The products that have been launched recently sit in big buckets titled IOT, Cyber-Security, Managed Services, SD-WAN and of course UC (UCaaS, UCC, WCC).
Rich Tehrani has a nice read about AI and analytics transforming companies like Vodafone.
COLOTRAQ has a new IT Risk/Cyber-security Assessment and Planning Service. They even brought in some talent to delivery it in Victor Zamora.
MetTel launched a single SIM for IOT. One VAR I spoke with said that they are going to run with this to the end-user because it is a niche that is almost without competition.
Level3 consistently emails me about selling cyber-security, especially their DDoS Mitigation service.
EarthLink is still around? They launched a secure public Wi-Fi connections with Norton WiFi Privacy (basically VPN). Considering how often businesses use Starbucks, hotel, airport and other public wi-fi, this should be a no-brainer sale.
Panterra rolled out Streams, an ode to Slack, but integrated into a secure, encrypted full unified comms platform.
VZW has One Talk, one of the few mobile UC plays out there.
When TelePacific re-branded as TPx, the highlighted products were managed IT, security, UCaaS and SD-WAN.
Aryaka just rolled out a clientless SD-WAN: "SmartACCESS - the first-to-market SD-WAN for remote access, with built-in dynamic CDN." In the US, Content Delivery Networks are how a majority of users get their Netflix chill on.
Verizon announced that they are selling more MPLS due to SD-WAN. CenturyLink has said that SD-WAN is not a quick fix. So there is a lot of room for expertise and advising in these projects still.
AT&T says that enterprise clients want a hybrid solution to managed services. (Nothing new here). Some of the services will be outsourced to the likes of AT&T and some will remain in-house. That is the way it is for cloud as well - HYBRID, according to an Evolve IP survey. Private for mission-critical, Public (AWS, Azure, SaaS) for mass market stuff and VPS for DevOps. Pulling that together requires some expert help. Is that you?
All of these vendors are just waiting for Channel Partners to pickup the ball and run with it.
It will take more than the Twitter approach to launch. Twitter put there platform out there and waited to see what people would do with it. Years later, Twitter still has no idea what the business case or financial model is. Don't be Twitter!
It isn't about just throwing your toy into the yard so someone will stumble along to play with it.
We want to be spoon fed who IS buying it; why are they buying it; etc. (As I have written about ad nauseum.) It is all about the Stories! Ignoring this means that we will leave that toy alone on the ground over there.
I understand that channel partners have to innovate, change, transition, etc.
With network revenues steadily declining and telecom being a broken mess, partners spend all day selling bandwidth at lower rates - and lower commissions - and then having to navigate the many layers of Dante's Hell that is a carrier today to get it installed (and then fixed - yes I am talking to you ACC Business and GTT!)
In the midst of this mess, on-going consolidation and the accompanying musical chairs is making a partner's job harder, not easier.
Much of these products require new knowledge and some training. That is not time that is always available to partners. I know, Go Make Some Time before you become Extinct. You see, we'll have time when we are extinct.
Besides compelling stories, buyer profiles and the WHY, we will also need new sales skills. Selling dial-tone or network is replacement. Selling Cyber-Security or AI requires a different sales approach.
MSPs understand how to sell managed IT but some VARs do not. (Hence why they are still VARs!)
While many of these products allow a Partner to enter a green field with little competition, maybe the business model for the partner has to be demonstrated as well.
And maybe instead of launching more services, you figure out how to deliver on the ones you have. If you can't deliver the easy stuff (Network), I will never give you a shot at the complex!
Just some food for thought while you wait on the Channel.
]]>This and some other moves clearly closes the book on the era of the CLEC.
Southern Light got acquired by UNITI Fiber (formerly CS&L which was the Windstream spin-off REIT) for $700M.
The Intelisys division of Scansource finally revealed that they acquired Kingcom, the exclusive Verizon partner that they run their VZ business through. Just bringing it all in house.
There were more announcements of companies picking a SD-WAN partner: OneStream picked Versa; Star2Star chose Velocloud; Nitel chose Versa, too. This is quickly becoming like Hosted VoIP/UC. It will quickly become a commodity, faster than any technology the channel has sold.
AT&T bought Straight Path for a billion dollars for the spectrum. Any spectrum is property with a water view right now.
]]>In cable news, you get a site survey done supposedly before quoting. You get the quote; give it to the customer who says Yes. You get paperwork; customer signs paperwork. Then three days after the paperwork is submitted, the site survey comes back. "Subject: Construction required. Comments: A site survey was completed that determine there is a total construction cost of $71,972 for construction to bring service. Your organization can pay the contribution of $69,687 or we can amend the contract to 36 months and increase total MRC to $2,400." Mind you , that $2400 per month is for cable broadband - 150x10. This happens TOO often. It makes no sense to me at all.
There are new acronyms to know in Security. According to 451 Research, "Managed security services (MSS) is an emerging sector of the security and managed services market. As new security threats evolve, many organizations find they lack the expertise to protect against increasingly complex attacks and meet compliance requirements. Security is one of the IT functions that can be managed by a service provider." MSS providers are MSSPs. If the MSSP develops and delivers security technologies and services, it is a security service technology provider (SSTP). If the MSSP focuses on delivering security services, but does not develop their own technology, then these MSSPs are "pure play". There are also Hybrids that mix the two. Fun, right?
Businesses buy a lot of software. Office365, Google for Work, email and web hosting just being the start. CRM, UC, conferencing, digital marketing technology, Business Intelligence (BI), Virtualization, Data Storage and Database and ERP. 451 Research survey suggests that spending will be up for software in 2017.
"SAN-based Storage (67%) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Arrays (59%) are currently the most widely used storage systems by companies, followed by Backup/Recovery Software and Disk Backup Appliances (44%)," according to 451 Research. "Respondents were asked which storage systems and related products, including upgrades/refreshes, they plan to purchase in 2017, and SAN-based Storage Arrays (48%) tops the list, followed by Third-party Cloud Storage Services (34%) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Array (34%)."
This leads me to suggest that you ask your customers about software and storage. There is money to be made there and you are leaving it on the table.
Think about this: SD-WAN providers use an appliance as the CPE or end-point. This appliance can function as a switch, router and more. It can be a firewall, a wireless access point and more.
Most of the big name LECs (ILEC and CLEC) have added SD-WAN technology to their portfolio. Even lesser known former CLECs like TelePacific, NITEL, Transbeam and AireSpring are offering SD-WAN technology. That means less Cisco boxes being deployed.
Not only is this a problem for the hardware vendors like Cisco, ADTRAN, Juniper, Brocade and Extreme Networks (mentioned because of recent news), but this is a problem for VARs and MSPs.
Long ago, I explained that VARs selling carrier services was like CLECs selling AT&T services - you are fighting against your biggest vendor. Now those same vendors are going to take away the Box Business that floats their business. VARs still make money selling boxes (so do Avaya partners!). The margins have shrunk. The sales have declined a little year over year, but not enough to make many change their lines of business or their model.
EarthLink announced 4000 locations on its SD-WAN as it merged with Windstream. If EarthLink can sell multi-location retail and restaurant chains, the SMB market is in play. The bread-and-butter of the VAR.
I am not throwing around FUD. I'm saying that every industry comes under attack by new technology. The new techis SD-WAN; the legacy business is Cisco and VAR - as this segment moves to a bigger managed services provider and hardware-as-a-service.
Microsoft has been far behind AWS but then they started later too. This study shows that AWS has 45% share of public cloud infrastructure market -- more than Microsoft, Google, IBM combined.
Amazon launched a conferencing service called Chime.aws. They launched it with Vonage Business. Why? Unless the old Nexmo service is the back-end for the WebRTC voice and video and screen share. Vonage has 4 platforms - consumer VoIP; Vocalocity small biz; Broadsoft and Nexmo. I think they would have conferencing covered.
Amazon offers VPS and Hosting too. They also are a sales agent for Frontier and Comcast.
ABRY Partners owns StackPath which acquired Highwinds, a Florida based CDN company. StackPath will now offer secure CDN on top of firewall and DDoS mitigation services.
Dell announced that is unifying the Dell and EMC partner programs. Dell used partner feedback to make it simple, predictable and profitable. It is the best of both programs, says Dell. "It Preserves best of legacy Dell and EMC programs to reward partners who sell the full portfolio, including services, grow their business and win net new customers." One characteristic: "One deal registration program and a Zero Tolerance policy for deal conflicts."
Datto has acquired OpenMesh to further its pivot to be a premiere partner for MSPs. "The Open Mesh wireless access point and ethernet switching technologies will join the existing Datto Networking Appliance to create the Datto Networking line of products, optimized for small-to-medium sized businesses and delivered exclusively through Datto's global network of Managed Service Provider partners." I guess it will compete with Ruckus, Meraki (Cisco) and ADTRAn's managed wi-fi solutions.
In an interesting vertical move, "Evolve IP has partnered with Nimble Storage to provide healthcare organizations with on-premises Nimble Storage flash arrays, supported by HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST-audited hybrid cloud, cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions from Evolve IP." [channelvision]
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>"But bullishness on future business is tempered by worries about margin erosion. Just over half of the firms cite margin erosion as a factor that keeps them awake at night." Every sector of telecom and IT is seeing price pressure. Every sector has a couple of giants that control the lion's share.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Rackspace are the computing giants, but traditional MSP vendors like Cisco and Microsoft have affected MSP business models. Carolyn April, senior director, industry analysis, CompTIA says, "Naturally occurring market commoditization accounts for a portion of slimming margins, but some of the blame also falls on MSPs themselves, many of whom continue to compete with one another solely on pricing."
In an interview for Ramblings, Host.Net's Lenny Chesal remarked, "The world we see requires a lot more hand-holding, problem solving, and out-of-the-box thinking. We're really taking advantage of that, and going forward we are really focused on an open mentality toward solving problems, bringing in more, stickier solutions that aren't pure infrastructure." Creativity, Solution Selling, Out of the Box Thinking - and other cliches are actually needed today. Not just by MSPs either. CLECs, ITSPs, VARs, Agents are all competing in a different world. However, they are using old models to do that with to their detriment.
My favorite quote: "Topping the list of things that keep MSPs awake at night is cloud computing, cited by 62 percent of companies." The hottest sector that they used to own and could continue to own, but they think that price will beat them. All about Value and service.
]]>First up, Blue Coat is selling itself to Symantec for $4.65 Billion. The cyber-security software company was going to go public via an IPO, but chose the private sale route, which seemed a safer bet for the PE firm, Bain Capital, that bought Blue Coat in 2015 for $2.4B and financed acquisitions to bolster the product portfolio to annual revenues of $598 Million. Blue Coat lost $289 million in those same 12 months. Good deal for Symantec, who sold its Veritas data storage unit to the Carlyle Group for $7.4 billion earlier this year.
BitTitan, the cloud services enablement specialist, has announced that it has closed a $15 million round of Series A financing led by TVC Capital, according to Channel Vision mag.
Speaking of IPO, twilio filed for one. VoIP Logic has an interesting take on it here.
Two Rhode Island based IT firms merge. "Carousel Industries, a leader in communication and network technologies, professional and managed services and cloud solutions, today announced its intent to acquire Atrion, Inc., a leading IT services firm specializing in security, productivity and collaboration, unified communications, networking, applications and integrations and data center solutions." This kind of PR is annoying to me because no one - even with 1300 employees - can be a "leader" in every aspect of IT and comms. And most mergers don't even come close to 1+ 1 = 3. Rarely do you get 1+1=2. It is usually 1+1=1.
Now for the big news: Microsoft is buying LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in cash. I have no idea why everyone is calling this a real-time comms project. The adoption of Slack changed everything. You can see it in how other projects have pivoted or added features, like containers, groupware, video and voice calling.
To me this seems more like a continuation of efforts to be a portal for employees that Sharepoint started. As Microsoft works on Sharepoint revisions (to look more like Slack?), they have to be thinking of ways to compete with Facebook and the myriad social networks that are taking up eyeballs, video and chatting away from telcos and enterprise communication systems.
Slack's loudest benefit is the reduction in email, which means less time people spend in Outlook. Cisco Spark will have people doing everything from a single GUI (in theory). That means Office365 is just one of the integrated services.
Do you need MS Office suite if your resume is on LinkedIn, docs are shared on a collab platform, databases are in the cloud, and contacts are on your phone?
No one wants Windows 10 and its all seeing activity tracking. Add that to LinkedIn and MS will know an awful lot about a lot of people. Almost as much as Google and Facebook know.
Microsoft has tried this before with acquisitions of Lync, Yammer and Skype. It takes them years to get the integration right (if at all). Remember, they bought Skype in 2011 for $8.2B and didn't really get the integration until 2014.
Maybe this is their new mobile strategy... LinkedIn, a clunky platform for resumes and social networking that as of late has many users frustrated and disappointed. Will we see Lync integration in LinkedIn soon? Click to email, call, chat, video anyone in your network? Oh, won't that be fun from a noise stand point.
They just dumped Nokia and took a huge write off on that mess. Have they made any money yet on Skype?
According to the MS CEO, it is all about the professional network meeting the professional network: "Think about it: How people find jobs, build skills, sell, market and get work done and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world. It requires a vibrant network that brings together a professional's information in LinkedIn's public network with the information in Office 365 and Dynamics."
Even this LinkedIn fan boy isn't sure what Microsoft is doing with Azure, Xbox, Win10 because he is on Chrome. The way I see it, LinkedIn in two years becomes integrated into Outlook, Office365, Win10, Sharepoint and Dynamics. Some of that will look like Salesforce and data.com (although Salesforce got a deal on Jigsaw in 2010.) The social graph adds a piece that MS doesn't currently have.
It will be interesting to see how Lynda.com is utilized by the combined entity. Will that become a tile on Win10 and Xbox? Probably. The deal slides are on Scrbd.
For segments of the marketplace this Microsoft centric move will make sense. Others will turn to Google for Work or Facebook for Work - or an IBM suite if they ever resurrect Lotus Notes & Domino into a true competitor for enterprise. Spark may take some of this. Add Apache Open Office to Spark and what do you need MS for?
What will also happen is that another online Rolodex will make some headway in this space, the same way that Snapchat took from the other social apps.
A bunch of investors are going to look at this and push more transactions. Facebook and Google hardly ever play follower, but they might shop for an online resume platform like JibberJobber - or a jobs board like Indeed or Monster to put some pressure on Microsoft and LinkedIn. If nothing else, that type of data can only add to the social graph that both of them have. This creates an opportunity for someone because there is a window of about two years before this integrates. We live in a first mover marketplace.
$26 Billion in cash, like money is nothing. Will this be a bigger debacle than Nokia?
]]>Some folks didn't particularly care for the forecast in my podcast with Acuity.
"Hope is not a strategy. [I have a little bit on strategy by PWC here.]
One thing about the channel: Most people are heads down just getting from payroll to payroll with no time or desire to look up and pivot. And, yes, picking a new vendor in a new sector is pivoting. Going from selling Internet to selling cable is not a pivot. Going from data to contact center or managed services is.
Master Agencies, carriers, service providers are all dealing with the traction-attention deficit.
In a call today, we agreed that an MSP is not going to risk his client (billing north of $1000) for a voice deal that will net him less than $150 per month. The risk/reward is too high.
What happens as average deal size is sub-$1000? Think broadband, VSB, single location and other examples as the majority stake of a book of business. That means that each deal is netting $150 (with 15% commission on $1000). That is a lot of deals that need to close to build up a decent monthly check.
Have you seen the look on a VAR partner when they get the check for a 10MB DIA order? After they have received somewhere north of 75 emails about the deal and install?
The answer: go up market. Add more services. Yeah, I know that tune. I sing it often myself. There are only so many businesses with more than 99 employees.
A majority of businesses in the US are small bsuiness. "In 2010 there were 27.9 million small businesses, and 18,500 firms with 500 employees or more." Also, "over 22 million are self employed with no additional payroll or employees." And "Among employer C Corporations in 2012, 99.2 percent had less than 500 workers, and 86.2 percent had fewer than 20 employees." [source: SBA and here]
So 18,500 firms with 500 employees. How many are protected accounts? How many are in play? How many are married to a vendor - AT&T, VZ, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM?
In an ideal world, partners would:
In an ideal world, vendors would:
But it isn't an ideal world. It is messy and busy and distracted. It is filled with buyers who rank root canals above dealing with telecom. The industry is rife with I'll save you money talk that has gotten us to the point we are at now. More price wars coming.
There is another shift coming. If the carriers can automate more and drive sales to e-commerce, Amazon will replace brokers. At that point, pricing will continue to collapse. Look at what is happening to Wal-Mart: they destroyed small businesses; now Dollar stores are snaking their lunch. Retail is taking a beating because it didn't evolve. Sears, K-Mart, Sports Authority, Barnes & Noble and so many other retailers are taking a beating. Go to a mall. How many people are walking around? How many have shopping bags? The answer: very few. They have Starbucks coffee cups, but no shopping bags from purchases.
The channel broker model has to shift as well. It may take a couple of bankruptcies to do that. Or it may take a much smaller commission check. Who knows?
Many agents were supposed to die when long distance compressed, but that didn't happen.
Inter-connects were supposed to go broke when Hosted PBX took off. That didn't happen.
Another batch of partners will come along and bundle multiple vendors into a single package and sell the heck out of it. Until then, keep reading.
]]>Try something new.
Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report was released this week. She makes 2 big points:
One: There are now about 3 billion global internet users, but user growth is stalling at about 9% year-on-year. Smartphone sales are slowing, as is the yearly growth in the number of smartphone users, down to 21% from 31% last year. There will still be a market for bandwidth, but the it will not be lucrative. Revenues need to diversify from network.
Two: The rising Snapchat generation: Millennials communicate with text, but Generation Z prefers to communicate with images. There are now over 3 billion images shared daily between Snapchat, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp--all but one of which are owned by Facebook. 55% of Pinterest users use the site to find products they want to buy. Messaging apps are moving from simple text tools to communicate with friends to platforms for commerce. It will make selling simple VoIP solutions difficult, because smartphone and apps beat a Hosted VoIP solution. This will make it even harder on the remaining VoIP Providers.
Other things not from Meeker's report, but from the news.
Ransomware is a real problem for small and large businesses. Even NASA got hit - as did Congress recently. It is so bad, the FBI issued a warning. Selling security is going to be a big market. Data backup is a good solution for ransonware (if set-up properly). So is an anti-malware solution. How many businesses can afford to be down for 2 days?
Have you thought about selling data center? If they have an extensive WAN or MPLS network, a data center may be involved. QTS is turning the Sun Times building in Chicago into a large Tier 3 data center. It will have with 317K SF of capacity, 24MW of power and have fiber connectivity from 5 carriers. If you need help selling colocation, call the experts at COLOTRAQ.
If you want to stick with just bandwidth, how about managed WLAN or managed wi-fi solution for bigger buildings? Cablecos offer it. Some telcos. ADTRAN, Ruckus, Cisco. In a world of IOT and mobile devices, managing the wireless network is a pretty big problem to solve.
Don't want to sell mobile devices? How about mobile expense management? Stay tuned for a podcast on Monday from Wireless Watchdogs.
Have you thought about Microsoft - and riding the wave of hype around Office365, Sharepoint and Skype4B? If you have read any of my blogs, I mention Skype4B often. There is demand for it.
WAN Monitoring is getting louder. Master Agents have added circuit monitoring. AireSpring offers it under the AireNMS service mark. Most VARs and MSPs offer RMM (remote monitoring and management) of desktops, laptops and servers. This is similar.
Colocation, Backup, Security, Monitoring, WLAN and mobile expense management are all items ancillary to what you are selling now. You would be doing a disservice to yourself and your customers by not mentioning them.
There will be a gulf of disapproval. (see diagram) I think that gulf is about 5 years old now. Time to get through the Dip, grab the bull by the horns and change.
]]>Last year, HP broke up into 2 units. Now one of those units is in a mega-merger. USA Today reports that, "Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), run by Meg Whitman, late Tuesday said it was spinning off its enterprise services business, and merging it with Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), to create an IT services firm with $26 billion in annual sales." This will create the world's third largest SI with 5000 clients. IBM and NTT are probably taking notice.
NTT's Dimension Data acquired Ceryx Inc., a Microsoft-based service provider out of Toronto. Everyone needs to add a Microsoft division to cover Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business.
AirTight Networks, a vendor for EarthLink, renamed as Mojo Networks, which is kind of confusing because we already have Mojo in telecom. The company has tightened its focus to cloud managed wi-fi.
More re-branding: Dell Technologies is the new name for the company being formed from last year's merger of Dell and EMC. Went out on a limb there with that one.
Tech Data Launches Cybersecurity Unit for Channel Partners. It will showcase all the cyber vendors in one section. TD resellers "will gain access to customer enablement tools, including security assessments and professional services, to build security practices and increase their overall knowledge of the market." Yeah, and that just like that everyone is selling security.
If Cox thinks that Netflix and a few other OTT players have made its life rough, wait for the roll out of SD-WAN. Once that happens, businesses will have reporting to know what the throughput really is on their circuits. And the SLA credits will mount. Usually to get an SLA credit a business has to catch the carrier breaking the SLA, open a ticket and then chase down the credits. Now, with SD-WAN or with circuit monitoring that a few companies have launched, businesses will have the reports to show to the carrier on the mess that is the network today.
If every OTT player graded carriers like Netflix does, carriers couldn't hide any more. That kind of transparency would force a better network.
BIG RUMOR
Avaya was taken private in 2007 by two private equity firms, TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners, for $8.2 billion. Since then, Avaya has acquired Esna, Radvision and Nortel assets, while not exactly gaining ground on the changing landscape of global UCaaS, which is becoming dominated by Microsoft and Cisco. So the PE firms are exploring a sale! They are looking for a valuation between $6 billion and $10 billion, including debt, based on "adjusted (EBITDA) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization last year reaching $900 million. However, its interest expense of more than $400 million every year has been pushing it consistently into loss." Yeah, might have to take a haircut on that one.
]]>In 2003, a business would have ACT! CRM installed on one computer. They probably ran Hosted Exchange from an MSP, but had MS Office with Outlook on most computers. They probably had a website and used ADP for payroll. And maybe they had a file server running either Novell or Windows NT.
ADP at one time said they were the first cloud application. Email was probably the first public cloud application that most people used. (There were others before that.) The website is on a public cloud. So there are 3 apps running in the public cloud arena.
The file server and ACT! are running in the local LAN - or what we call today servers in the data center, even if that data center is a closet. That is the private cloud. The MSP is running MS Exchange in his data center on his private cloud, sotospeak.
Today, SAAS like Salesforce and Microsoft Office365 are public cloud apps. The data center is now a colocation in a data center. The company might use AWS or S3 for file storage. Azure or Google Compute for storage or apps. The Hybrid Cloud scenario is more defined today and a little more complicated,e specially if you throw in some VPS or IAAS platform too. But the WAN today has to connect all of these parts and pieces into an efficient network. That is where you, the telecom expert, come in.
Where is the Upsell?
Just asking the questions will put you in a different light. But asking the questions let's you see the whole picture, not just the Internet pipe at 2 locations. You can add value (and upsell) if you see the whole picture.
Hybrid Cloud has been around for a while. The concept is not complicated. And after you map it out, it isn't that complex. Make it simple. That is where the money is.
]]>Funny how different vendors are trying different things. Fonality is placing bets on both sides as they announced both a distribution deal with Ingram Micro and an exclusive deal with The (Agent) Alliance. So chasing VARs and masters at the same time.
One master agent is chasing MSPs with MITEL.
RingCentral hired an old Cbeyond exec to revamp the channel to - you guessed it - chase master agents!
This tells me a couple of things.
One is that no one has a magic bullet.
Two, the alignment of the product, the message, the customer target and the partner has not happened yet - except maybe for one provider.
Three, UCaaS just isn't getting the traction every analyst has predicted. I have said before that selling Change is extremely challenging.
Lastly, every partner has a business plan that they are heads down scrambling to work. To switch gears to sell another service - to learn it, digest it, start selling it - is time and effort that they may not want to expend, especially when (1) the price of services is down, so the commissions collected are down. Partners have to sell twice as much to maintain. And (2) the price of the new services - 8x8 ARPU is $369 - is too little for too much effort. And why sell something that may jeopardize your relationship with the client? Also, no one has the deployment down to a science yet [see Dell survey], so that is another fumble waiting to happen. Too much risk, not enough reward.
Agree or Disagree?
]]>It isn't that most partners do NOT want to change. It is that most partners are heads down, entirely focused on survival!
The race to zero isn't helping!
A combination of the cable growth and the bandwidth price compression have forced agents to sell more and more to make less and less. There just isn't time to learn new services and shift gears. AND the SMB market IS consuming what they are selling - bandwidth, cheap voice, wireless.
That isn't to say that partner don't need to learn new services and sell them.
It also might mean that the message, training and collateral aren't nearly hitting the mark the way that carriers think they are. After sitting through 14 meetings this week as well as walking the floor daily, the messaging to the partners is product focused, tired, repetitive, and frankly unappealing.
The job of the carrier is to grab the attention, wow! the partner enough that they go sell the services whether or not there is a spiff.
While every carrier tells me they meet with their partners and have business plan reviews, etc. Are they really listening? Do they actually hear what the partners are saying?
My message is to the carriers: Change or die on your story and marketing.
P.S.
The more that carriers say that VARs and MSPs are better partners - (All we hear is the charge to the VAR brigade) - the less agents will listen to you. #justsaying
PPS
When carrier employees have a vague understanding of the products, it is a challenge for partners to have a good understanding of those products. See UC, SD-WAN, NFV and other acronyms.
]]>