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.
]]>ITEXPO Keynotes in February were from iconectiv; Jeff Pulver; vmware; IBM; Onvoy and RingCentral.
Enterprise Connect keynotes this month will be from MS Office365, Google G Suite, AWS, twilio and Cisco. Not Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, or even Windstream or Comcast.
I'd like to hear a Slack keynote.
]]>I sat down with an old colleague from ISPCON days, Tristan Barnum, and her co-founder at Tellient, Shawn Conahan. We talked about IoT, the Internet of Things, and its similarity to WebRTC. WebRTC was tech; VoIP is tech. Both needed a business plan wrapped around it to make sense. (The technology alone is not a business.) The technology has to be monetized. Tellient is in the business of monetizing IoT.
Conahan describes a marketplace as the place where data inputs into other data. All that data by itself means little. It takes analytics as well as understanding to give that data meaning. Then you can take that data and deliver it to a user in a fashion (or graphical form) that he/she can understand and utilize, in place of a terabyte of ones and zeroes.
"For companies wanting to embrace the Internet of Things to extract the greatest value from their products and customer relationships, the new value chain must include device analytics." [from the Tellient website]One example Conahan gave was over a NOAA buoy, which can be used to improve shipping routes from the same data that the NOAA collects (but doesn't use.) Another example came from GoGo (the satellite Internet provider to airlines) who will use data to help airlines avoid turbulence, which wears on both the passengers and the planes.
In a way Tellient is helping to build a mesh network to connect data from a number of connected sources, add analytics to it and provide a functional output (like graphs).
For me, Big Data, AI (artificial intelligence and bots), math (algorithms + analytics) are all coming together at the same time as sensors, computing and connectivity are all hitting mass market penetration. Look at the Raspberry Pi, a $5 computer! Sensors are under a dollar each. Smartphones can be had under $100. Connectivity is all you can eat. Data storage on AWS or S3 is pennies. All of this hardware is commodity. The smarts - the math - is where the business plan is. It is where the money is.
]]>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.
]]>On Wed., 2/8th at ITEXPO, there will be a panel discussion titled Women in Tech. One of the panelists is Karin Fields, CEO & COO of master agency, Microcorp. Here is a brief interview we did together.
ME: What is the significance of this panel for you?
KF: Being a woman in technology has afforded me the life I wanted. I have been able to have a great career but more importantly be the mom I wanted to be. It's important for me to evangelize that this can be a good career for woman and to help encourage more woman to get into our industry.
ME: What one takeaway do you hope the audience will get?
KF: Diversity is essential for sustainable growth. For the men in the audience, it's important they step up to ensure women get the support they need to grow within our industry. For the woman in the audience, this is a good industry to be in and have they life they want.
ME: Why is it important to have more women in STEM and/or Tech?
KF: Women bring a different perspective to the table. We often look more at the human element not just the facts. Woman tend to be better listeners and hear what is being said and what is not being said. All diversity is important especially in a global economy.
To her point, Harvard Business Review wrote about a study that has shown Firms with More Women in the C-Suite Are More Profitable. "When we examined the profitable firms in our sample (average net margin of 6.4%), we found that going from having no women in corporate leadership (the CEO, the board, and other C-suite positions) to a 30% female share is associated with a one-percentage-point increase in net margin -- which translates to a 15% increase in profitability for a typical firm."
Join us for the session.
]]>This topic has been on my mind for some time. The fraternity of telecom seemed to boil over last summer. We just had a presidential election cycle where one candidate played the gender card as several right media outlets put it, while also being maligned because of her gender. That played out on a national level.
Having run startup and tech events in Tampa for years, it is still largely a male dominated space. Just 18% of Computer Science Degrees go to Women. How many Entrepreneurship degrees go to women? Probably less.
In the last year, there have been a number of articles like this one about Why Women Quit Tech. To address this and have a good discourse, a panel of distinguished women was chosen from volunteers:
As one female CEO wrote me, "You know what is interesting is that a lot of this article is exactly what Sheryl Sandberg wrote in "Lean in." For the most part women in Tech are in marketing and operations. They aren't in the "driving" positions." True enough, because as I look at the Board of Women in Channel, half are in marketing and half are in channel sales. (Also, not certain how many expo attendees have read or heard about Sandberg's book.)
Come join the discussion in Ft Lauderdale!
]]>The premise for the panel is as follows: "The way telecom, managed services, cloud, and hosting purchasing decisions are made is changing. Today, because IT influencers and decision makers are doing so much upfront research, often 70 percent or more of their decisions have already been made before you're even looped into the conversation. This can put you at a huge disadvantage if you haven't drawn their attention through market differentiation. Likewise, for those MSPs that have, this change in decision-making theory presents an opportunity to earn a seat at the table as a highly-differentiated trusted advisor. This session will detail how to ensure you get found early enough in the buyer's journey to matter, stand out from the crowd, command premium pricing, and attract world-class clients and talent."
As I have often written here, positioning, differentiation and USP are the key to value and standing out. We will discuss this during the session.
The IDEA Showcase Startup Event is Thursday at 4.
]]>Hope to see you at ITEXPO in Ft Lauderdale on Feb 8-10! Let's meet for coffee.
Vendors try to puke every ounce of information at me in 40 minutes! UGH!!!
Look at it from this view:
What doesn't work? You puking your entire catalog and every fact and figure at me.
Have you taken an online course or a college course recently? They teach one chapter of a book per week in college according to my adjunct professor friends. One chapter per week. Not the whole book in 45 minutes!
The key is to pick one nugget, one take away and present it clearly and concisely. Be Interesting, so that people become Interested.
You know what we want to know?
* If you don't know what a TED Talk is, stop presenting!
Also, Practice. Don't wing it.
Present from a quiet place like an office, not the airport, your car, or live from Starbucks.
]]>It wasn't UCaaS after UCaaS after UCaaS. It was broken up. UCaaS/VoIP is still big - and there are still too many vendors for not enough sales - but it didn't seem like every booth. At the CSNG event, it was wall to wall VoIP. It looked like the starting line for the Great Race, with teams in their matching colored shirts from almost every VoIP provider - DSCI, Panterra, Jive, Fusion, Momentum, Net2Phone, Nextiva, Vonage, Star2Star and a few others.
TelePacific is closer to finishing its merger with DSCI, which will be good for all partners as this CLEC pops out onto the national scene as a Managed Services Carrier. TelePacific will have a new line of managed services launched soon in conjunction with DSCI. SD-WAN will just be one of the new services that partners can sell nationally.
SD-WAN is making a ripple. Verizon brought the full team to its hot dog and beer session on SD-WAN. Very competent people explaining the different ways that VZ can deploy managed SD-WAN either from Cisco or from Viptela.
Ecessa is excited about the opportunities that the channel is bringing them. Both Ecessa and Aryaka told me that right now it is about education - both to the customer and to the partner - about what SD-WAN is and what it can do for the networks and productivity of the customer.
Polycom wasn't prominent at the show, but neither was Yealink. A few UCaaS providers told me that more and more UCaaS seats are beings old without phones. Jabra and Plantronics are picking up business. (I wonder if ScanSource distributes those lines of headsets?)
Level3 is still going through integration issues according to two different partners.To be expected I would imagine as they try to merge networks with TWTC and add SDN.
Quite a few carriers spent more than a little time explaining that they WERE indeed embracing the channel.
IOT was talked about, but I still don't get how channel partners will make money at it. Verizon went from $455M last year to $800M this year in IOT revenues, which is a blip in their coffers.
A lot of talk about the ScanSource/Intelisys deal. The X4/Sandler merger didn't even get to spend a week on anyone's mind. Everyone is wondering if this will be a trend. There has to be at least two deals in the pipeline right now. We'll see.
Not much else to say. Safe travels.
]]>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?
]]>Do the sub-agents get screwed in the ScanSource deal?
What Changes? That is the big one because we HATE CHANGE!!! Well, maybe more precisely, we FEAR change. Yet we work in an industry that is not only in constant change, but in the midst of big, faster change - with more coming.
Many partners have been in the game since the 1990s. Some of them want to retire. Some are tired of this sh stuff. They don't enjoy it anymore. They don't give a hoot about the cloud or UC and now comes SD-WAN. F*** Me!!! It's too much. Too complicated. Top that with buyers who think they are educated (and we have to re-educate). Other buyers just want simple. (I hear about this everyday as they ask not for UCaaS, but SIP trunks or just dial-tone.)
So we will see more M&A as partners transition out.
We will see a couple more VADs merge with masters. Why? Copycat Effect coupled with the very real Wall Street declining revenue effect. For example, Tech Data did $27.7 billion in sales in 2015, $26B now. That is the cloud effect on VADs. They need MRR. The VADs have tried MRR via partnerships with masters and rolling their own cloud services. They will need inorganic growth to counter the revenue decline. (And hey money is free today for a public company!)
The other point comes from a Juniper blog post about how MRR increases valuations today (if you care about that sort of thing.)
On the W-2 side of the equation, things have changed in the channel as well. It used to be that Channel Managers would become Agents. (See Aligned Communications, GCN and others.) Not as likely today.
Instead the CMs cycle through a bunch of carriers until they run out of options. Then they either take a position with a master agency or join the cloud services world, which is entirely different than the telecom world that they are used to.
Selling has changed. What we sell has changed. The WAN is very complicated now. The services catalog from vendors is huge and relatively unknown. There are too many acronyms. There are too many vendors. (Stat from CompTIA: 600 new vendors entered the global IT arena; meanwhile, the number of partners have declined.) I'm tired just writing that.
Top that off with M&A that scares the heck out of partners who are in a constant state of panic about commissions. There aren't many partners who have not been screwed on commission at least once. Every M&A deal results in one question: Am I still getting my commission check?
As we head to DC for another channel show, the buzz will be about the ScanSource deal as well as Shoretel up for sale. Hopefully some SD-WAN buzz and plenty of time for coffee. If you are going to the show, partners are meeting for drinks at 7 pm on Tuesday, 8/16 at Granite City Food & Brewery, one block from Gaylord. Join us!
]]>Both sides will need to adapt. Most of the servers being bought now are being bought by the likes of Amazon, Rackspace, Facebook and Microsoft. They are not buying through Ingram or Tech Data. That affects their business in yet to be seen ways.
Tech Data's business model is predicated on two things: logistics of demand and co-marketing dollars. TD and Ingram (and their siblings) live on razor thin margins for hardware. They are pure distribution logistics for hardware and software licensing that is in demand. In a purely cloud world, those warehouses scattered around the globe may have to be refurbished into data centers to house SAAS gear. If they can even pivot that way.
Just to showcase the difference in mindset between a true VAD like Ingram and a amaster agency that calls itself a VAD, look at this article: UCC Solutions: What's Trending in 2016? by Ingram Micro. To Ingram, Logitech ConferenceCam Connect, Sennheiser Presence UC headset, Jabra EVOLVE and Plantronics Voyager 5200 UC. Is that what is trending in UC&C? Or is that what hardware is selling (or more likely being promoted)?
For years, we have waited to see if Insight or D&H or SYNNEX would buy a master agency in order to ramp up the shift to MRR. It hasn't happened yet.
Now that ADTRAN is pushing its hardware-as-a-service model, VADs have to consider what that means to their meager margins, sooner rather than later.
The other shift that will affect the VADs is the shift to SD-WAN. This means white box CPE in place of routers, switches, IADs, etc. The SD-WAN appliance will be just hardware with the software control coming from the SD-WAN provider. That may affect distribution of CPE too. Does the MSO or CLEC drop ship CPE from TD or Ingram?
In the Faces of July gallery on CP, the number of companies that I have never heard of reached a new high. Someone mentioned at CompTIA that 600 new vendors entered the market. At the same time that the number of channel partners is actually shrinking.
I look around the room at these conferences and see mostly gray hair and bald heads. There are not a large number of folks under 30 in the crowds. Consider the number of mergers in the partner space as older partners ramp out or look to retire.
One joke about telecom is no one got here on purpose. Our sector isn't recruiting on college campuses or advertising the joys of channel partner life. This is a heavily sales dependent business. How many people go to college wanting to be in sales?
A lot of different pieces are on the table. It will be interesting to see how this puzzle is put together.
]]>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.
]]>