to the same account.

Managed Security - most of the CLEC's (XO, EarthLink, Netwolves, Integra, Cbeyond), the RBOCs and the ILEC's (Windstream and CenturyLink) offer some type of security offering, usually Managed Firewall, IDS (Intrusion Detection Service) and Network Monitoring. As more data moves to the web (Cloud), security will become even more significant, in the form of email and application security, encryption, event and log management, and mobile device management. For example, Reflexion provides hosted email security, archiving and encryption services exclusively through the channel.

Hosting and email services - everyone has a website or blog; everyone has email. Why shouldn't you be offering those services too? XO started out as Concentric Network, a hosting company. This was Cloud before it was called that. XO sells Hosted Exchange and website hosting. Megapath just rolled out the Microsoft suite. Intercall offers Live365. It isn't big dollars, but it is a place to get your feet wet in Cloud and apps.

Managed IT - remote monitoring of servers and desktops - is a VAR service powered by software like Autotask, Connectwise, Kaseya and GFI MAX. As businesses are essentially dependent upon computers and technology to do business, managed IT services become an option when skilled technical support staff are too expensive, churned or unavailable.

A step past, Managed IT is the remote desktop - aka Desktop-as-a-service (a term I dislike) and VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). In 1999, Wyse terminals were going to replace desktops for efficiency. It didn't happen (except in the POS space.) Now we are trying it again. MSP's offer this service - with a big fat helping of bandwidth. There are big names in this space, including Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft. There are also a number of providers, like IIS Group, who provide VDI through the channel. Navisite, which TWC owns, just chose Desktone as its DaaS partner.

Next to DaaS is HaaS, or Hardware as a Service. Don't ask me how this is different or how it isn't just leasing. Ask Chartec.

There are issues with selling cloud services - like the service provider's (SP's) financial position; redundancy and resiliency of the SP's architecture; SP's ability to scale in terms of on-boarding new customers properly and scaling tech support for end users; the end users' experiences as cloud services will change some business environmental factors; and licensing issues.

That being said, Agents should be surveying their current customers about the needs outlined here. Why? To get a bigger share of the customer's wallet.

Another way to look at it is: the customer is going to shop these services like he shops T1's, broadband, and voice. He might as well pay you to shop them for him, like he does for the telecom stuff. Get in there!

If you liked this, you might like this blog post too:

What about selling Cloud

One addition, I interviewed VAR Dynamics (local boys from Tampa) at ITEXPO. VAR Dynamics is a private-label Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud business apps provider selling exclusively through channels. Apps include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, Zimbra, BlackBerry BES, email encryption, email archiving and more. There will be cross-over in what a provider sells. Just as VAR Dynamics sells the Microsoft software and email security, CLEC's that you are already familiar with - like XO and Cbeyond - offer a variety of services to sell deep into your customers.

Telecom Tidbits on Presidents Day

2012-02-20T19:22:10Z

On a LinkedIn group we are discussing SLA (service level agreements) and how they do not represent uptime. If you need uptime, you need redundancy. You need to build a resilient network. Netwolves has a solution called Bonded Broadband. "NetWolves consolidates the best carriers through their Bonded Broadband product by combining four circuits of diverse types from different carriers. It supports DSL, Cable, Fixed Wireless and VSAT (and even a T-1, etc.) simultaneously. It will to operate, though at lower speed, even when it loses one of the underlying circuits. It provides a level of high availability with diversity that is unique and valuable. Bonded Broadband always includes 1 static IP for the virtual circuit."

Conferencing is a different kind of sale. It's good that InterCall has added some scripting into their FAQ. By that I mean, by provided answers to questions that come up in sales meetings, like "The majority of our meetings are audio only, how can Unified Meeting add value to those meetings?" More companies should do that.

Aastra IP phones are not widely supported by Broadsoft based VoIP providers. Aastra gets a lift since Metaswitch based EarthLink selected 6700i SIP phones for EarthLink Complete™ (hosted VoIP service).

Analysts are raving about Rogers Communications in Canada launching One Number by utilizing Counterpath's Bria softphone. Now the customer has one number on any platform - PC, Mac, mobile, etc. Rogers mentions IMS, that long ago over-hyped architecture that was supposed to solve the telecom world's many problems, as the underlying network piece. The other is the Bria software, which presents an almost Google Voice like service. "Rogers, however, isn't simply re-branding the Bria Android and iPhone clients. It's doing something far more sophisticated. It's using the underlying Bria technology to power a web-based portal that can make and receive phone calls and send text messages to any Canadian number as well as video chat with other Rogers One Number users - all at no charge and with no penalty to a customer's voice minute or SMS caps," writes GigaOM. Jon Arnold has a good look at the service on his blog too, including a post about the beta launch.

AT&T partnered with VMware to launch AT&T's "Virtual Private Cloud". I have a blog coming up about telcos and Cloud. Watch for it this week.

New to the American market but not new to the global telecom industry, One Access

They make CPE for CLEC on multi-access platforms.

Looking for a white-label VoIP company? Flat Planet Phone Company is looking for a few select partners that want to own a VoIP business and the healthy (40%) margins that come with it.

I get press releases because PR folks like to make me annoyed daily. What really gets me is how many make outrageous claims like free calls and no more cell charges: "Zipring works with every phone and turns any smartphone into a free or cheap calling phone. It supports all SIP-enabled devices and does not handcuff users to Zipring software. It also turns any iPod Touch into a smart phone."

Carbonite has some cool new ads to sell online backup [from Adweek]

XO Communications Inc. launched a three-year strategic plan in 2012 that involves streamlining its product offering, including eliminating most TDM services.

The FCC has a lot on its plate and wants to close some dockets. FCC's Genachowski Tells Congress He Will Consider Closing Title II Docket, which proposed to reclassify Internet access service as a telecommunications service subject common carrier regulations.

I emailed my list this post from L3 this morning. How Kodak is just like POTS.

Has Verizon Stopped Repairing Copper?

2012-02-17T21:08:18Z

Over and over, I am hearing that Verizon has given up on copper. From repair issues to DSL to stripping copper out when FiOS is installed, the story seems to point to VZ looking to forget its copper plant.

in a discussion on LinkedIn about SLA's, one agent had this to say, "The absolute WORST cases I have seen have all been in the northeast where Verizon's copper is concerned. Verizon seems to have made the decision to put all efforts and funds behind their fiber build out (a good thing) but have completely sacrificed the quality behind their copper services such as T1. If your copper T1 goes down in New York, you might has well throw your hands up in prayer, because that's the only thing that will get it fixed."

Another commenter wrote, "Verizon in some places is actively ripping up copper as they lay fiber because they are not required to resell fiber to CLECs and ISPs at wholesale rates." This has been widely reported, because VZ doesn't want the expense of running to networks - copper and fiber. Plus the fiber doesn't have to be shared and the copper does. The copper means competition. Fiber means they just have to worry about cablecos, who quite frankly are kicking their butt.

Wholesale used to be a healthy business for ILEC's. Today, neither cablecos nor ILEC's want to wholesale anything. In fact, clients of mine in VZ regions have a lot of issues.

For example, "We had an outage about 3 weeks ago that lasted more than three days. This also affected [another local ISP] as I spoke him last night about the current outage. We [both have] a bunch [of customers still] out of service as well. They have been out of service since Monday. The last outage caused an exodus of customers and this one will do the same. Our guys have put in tickets, called to escalate many times. .... no one at VZ will listen. Ever. They simply close the tickets that we open."

It's a systemic problem - widespread - from the C-Suite down - the story has been that every company -- even wholesale customers - are the enemy and the Union and on-union workers must do everything they can to make it uncomfortable unless you are a direct VZ customer.

We have the case of a BK CLEC who had recorded conversations with VZ employees soliciting a customer who was down saying that it wouldn't happen if they were with VZ. [This has been a problem with both RBOC's since I got into telecom in 1999.]

Verizon faces up to $400,000 in fines after New York's Public Service Commission accused the company of not making service repairs in a timely fashion.

What do you do when the RBOC doesn't want to wholesale, doesn't want to repair, and just looks at the bottom line and the few metrics that Wall Street analysts can understand??

Many states don't even regulate the ILEC any more, so what do they do? It becomes the job of the FTC, the FCC and the court system. Talk about a deck stacked against the customer!

When our underlying telecommunications structure suffers, so too does our economic growth.

here's 2 problems with a fiber only strategy for an ILEC:

One, fiber goes out with power, so no 911 or dial-tone when the lights go out.

Two, the installation period for fiber is wicked long. Copper can be installed within two weeks. Fiber takes months. That hurts businesses. I have one moving in 3 weeks and to get 20MB of bandwidth he has to wait months. That won't work.

Ever think that just nothing in this country makes sense any more?

In the discussion about SLA's, the conclusion is to convince your clients to buy redundancy: 2 pipes. That's nice in theory but not in reality. The thing is that you have to set the expectation that if Internet or VoIP is integral to their business operations, no SLA is going to save them, redundancy and business continuity planning will. Otherwise, an outage will be a disaster that they have not planned for. It is not IF, it is WHEN.

Trouble at Vu

2012-01-12T21:09:35Z

Got an email that VU dumped their entire sales force this week! The email went on "They are in dire financial trouble and their CEO is facing prison for insider trading for his sale of his stock as CEO of Zenith Infotech prior to their sale to Summit Partners."

Not sure how accurate it is but Vu TelePresence is part of the Zenith World Group of companies. Summit Partners put some of their capital into Zenith Infotech spinoff, Zenith RMM, a remote monitoring service. The cash infusion was necessary because in 3Q 2011 Zenith missed a bond payment which sent speculation that the company was in trouble. The company says everything is fine and the cash will be used for acquisitions.

I don't know. "Today, nearly 3,000 MSP partners use the Zenith RMM platform to manage almost 400,000 endpoints." Do the math: that's about 133 endpoints per partner. How much can that bring in? Many Master MSP's have changed their business model because it takes scale to make money running your own NOC and being a wholesaler of service. But also that same scale can kill you -- too much payroll to make a profit. Zenith RMM recently changed its name to Continuum, probably to distance itself from the legal entanglements of its parent.

Zenith Infotech had a bad quarter too. "The depths of Zenith Infotech's financial troubles are becoming clear in its latest quarterly earnings statement, in which it posted a year-over-year loss due to declining sales and unstable foreign currency exchange rates," according to Channelnomics. Apparently, quarterly revenues in USD are about $10M and the sale of RMM was about $8.7M. I don't know how VU Telepresence fits into this picture. I do know that undercutting your price to take market share requires deep pockets and that's what VU was doing against Cisco gear. Lower price means less revenue and virtually (get it?) no profit. That doesn't help your cash flow issue. And all this press doesn't help you gain partners to sell more of your stuff.

The Inexpensive Cloud

2011-04-21T14:20:11Z

Image via Wikipedia

Amazon Web Services including EC2 is down today. When Gmail has any failure my twitter stream goes nuts. Facebook collapses often.

There is one thing people should keep in mind: Building Resiliency and Survivability into a Cloud Platform is not cheap.

For Agents, used to selling TDM with five nines reliability, moving to VoIP with less than that will be a shock, especially when they find out after the first outage.

For VAR's, who have been running their own servers, and like visitors to Vegas who tell me they are up money, will tell you about never having any down time, moving customers to the Cloud, where you lack control and transparency, will be unsettling.

Everything breaks or burns out - that's the nature of commodities (and servers, power supplies, hard drives and NIC's ARE commodities). Outages will occur. The Cloud Provider has to provide updates (honest updates) - and the Channel will need to communicate with the customer. It will just be a shock the first time.

Let's just say that a cloud provider doing less than $8M in revenue is not going to have the finance or propensity to design in high-tech security, survivability, and resiliency, because it will be just too expensive. (This might explain why the finance industry is taking slow steps toward cloud use).

Let me explain. Security is a full-time job. Administering password management is just one aspect. The network gear is expensive - IDS, firewall, router, switch, etc. And in redundancy?! Twice or four times as expensive. (Two per data center as a back up and two data centers equals 4.) Add monitoring all those parts. Then securing the data, encrypting it, backing it up, off-site storage, etc. Not only expensive, but a challenge to manage.

And for Cloud Communications providers, dual data centers is more expensive when you consider that the softswitch is $250K and rides on a blade server (x2 for redundancy at each data center). Plus other gear like SBC's which aren't cheap either.

Even Google and Amazon can't keep everything up and running. Even these two don't have enough survivability and failover built-in to takeover after an outage.

This will be a problem for Agents selling Cloud. Agents and Customers will have to come to grips with the fact that the Era of Five-9's is ending. Luckily, consumers are so used to dropped calls and other glitches on the Internet, that perhaps this will lighten the blow. (Much like how inferior cellphone call quality allowed VoIP to take hold).

Tele-Pacific Looking Wireless

2010-12-22T17:37:47Z

TelePacific Communications, the largest California-based CLEC providing integrated voice and data telecommunications services to the small and medium-sized business ("SMB") customer segment in California and Nevada, and MegaPath Inc., the leading provider of managed IP data, voice, and security services in North America, today announced a definitive agreement for TelePacific Communications to acquire MegaPath's NextWeb, Inc. subsidiary, dba Covad Wireless, a broadband fixed wireless carrier operating in California and Nevada.

Under the terms of the agreement, TelePacific Communications will gain approximately 3,500 profitable broadband fixed wireless business customers in California, Nevada and suburban Chicago through an all cash purchase of capital stock, per the press release. The footprint is complimentary so that helps.

This move just adds to the wireless moves that Tele-Pacific has made this quarter. Tele-Pacific Mobile has a wholesale contract with VZW to provide cellular voice and data services (3G) on one bill to its customers.

The NextWeb acquisition along with the 3G addition allows Tele-Pacific and its agents to offer a fully redundant circuit to its customer base. Wireline-Wireless bundles are becoming something of a necessity today as the business world becomes more mobile and moves depper into cloud application services.

EarthLink Business has a 3G data backup solution from New Edge Networks and a cellular voice option from Dealtacom.

MegaPath has a 3G data backup plan too.

As we move to an all-IP world, we are stepping away from a line powered five 9's reliability. The smart move for agents is to fill in the redundancy piece with 3G, Hosted PBX, fixed wireless, diverse fiber paths, and other modes of business continuity planning for disasters - minor and major. Data backup, network monitoring and security, even SmartUPS sales can add incremental income to your business, while allowing you to have a different conversation with your prospects and customers - albeit a higher level discussion.

Best Wishes for 2011!

8 Questions for Cloud Providers

2010-11-22T23:13:38Z

I've done a couple of webinars lately for VAR's and Agents about the Cloud. I think that between SAAS and Cloud, vendors are forgetting that they are selling applications.

I think the disconnect right now is that Agents aren't comfortable selling apps. They aren't comfortable with many of the SAAS Providers.

Here's the scenario: Agents sell telecom services for licensed companies, most of whom are public. And all agents have heard or know someone who was burned on commissions from companies they know. So now imagine we go into this nebulous thing called Cloud or SAAS, where some company says, "Hey, Go sell my Apps to your base!" The company is unknown, unlicensed and private. You have no idea what to look for; what to ask; what to expect; and in some cases how you are going to sell it.

At least the Conferencing companies (Conferencing is Software-as-a-Service and Voice-as-a-Service) like Intercall and RollCall have been around a long time. SalesForce too for that matter. But others? Not so much. Unknown entitiy.

So how do you choose a Cloud Provider to be a vendor?

Carefully.

Really the questions are the same for a Hosted UC company as it is for Cloud provider or SAAS company.

You want to know something about the financials. How many paying customers do they have? Can any be used as reference accounts?
Do they test their software regularly? Do they use an outside audit firm?
What does their redundancy look like? What does the data backup system look like? What does the Disaster Recovery scenario look like?
Are they using SAS 70 data centers or are they seeking or ISO 27001 certification?
How do they fix problems? If they say there are none, that's a red flag.
What does the SLA cover? What's the procedure for SLA's?
See if you can talk with any customers that require compliance such as HIPAA or PCI.
Use your best judgement.

Cloud Opportunities for Agents

2010-10-17T15:35:51Z

I was on a Cloud panel for Comdex Virtual for VAR's. (You can see that Nov. 16-17, 2010). And I am moderating Demystifying the Cloud for Agents at Microcorp One-on-One on Monday morning. Then I will be presenting Put Your Head in the Cloud: Opportunities for Agents with Khali Henderson for TCA on October 29th.

Where are the opportunities for agents in the Cloud?

Become a Net-Head and think beyond just the transit. Think about the overall way that the business uses the Internet, applications, and how important each of those are to revenue for the business. Security, disaster recovery, business continuity, data (storage, backup, archiving), redundancy, and productivity are what you need to be thinking -- not save money, cut costs, and let me see your bill.

There's more to it than a simple SIP Trunk.

What to Ask Your Prospective VoIP Provider

2010-09-29T20:13:58Z

If you are a VAR or telecom agent about to pick out a strategic partner to be the VoIP Provider that you work with, here are some things to ask the execs.

Are you a CLEC? It isn't a requirement to be a CLEC to deliver VoIP. However, if not, E-911 and porting will be done by a third-party. Find out who. This brings up the other similar questions:

Can they port numbers? Most businesses don't want to lose their phone numbers or toll-free numbers, so ask if (and where) they can port numbers. Many VoIP Providers back-end into Level3 who does the porting and hands them DID's (phone numbers). But you need to know the territory that you can sell in. Plus who is the RESPORG for transferring toll-free numbers? Maybe how is E-911 handled?

What is the Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity plan?

How do they handle Fax over IP? T.38 works for the two-page occassional fax, but if the business does a lot of faxes (lawyers, mortgages, etc.), TDM is the name of the game. T.38 requires a compatible fax machine, IAD, and network.

How is NAT Transversal handled? If some employees work from home behind a Duopoly broadband connection, how will the IP Phone connect to the LAN?

Not every IP-capable PBX can connect to every VoIP Provider. Some do Inter-operability testing. Some don't. A duct tape solution is to do PRI conversion of the SIP Trunk at the customer premise, but that will be messy. PRI is a standard with just two configurations in any class 4 or class 5 switch. However, SIP is a collection of about 30 RFC's - or think of it is 30 compromises that were never standardized for the industry. So you have to ask about inter-op between the SIP switch or SBC and the hardware before the order.

In a similar thread, you might want to ask how some special features that you are used to are implemented (if they are). For example, overhead paging, call park, message light, and other key system features. If they are important to the client (due to what I call Blinky Light Syndrome), you want to make certain that you explain the implementation to the business BEFORE you order.

Finally, how do you maintain Quality of Service for the VoIP packets? Is this On-Net via Private Line or MPLS? Or does this service ride the public Internet?

One for the Geek Squad:

What codec to they use? Important only so that you can talk about it with the geeky prospects, but also so you have a handle on the upstream bandwidth needed. FYI: G.711 (64 kbps); G.729 (varies); and G.722 (HD).

Obviously, there are questions about the VoIP Providers commitment to the Channel; how quotes and orders are processed; commissions; and the like, but those are the same questions you would ask a cableco, cellco or CLEC.