Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter

On Rad's Radar?

| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

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A Fun Chat with VAR Dynamics

February 1, 2012

It started out coincidentally as VAR Dynamics CEO, Tony Francisco, was on my plane this morning. And he just recently moved from Silicon Valley to Tampa Bay, where I live. He is working with Gazelle Labs and spoke at BarCamp Tampa Bay, which is an un-conference I co-organize for the last 4 years. I had to go to Miami Beach to talk to him though.

Posted in VAR, agents, apps, backup, channel, cloud computing, compliance, msp, saas

End Caps

January 21, 2012

This was the week that we learned that online protesting can work -- if enough people get involved and if you get the support of some powerhouse websites like Google and Wikipedia. It looks like SOPA was dropped and the vote on PIPA was delayed. (It is still alive due to Democrat lawmakers who are beholden to Hollywood like Florida Senator Bill Nelson. If he knew how to turn on his laptop by himself I could understand it, but come on!)

We don't really need any more copyright laws.
Posted in TCA, agents, backup, channel, cloud computing, colocation, commissions, data center, politics, saas, vc

Oracle Says RightNow

October 24, 2011

What surprised me about Oracle buying RightNow was that RightNow was worth $1.43B! My impression of RightNow was just a small CRM software-as-a-service comapny. Whoops! Just goes to show that you can't watch hundreds of companies.

RightNow positions itself, not as CRM, but as a cloud based customer service company. "RightNow's products add leading customer experience capabilities that help empower companies to interact with and provide a consistent experience to customers across channels," said Greg Gianforte, CEO, RightNow. This should dovetail well with Oracle's idea of Public Cloud that consists of sales force automation, HR/talent management, social networking, databases and Java.

Posted in cloud computing, mergers, saas

How Do You Make it Rain in the Cloud?

October 10, 2011

Here at Microcorp's One-on-One event, I moderated a panel this morning about various cloud services with Level3 (CDN), Cbeyond (Virtual Servers), Intercall (Microsoft 365/Linc), EarthLink (Security), and PAETEC (Visual Messaging). It's an eclectic mix, but that should tell you that there are many ways to leverage this thing called CLOUD to make money.

The Cloud is really a value for IT services. It's about leveraging the technology and the technical skill set of another company in order to let the business focus on their own finctionality, instead of the tech that might help the business operate.

The move to the Cloud by carriers is due to the lack of margin growth in the primary business of access. It's moving up the OSI stack from Layer 1 (wireless, copper, fiber) to Layer 3 (Internet) to Layer 7 (Apps).
Posted in Internet, agents, apps, broadband, channel, cloud computing, economy, email, saas, security, technology, telco, wi-fi, wimax, wireless

Ethernet is Spreading

July 18, 2011

So many notices this week about Ethernet. It's the preferred protocol for most businesses. (No one wants to buy a DS3 card and configure it, I guess). Ethernet is becoming more and more available as the delivery protocol for Internet bandwidth, MPLS, IP/VPN, and Private Line.

The M&A targets are all fiber guys like FiberLight, AboveNet, Zayo, Sidera, Fibertower, Fibertech and XO. All are Ethernet players.

AT&T announced that come August 1st it is almost doubling the Metro Ethernet rates in the 9-state BLS region.

Posted in Internet, agents, bandwidth, channel, data center, ethernet, fiber, mpls, saas, technology, telecommunications, video, xo

Alteva Acquired by WVT

July 14, 2011

Warwick Valley Telephone announced that it is acquiring Hosted UC firm out of Philadelphis, Alteva for cash and stock valued at $17 million - $10M upfront. "At closing the Company will enter into employment agreements with certain of Alteva's key employees." WVT is going to integrate Alteva into its CLEC operation, US Datanet. Alteva is the second Broadsoft client in M&A activity announced this month.

"Pursuant to the Agreement, upon closing, the Company will purchase substantially all of the assets of Alteva, except for Alteva's employee benefit plans, organizational documents and insurance policies. The Company will only assume certain of Alteva's liabilities, including certain of its contracts, debt owed under specified capital leases and certain accounts payable."

It's ironic that telcos are buying into Cloud at the same time that they are also killing the Cloud.

Posted in CLEC, apps, bandwidth, broadband, cloud computing, hosted uc, mergers, saas
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4 Notes About CRM

July 6, 2011

I get asked often about CRM systems for sales teams. (I should I train salespeople and help hire salespeople.) Here are a few thoughts about CRM.

One, it's only effective if the sales team actually uses it. Most sales stars are too busy selling to fill out forms completely, do their paperwork, or enter data in CRM -- unless you tie to their compensation.  But do you want to force an otherwise productive sales star to paperwork and data entry? Or do you want her out selling more?

Two, CRM offers management a way to see sales activity. This is important for a couple of reasons: to know what is in the funnel; to know what may be installing (workflow scheduling, financial forecasting); and to know what is disconnecting (forecasting and cash flow).

Three, CRM for tele-sales should make the process smoother.

Posted in Marketing, apps, saas, sales and selling, social network
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TDCloud Joins the Fray

May 19, 2011

We have seen the hardware distributors moving into the cloud space. We saw that SYNNEX launched Cloud SolvUC as a unified communications play. According to the PR, the first nationwide cloud UC product. Umm, just from that marketing spin alone, I would suspect that SYNNEX did not have its finger on the pulse of this space.

Posted in Internet, VAR, agents, apps, channel, cloud computing, hosted uc, im/chat, saas, sales and selling, technology, telecommunications, unified communications, voip, xo

The Inexpensive Cloud

April 21, 2011

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.
Posted in VAR, Web 2.0, agents, apps, cloud computing, data center, disaster recovery, outage, saas, technology, training, voip

A Failure to Communicate

April 6, 2011

In the Agent space, many non-telco vendors (like Conferencing and Hosted PBX providers) have tried to get traction. Sales traction from this independent sales force. It isn't going well.

Agents (and VAR's) spend about 80-99% of the work week in the comfort zone. That is, doing what they have always done.

Posted in Marketing, VAR, agents, backup, cellular, channel, cloud computing, commissions, conferencing, hosted uc, saas, sales and selling, smb, unified communications, xo
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