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I'm in Atlanta speaking at the Microcorp One-on-One event about Trends in 2010. The three trends that I see for agents are the following: Applications, Quality of Service (QOS), and Mobile Broadband (MBB). But they are kind of inter-dependent. Ubiquious broadband leads to innovative uses and applications. Applications like on smartphones lead to a greater need for mobile broadband networks.

Mobile Broadband is growing. Smartphones are replacing cellular handsets. Social networks are moving to mobile devices so people can Facebook and Tweet. RIM's Blackberry brought us mobile email, but it is a standard on many phones now. Netbooks and data cards are presenting the US cellular companies with some fits. They like the additional revenue, but have to keep dropping billions on the network backhaul and capacity upgrades. (And another $45B+ on the upgrade to LTE/4G).

All this means that there are new uses for the mobile broadband, like the Kindle. Sprint's Wispernet allows Amazon to instantly download books, magazines, newspapers and blogs to Kindle devices. Machine-to-machine devices can utilize the cellular data network to provide connectivity for ATM machines, security cameras, and a host of other devices that need to communicate with a NOC or remote server.

All of this is a cycle of applications driving network usage. Ubiquious broadband driving more apps. It's one reason that the FCC needs to maintain open network and Net Neutrality guidelines in place.

Applications - like email, databases, office suites, CRM - are creating a demand for managed services, such as an outsourced IT department. In addition, businesses are looking at the Cloud - moving applications to a data center for redundancy, security, and availability - as a way to save money and stop worrying about the IT department. With applications being delivered in the Cloud or by way of SAAS or even Virtualization, Agents have a chance to offer more than just Internet Access or WAN circuits, like private line. Agents can sell Layer 2 to Layer 7 - pipe to apps. It's a way to get deeper into accounts. It's a way to offer a complete solution. It's a way to deliver on the label of Trusted Advisor.

Applications are driving sales. Voice and email are just the primary apps. Business critical data is also driving mobile broadband. Ubiquious broadband is allowing for innovative ways of accessing data. The problem becomes reliable access to the data. That's where Quality of Service comes in. QOS on the WAN is what is needed to access data reliably and quickly. The MPLS trigger is the Class of Service reliability and prioritization of data over the network. This is paramount for businesses running a truly converged network with video, database, VoIP, email and Internet riding the same pipes. WAN Optimization is selling due to the cost containment and the performance enhancement. Big bang for the buck.

So the agents can sell mobile broadband, applications via Virtualization or SAAS, and add QOS to the WAN to provide reliable access to these business critical data.

Master Agency Microcorp is holding its One-on-One Event for its agents in Atlanta next week. I will be moderating a session on Trends for 2010 & Beyond, where we will discuss the next series of services that Agents can create revenue streams from. 

You've heard the noise about Conferencing coming from the likes of Premiere and Inter-Call. With the Green movement and the economic realities of cutting down travel expenditures, video and web conferencing are selling. It's just a software application that can be sold as a service - (notice I mentioned app and SAAS there?). It creates a revenue stream for an Agent by cross-selling to your existing client base.

You can also offer Hosted Microsoft Exchange email and the Office Suite software. Alternatives to that would be Google Apps and now IBM LotusLive iNotes.

Managed Services is the new buzz word around the Industry. Outsourcing IT (computer support, server maintenance, software updating and backup) is a growing market segment as small businesses find it harder to keep IT staff in place (and trained). Also, IT is becoming mission critical -- well, access to data, email, voicemail is becoming business critical.

The panel will be with InContact, Sprint and New Edge Networks. We will be discussing 4G and M2M as a growth sector. Private Networking and QOS on the WAN for today's real-time traffic. And finally how apps like UC and Contact Center software can provide agents a renewed high margin business.

Please note I didn't mention Cloud or Virtualization.

While speaking at the FISPA meeting this week, I kind of focused on sales and marketing. Why? Mainly the E-Myth. Most of the ISP owners are technical but are very uncomfortable talking about business, marketing and especially sales. One point that is important is that ISP's are NOT selling Internet Access. ISP's are selling reliable, dependable high-speed access to Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the websites and Web Apps that people desire to use. SAAS and VoIP means that ISP's need to be cognizant of the fact that if you keep selling Internet Access you will relegated to a dumb pipe. Instead, you should be offering not just the access but also some of those Apps. (That's what the RBOC's want to do).

ITSP's are NOT selling replacement phone service. They are selling business productivity and efficiency through a new, reliable and redundant platform for voice service. It's NOT about saving someone 10% -- it is about understanding how the business uses the phone (and other communications services) to interact with prospects, customers, and employees.

Google Voice is now going public. Luckily, for some providers Google announced that it will charge for enterprise and premium users. At the FISPA meeting, IKANO (Disclaimer: I rep IKANO's Google Apps for ISP's) presented the concept of ISP's moving their email service to Google. This was at the tail end of a CLEC session where the discussion centered around becoming a CLEC is about controlling your destiny and your services. Well, outsourcing your email - still the killer app for users - for an ISP is tantamount to losing control. And the fact that Google - IKANO's partner for email - is launching Google Voice is just one more reason that the ISP's will say No to Google Apps. They see Google as the new AT&T.

HyperOffice is holding a webinar about Email and Productivity. It follows up on the LinkedIn Poll that Shahab Kaviani, VP of Marketing at Hyperoffice, held last week on reducing your Inbox with Online Collaboration.

This is of interest to me because I get so much email, including listserv messages and social networking notifications. There is so much noise to filter through - Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, IM/chat, voicemail, and text messages - it is becoming overwhelming.

There are days that it takes 6 hours to shuffle through all this communication. I think this hyper-connectivity is a bad thing. Notice how people in a restaurant or a bar spend more time on their phones than actually talking / interacting with the people right in front of them?

Crackberry was a joke, but it turned out that it is very difficult for people to unplug. I successfully did that for a couple of hours each day this weekend, but then right back online to see what I missed. It's nuts. I'm going to start a 12-step program.

Are you overloaded with email / communications? Is email bankrupt? (After getting 500+ spam messages this morning, I think the answer is obvious, except that email is primary communications tool).

Obviously, there are tools that can be used to make business communications more efficient, but some that I have tried slow down Outlook so much or eat up so much memory the laptop slows down that I had to delete them. Suggestions are welcome.

1. Are you overwhelmed?
2. Can you un-plug?
3. Do you un-plug?

A productivity consultant I know, Matthew Cornell, says that he has a zero inbox. I can't even envision that because some projects, like a fiber build, can result in over 400 emails. I leave them all in the inbox until the project is finished, so I can search in one spot. That's probably not the best way, but I also go through both my sent folder and my inbox monthly to make sure that I have contacted people regularly.  Again, I would be happy to hear of a better way.

Software-as-a-service (SAAS) is the new buzz in 2009. Salesforce.com hit a $1B in sales so its the poster child. Google is the other golden child of SAAS pushing is Apps and Gmail to businesses. For me, even hosted email is SAAS.

I am a referral agent for IKANO who is a Google Apps aggregator. , I am having trouble selling service providers on moving to Gmail and Apps. The overall ROI certainly makes the migration appealing, when you take into account Postini anti-spam licensing, server lease, power consumption, collocation space, email server licensing costs, maintenance and support. Seems like the ROI would make it a slamdunk but it is not.

Top 3 Reasons its hard to sell Google Apps:

1. FOG
2. Control
3. Change

FOG is fear of Google. For ISP's, Google is a competitor. Not really, but techies seem to find bogeymen behind every door. Which leads to reason two: Control. Techies have to be able to see the box (server). I call it humping the box. But the service providers have to have total control over the server or they can't sleep at night. Afterall, they are techies, who can run a server better than them? However, if you want to make the transition from techie to businessman, you make decisions based on what is best long-term.  Hey, Nuvox moved to Google Apps - and uses it to get appointments by telling every prospect: "We are partnered with Google. Can we meet to talk about that?" Appointments up 25%.

And finally the change thing. No likes change, especially when we have so much going on around us. It's the same reason that businesses are taking so long in the sales cycle - fear of change. But making No Decision is still making a decision.

You will hear other objections like:

• I just bought the server
• I just upgraded to version 0.7.1.1.1.3b and paid for it.
• I just re-cast my Postini contract

The servers can be re-used for something else. The sunk cost on the software can probably be re-claimed by the move to Outsourcing.

Today, I was talking to a salesperson for Hosted Exchange. We agreed that there are big obstacles to people buying into hosted email - whether Exchange or Gmail.

1. Change
2. Headcount
3. ROI

Again the fear of change is number 1. No one wants to make a decision for it to turn out wrong. No one wants to make a decision because CYA right now may mean you keep your job. But in some cases, making the decision could save your company because SAAS is a cost saver in many cases.

This leads us to Head count. An IT manager isn't going to move to SAAS right now because he will lose the budget justification for his head count (number of employees in his department). Maybe Tech One-Twenty spends only half a day each day on email issues. If you outsource it, what do you do with Tech One-Twenty? He can start working on priority projects or long term initiatives (if he has the skill). Likely, he will need to be let go - and someone has to pick up his half-day of work. Dilemma.

Finally, there is the ROI (return on investment). In some cases, there may not be a return enough to make the move. Even calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO) may not be enough if there is an IT staff.  But if the business doesn't have an IT staff, then moving to SAAS should be a no-brainer.

So how do you sell 40M paid mailboxes on Zimbra? One small business at a time. SOHO and every business with 50 employees or less. Or businesses with old servers or software (like Exchange 2003).

We did discuss that the customer acquisition cost is large. If the sales cycle is 6 or 7 months, a sales person is spending about 4 hours or so on contacting the client to get to the close. then maybe another 3 hours to demo, propose, paperwork, and survey. Provisioning is about 8 hours. So 100 email boxes is costing you 15 hours of labor. At $25 per hour average for a $50K salary, that's $375. But it is really about $488 when you consider that salary is only 70% of it. If you move them to Gmail/GApps the profit is $10 per user / mailbox per year. That's $1000 from $488. That doesn't include ongoing support costs. Just something to think about. 

I am on quite a few committees that meet mainly by email and the occasional  conference call. Neither email nor conference call are highly effective collaboration tools for an ongoing committee. So I have been looking at other ways to work.

One idea that comes up is Yahoo! Groups (and Google Groups). It's basically email but with the message archive. It also has a file upload area; polling; and who's online. But you have to register (using a Y! account).

I have had a cursory look at Stixy. It has notes and to-do lists, which makes it like a wiki only better. (Most committees I work with don't like wikis and have tried to use Google docs instead). We may try this one.

Another one that looks good is Genius Room.  It has a good review here.

If you have other ideas, please let me know. Thanks!

During a discussion online, some interesting items popped up.

Companies ban Instant Message. One IT Security Consultant looks at the irony of it here. Tele-Presence is all about improved efficiency in communicating -- no more phone tag, less voicemail, that kind of thing -- but how will that be implemented in a corporate environment that locks it down?

Social networking like LinkedIn and Twitter are becoming commonplace among the marketing set. Maybe instead of banning these things in a corporate environment, you embrace it and set policy. Here's an article from CIO.com on LinkedIn etiquette.

It boils down to tools. Will you give people the tools that they can use to be effective at their position?  If you are that worried about security, do an audit and train your people. Manage by walking around. Most theft is internal or social engineered. You can train against the social engineering, but if someone wants something bad enough they will figure out how to get it. It's just a shame that can't get that passionate and creative about the job.

I see that The Mozilla project has added functionality to Thunderbird, the email client I use. With Sunbird calendar and Lightning plug-in. "Since it's an extension, Lightning is tightly integrated with Thunderbird, allowing it to easily perform email-related calendaring tasks." My question: Is anyone using this combo as a replacement for Microsoft Outlook?

My Outlook pst file is about 1GB and email contents date back to my start in telecom in 2000. Can T-Bird run with 1GB in email, contacts, hundreds of folders, thousands of calendar items and hundreds of tasks and reminders? Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.