On Rad's Radar? - saas Archives

Some Tidbits About Cloud

2013-05-06T15:30:02Z

Carbonite says that SMB accelerates - http://talkincloud.com/cloud-storage/carbonite-ceo-small-business-cloud-momentum-accelerates-0

Comcast opened a Cloud Services Marketplace, which sells cloud services like Carbonite data backup.

Apparently, cloud services brokerage is growing as Citrix just launched a program for cloud aggregators. There is even a referral and affiliate program with Citrix. I think this represents the cloud being like CLECs, "Please anyone sell my stuff!!! Please!"

Interesting tidbit, the global CRM market grew faster than other software and 40% of that market is SAAS, according to Gartner.

Rackspace has 50 employees devoted to the channel.

EarthLink sales dipped this quarter due to the sales cycle. "Our bookings in the second half of 2012 were soft as we saw extended customer decision cycles despite a growing sales pipeline that we've talked to everybody about. This caused the 2013 entry point and resulting financial guidance for this year to be lower than many of us had hoped it would be," according to EarthLink CEO. It demonstrates that hype is still growing, but sales are slow to come. I think the low hanging fruit is and will continue to be low cost, because integration, productivity and business outcomes are difficult to deliver, deploy, implement and show on a spreadsheet.

SIDE BAR

Good article about the Year of Hell for a SAAS CEO.

Some Interesting Reads

2013-03-13T13:58:17Z

Zayo CEO Dan Caruso wrote a good blog titled "Is Bandwidth Production Lucrative?". In the wake of Jim Crowe stepping down at Level3, Caruso's analysis of the fiber players in an interesting read.

Personally, I think these CEOs - Crowe, Hesse, and others - have to take more responsibility for revenue, integration, value and culture. The role of CEO is more than just setting some ambiguous vision that your reports then have to crystallize and execute on.

Best quote from Mobile World Congress:

"Openness is not something to be afraid of. There are lots of business models available. But openness is also about being open to innovate." - Jolla CEO Marc Dillion (launched Sailfish at MWC)

FCC and FTC gave the green light for T-Mobile to merge with MetroPCS. To VZW and ATT, this is a yawner. To the consumer, it will just eliminate one of the all-you-can-eat players.

This news comes as Gary Kim writes about the spectrum crunch that never came. Please note that all of the Top 5 cellcos still have a bunch of spectrum that they have not deployed yet. It bears repeating: there is plenty of spectrum that they have not deployed yet! (Despite what Hesse spouts to the press. He likes being in the spotlight, which is fine, if someone else was running Sprint.)

Susan Crawford wrote an article about the lack of wireless competition. Every flavor of broadband - terrestrial or wireless - has clear winners and losers, but mostly losers, who we call customers.

I have beat this drum before but all the value in the US economy is in knowledge and innovation -- it is the Internet Economy. Stifling that due to profits for a few companies is not going to make the US competitive in a global race.

Nice blog about small business, Obamacare and the opportunity for channel partners.

In SAAS, the secret sauce is data integration - which fails almost 20% of the time!

One last one: at CPExpo, a channel AVP at ATT was given my book and read it and took the time to come over to say that he enjoyed it. Kind of a highlight at the show.

The Changing VAR World

2012-10-16T01:44:04Z

Opening evening at UBM's BoB Conference was a panel discussion about the change in the VAR and MSP community. This is a collection of tweets about the panel discussion #bob12.

Social Media (SM) , mobility, are cloud - threats to some, opportunities to some - both to many.

"Behave like a three-year old: fall down, learn something, try again."

How do you scale marketing and lower customer acquisition costs in cloud?

The Channel is hiring sales <-- luv to know where they are finding them.

Amazon has $1bill cloud biz and not even 5 people on the street.

Amazon, folks, offers just 2 services in self-serve fashion.

RainKing, Salesforce, radian6 (social media), data mining to understand clients better.

Vendors need scale, but the channel needs customer intimacy (and the channel needs to build its own brand).

Manufacturers do not like the channel. Channel Partners are not enamored with the the manufacturers either.

Biggest Issue: Mainly vendors don't understand what the channel does. Manufacturers/vendors do not like that channel partners are not exclusive and offer choice to the marketplace. [Telecom vendors are the same way!]

@UBMChannel: Number 1 trouble w/ vendors: they don't understand solution provider business and value. "We are not just vehicles to end customers" #BoB12

@UBMChannel: Marketing has changed as businesses do. Moving from finding customers to how do customers find you? #BoB12

Overall, even as the marketplace is changing, manufacturers are slow to change. Vendors still want the channel to just get them customers, push their products and get out of the way. The Channel now wants to build a brand, retain customers, increase wallet share, and sell managed services (some of which will be their own). Unfortunately, there isn't a huge ROI on that strategy for vendors. In Telecom as well.

A final point by the panel revolved around Gartner pushing the Cloud Services Broker model on VAR's. The panel thought that was a ridiculously low margin business - basically, transactional. It is likely going to become what the VAD (value added distributors like Ingram and Tech Data) will become in some sense.

Here's the flipside to that. Right now VAR's have accounts with both Ingram and Tech Data (and likely at least one other distributor like SYNNEX, D&H, CDW, Insight). When looking for hardware, VAR checks to see who has it in stock, at which distribution center, and for how much. When things switch to cloud services, it is unlikely that VAR's will have accounts at all 3 because they are not going to manage SAAS accounts across multiple vendors like they do now. It will be about going with 1 or 2 plus having their own.

The panel noted that we are in the midst of a change in the VAR business to a completely new organization - structure, personnel, skills, compensation, financing, marketing, sales and metrics will all be different when it is all done.

Sales is changing. Not only what is sold, but to who - IT is not the only buyer in an Enterprise any more. IT doesn't own the desktop anymore due to consumerization of IT. CMO and CFO buy differently from CIO. Can IT sales people sell to buyers other than IT?

Plus sales isn't about low hanging fruit anymore. It's about harvesting the whole tree. Acquiring customers is getting harder and more expensive. Retaining customers will be huge. Acquiring customers is different now. CLIENTS FIND YOU NOW, via blogs, social media, SEO, PPC. Are you involved in that???

The three panelists are making money now on Help Desk, End user Compute Space (which can include VDI) and in Global Managed Services (including help desk).

Money, Market, Launch - News

2012-10-12T18:28:47Z

I can't always write about everything happening, so here are some tidbits:

The TCA added 17 more members at the CPExpo in Orlando as the TCA closes in on 550 members - about 200 of whom have signed up to get certified as a CTP.

The US Secretary of Defense announced that Cyber-attacks could threaten US infrastructure. The DoD is working on a response. It is a constant game of cat and mouse - and the mouse is a fixed target.

SaaS company, Workday, IPO'ed today with a 70% bump to rake in $637M. "The company has not turned a profit." And revenue last year was $134M. That cloud buzz is a hit with investors.

"Integra Telecom today announced that investment funds affiliated with Searchlight Capital Partners, L.P. have acquired a significant equity stake in the company."

Virtual Communications Express is VZ's Broadsoft based SMB Hosted PBX offering that has some integration with Google Apps and a dashboard. I know someone who is exhausted and glad it launched!

An inside look at the Sprint-Softbank negotiations. Customers? No a worry in those rooms.

Master Agency, Intelsys, blogs about the huge opportunity in sales that agents have. "Conservatively we believe the US addressable market share for the telecom services channel of which we are all part is $100 billion annually, or $8.3 billion in monthly spend. This excludes most of the Fortune 1000 on the high end, and the SOHO/consumer segment on the low end.... , Intelisys Sales Partners will own about 0.2% of the addressable net billed market share." The numbers say we need more volume to move the needle.

Cloud Will Be About Integration

2012-09-21T15:34:13Z

John Zanni, Vice President of Service Provider Marketing and Alliances at Parallels, spoke at the 6th TCA Channel Chief Summit in Orlando. Zanni presented on studies that Parallels has conducted globally about the SMB space and cloud services. That data is extensive.

Parallels sells through a wide range of partners - LEC, ISV, VAR, MSP, Cable, VAD (see diagram). It provides an easy way for SMB clients to by cloud services through the APS system, which through API's provides for deployment and activation form some 300+ cloud service providers, including TCA's own Alteva.

One thing that Zanni said was that Integration would be a factor in cloud service sales. That will be a problem for carriers. VZ bought Terremark for this. EarthLink has acquired a couple of MSP's for this. NTT grabbed Centerstance to add to its customer solutions portfolio.

The TalkingCloud 100 is filled with Google Apps Integrators. For the cloud to work for the business, there will be integration, deployment and on-boarding help needed. This is becoming a sector by itself.

Evolve IP just snagged IPiphany, a managed IT provider in Chicago.

In the end it will all be about the UX - the user experience. That is the battle to win.

Sprint Resells Cloud

2012-08-20T18:04:58Z

I don't know if you saw the announcement this morning from Sprint, but Sprint is using Parallels for cloud services - for Sprint's Carefree Cloud service and IT Helpdesk offerings.

"Bringing Office 365 to market quickly required close collaboration with Parallels and the deployment of its service delivery system, Parallels Automation. This comprehensive solution enables many of the features and use cases that differentiate Sprint's productivity suites in the marketplace."

I really like this: "This collaboration builds upon the expanding portfolio of cloud-based solutions that Sprint has been focused on launching this year. This portfolio includes Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) planned for launch in late 2012 and Sprint Complete Collaboration, a Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solution launched earlier this year. Sprint also is delivering an innovative private-label cloud services platform to wholesale customers today, enabling them to quickly deliver simple and affordable brand-name software services to SMBs."

Sprint's IAAS will be delivered through a partner, CSC. For speed to market, companies are leveraging other companies that are already in the market delivering services (or they buy them). There is a tremendous CAPEX behind do-it-yourself cloud - servers, switches, routers, power, bandwidth- and expertise. It is cheaper to buy it than build it.

"Sprint Complete Collaboration bundles all elements needed to deploy UC, including: connectivity through SIP Trunking, IP and video telephony, integrated messaging, collaboration tools, user endpoints and enhanced mobile integration." This is a Hosted Cisco offering, which is strange considering that Sprint offers an FMC (fixed mobile convergence) service via a mixture of MVNO, MPLS and Broadsoft.

While it is smart to be offering cloud services, the challenge will be deployment and on-boarding customers. That is where the rubber meets the road.

Can You Beat the iPad?

2012-08-16T18:47:49Z

As tablet after tablet fail to make it - I am talking to you HP, Blackberry Playbook, Dell Streak, MOTO Xoom, Asus and even Creative - does it make it even harder for another one to launch?

We have three new ones coming out: the Google Nexus 7, Lenovo Thinkpad 2 and Microsost Smooth.

Google Nexus 7 is making the most buzz. It has sleek design and a gret starting price of $199. This is a straight consumer play, but I find it interesting that it will be the remote for Google's TV bundle on Kansas City Google fiberhood.

Lenovo is trying to be smart about positioning there win8 tablet. "Multi-user login for doctors, sales reps and lawyers." It is wise to target a vertical, especially if you can bundle in apps. If Lenovo can partner with professional office management software makers, like NaviNet, med3000, ADP's AdvancedMD, or a host of others.

Microsoft ties into its Live stuff. What about an Android tablet attached to Google Drive, especially for the small businesses that have gone to Google Apps?

,p>Matching hardware and software is something that Avaya tried but I do not know to what success. However, our industry has stranded a lot of hardware that either didn't live up to the hype or was under-utilized (like IP Phones that are mini-computers capable of running xlm apps.)

NEC has a docking station for the iPad to turn it into a phone working with its IP-PBX. Tom Keating writes how the Microsoft Surface might be a threat to IP desk phones. That's one way to skin a cat, but when I think about Apple and all its apps, I don't think making it an IP phone will make it a winner for 2 reasons: (1) most companies have money tied up in desk phones; (2) as Rich Tehrani commented to me, who would leave their tablet on a dock in the cubicle? It would disappear. (Need a GPS app to track it, I guess.)

When Level3 sales purchased iPads it was to improve sa;es presentations and expedite the sales process by having quoting and contracting on hand. That's the type of thing that Lenovo and Microsoft need to start thinking about. Tie it to business applications and verticals, not as another consumer toy, since the iPad is now being seen as both.

Rich Tehrani makes a case that Apple is the luxe and top of the market, so everyone else will need to sell for less or being freaking awesome and different. The Nexus, Amazon Kindle Fire, and the Microsoft Surface are all cheaper. It must be tied to business productivity. Isn't that the lesson we tell salespeople trying to sell cloud? It isn't about price; it is about productivity.

Just saw this article about the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 for $499. I don't know Samsung's strategy here. Going head-to-head with Apple at the same price point seems like a losing strategy -- and I am not even an Apple fanboy. Plus at $499, you can buy a nice laptop. At $499 in Apple land you can but, well, not much. An iPod, and iPhone and an iPad. No Macs in that range. I also thing Apple users like cool gadgets, be part of the club and tend toward liking visual presentation at its best. The rest of us just want function.

The Cloudy Race to Zero

2012-08-06T18:44:59Z

There has been an discussion about the Transactional Agent - and his demise. I beg to differ. I think The Cloud will end up being transactional as well.

A couple of months ago, Microsoft lowered its pricing on Office 365 in March to compete with Google Apps at $50 per year per user.

At first, I thought only MIcrosoft and select partners would be offering Office 365, but with Sprint's announcement today, it looks like anyone can get in the game.

I was sitting in a CLEC training when the subject of Hosted Exchange came up. The CLEC would offer special pricing to not lose a deal. So again "We will lower our pants to get 1000 seats." Price war.

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

How do folks choose CRM? I'm guessing for some, it is solely on price. Agents could certainly have a collection of 3 - Salesforce, Dynamics, Zoho - to offer to clients. See? Transactional.

Hosted PBX - how many Broadsoft players are there? Over 400. Plus add in Metaswitch offerings from EarthLink and others. It can definitely be sold on price.

Avaya's Live Connect at $19 per user is certainly a shot across the bow (towards a price war).

In an interview, one Tampa cloud provider said, "You can save a bunch of money by going to the cloud." That's when I knew it was going to be another race to zero.

ASIDE:

Managed IT had this problem a couple of years ago. Everyone and their uncle was selling managed IT via remote apps. Once it got to sub-$10 per machine, the pros had to leave the market, because you just can't provide decent service at that price point. I see this happening with other services like email, office, Hosted VoIP. Mainly because people sell it as a line item that can be comparison shopped.

It will be Bundling that changes this.

When there are only a select few offering a service, margin is high and knowledge is clustered. As more enter the marketplace, the knowledge spreads thin (not a good thing), value dips and price erodes. For example, a boutique IT shop selling integration of a software suite can sell on value and target highly qualified prospects who will need this service and be willing to pay for it. When it moves into the mainstream, not so much. More people selling similar services - or at least outwardly similar to the market. Less sales people that truly understand the value of the service; that can prospect accurately; and can sell on value. Price war. Red Ocean. See that ship? That's where it is heading to the Red Ocean.

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.

Is Cloud Just Hype?

2012-07-23T21:26:15Z

A short conversation with the CEO of VAR Dynamics, an MSP Enabler, about white-label and the hype around cloud. We also talk briefly about cloud and the economy.

Have you read is our first interview with Tony Francisco?

My Favorite CRM Gets J2'ed

2012-06-25T16:30:15Z

There is a CRM system that comes with dial-in help (as the Optional VIP Sales Assistant Support of the Gold package). That's right! Salespeople can call in to an assistant that will type in the info and ask for whatever info they need from the CRM system. It's called Landslide and it was just acquired by J2 Global which owns eFax.

CRM only works if the salesperson uses it and works it. Landslide has a lot of nifty features including social CRM which means that it can integrate data from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook directly into their Contact profile. It integrates with QuickBooks, GoToMeeting and an email marketing module.

J2 Global has been adding to its portfolio for a couple of years by buying up Internet fax competitors. J2 now offers more than just efax. It sells virtual phone (like Google Voice), hosted email, email marketing (like Constant Contact), online data backup and kind of a unified communications system that is like Grasshopper Group or Phone.com. Now CRM. They have put together a nice catalog of cloud services for the SMB space. No idea how integrated they are though - or if they are just stand-alone apps.

So Much Stuff I Can't Get To

2012-06-04T15:53:01Z

So many things to write about but just not enough time.

Leap Wireless gets the iPhone 4S under its Cricket brand to sell without subsidy for $500! Let's see how that works. It does come with No Contract though.

A CompTIA study finds surprisedly that "interest in unified communications (UC) remains high, with four out of five companies seeing value in the technology. Large- and medium-size companies and those with a higher proportion of telecommuting workers are most bullish. What's more, budgets for communications and collaboration solutions are on the rise, at 85 percent of surveyed companies." I love studies that state the obvious - or sound like they were piad for by companies that needed to hear confirmation of their projections (and budget allocations).

We have seen in telecom that the master agents and carriers are replacing the search for agents with the slogan "We want VAR's". (This could be partially due to both groups - mastersand telcos - already having the lion's share of telecom agents already.) Now, "IT channel partner programs changing as business models shift," according to a TJS headline.

"With the industry changing and business transformation becoming a must, the channel is increasingly looking for help with how to sell and how to structure their business in new models," said Carolyn April, director, technology analysis, CompTIA. "Many vendors are looking at ways to identify practical partner segmentation and engagement strategies to pull off the balancing act of aligning new go-to-market strategies while maintaining short-term revenue productivity," she explained." Well if they want Go-To-Market Strategy and Sales Training, tehy should give my office a ring at 813-963-5884 or see me at ITEXPO. [use code "BLOG13" for a 20% discount]

Who knew that Best Buy's Geek Squad had a partner program? Not me. Geek Squad just signed 4 partners: Network Solutions Provider, Carrier Access, Inc., Access Media 3, and MACH 4. Now these agents can sell IT services in 50 states.

Social IQ has no price for Oracle. Oracle bought two companies in the last couplemof weeks to add to its SAAS offerings and social media intelligient quotient. "Oracle will acquire Vitrue, a leading cloud-based social marketing and engagement platform that enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+," per this press release. And "Oracle announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Collective Intellect. Collective Intellect's leading cloud-based social intelligence solutions enable organizations to monitor, understand and respond to consumers' conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter," per this press release. As Facebook stock price falls, Oracle is buying up marketing automation companies for social media. I guess someone had to.

In Wireline ILEC News:

According to Reuters, "AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said on Friday that a sale of rural phone lines may be too difficult to pull off because of regulatory hurdles." People have been betting that AT&T would spin off wireless like Verizon did. I figure that back office is such a mess that there isn't any clean way to separate the wheat from teh schaff. Ma Bell still operates the divisions - legacy AT&T, AT&T LD, BellSouth, BellSouth LD, SBC, Ameritech, etc. - under their original systems like in silos. And after that statement Stephenson then went on to complain about not enough spectrum, just like his successor, Ralph de la Vega, told him to.

In related news, AT&T is forcing customers to use U-Verse. No more DSL if U-Verse is available. (I think VZ is doing the same in FiOS areas. What am I talking about? Of course, they are. These guys never do anything original. They probably talk about it over Johnny Walker Blue and cubans at USTA meetings, when the hookers the lobbyists leave the room.) DSLR has the story about the expense incurred in the upgrades - new modems (that are not free) and price increases. Another win for cable -- which I HAVE to believe is the whole point: Let cable win and ask for forbearance. Get out from under state controls and sharing the networks. It has to be the end game, since Wireless and U-Verse/FiOS are less unionized; Next Gen; and less regulated.

Is it Cloud versus Agents?

2012-05-02T16:45:52Z

Is it Cloud versus Agents?

As an Agent, I sell bandwidth and transport almost exclusively. I am learning that the Channel does not want that business. The carriers do, but on the wholesale/carrier side. No 10GB private lines. No 1GB ports. Nope. The Channel wants Multi-site multi-access customers. That's fine. Just stop talking about your fiber map then. It's irrelevant for that kind of sale.

The CLEC's also want Agents to sell Managed Services and anything Cloud. That's nice but who cares?

Cbeyond announced that they are "no longer recruiting traditional telecom agents". well, they already signed up the biggest masters - CMS, Telarus, Microcorp, TBI, etc. So what they are really saying is that traditional agents will have to use a master agent to get paid. That's becoming Normal in telecom. Carriers just want to deal with master Agents. I guess, they think that is more effective or efficient. I have no idea if it is either. We'll see, I guess.

Like so many other providers, Cbeyond thinks that the answer to its cloud strategy will be VAR's. That's not likely to happen.

VAR's don't trust telco. (Heck, I'm still waiting a month for an FOC from XO on an Internet T1, so I totally get the attitude.) VARs already have relationships with VAD's like Ingram and Tech Data, who can provide most of what Cbeyond is offering - or they can provide it themselves. Would you go to Rackspace or Cbeyond or EarthLink for hosting? That's basically what it comes down to: who is doing the hosting.

Right now Microsoft itself and carriers are getting into the traditional VAR space (offering hosted Microsoft products and data backup). Why would VAR's shift from a reseller model to a sales agent? It's kind of like, do you want white-label or straight resale?

The thing that most miss is that it is all about Control. In white-label, you can build a branded business that you have a decent amount of control over, especially in Hosted PBX. In straight resale, the bill, the brand, everything is in the carrier's name. No control at all.

My clients - CLEC, ISP and ITSP - want the illusion of control - or at least as much control as they can get. VAR's want the same thing. In the case of the ISP and the VAR, they like technology, but selling and marketing not-so-much. And you won't have much success forcing them into a sales+marketing shop - any more than you will trying to get T1 slingers become Consultative Sales people pitching cloud. Why? Motivation. Comfort Zone.

Robin Robbins has a very successful business offering turn-key marketing programs to VAR's. Cloud providers need to plug in to that kind of a system.

XO just re-launched its old hosting brand, Concentric, probably to get some space between the telco and its cloud services. (XO has to do something about its reputation in the telecom space and re-branding buys them time until someone buys them.)

Some Agents will obviously move into this space. Some already have making money on Cloud Comm like Hosted PBX, UC, IVR and conferencing. Some have sold collocation - although its a big leap to PAAS and IAAS from colo. But virtualization might be a nice tool in that box. It will come down to who you trust to deliver it.

I'm not saying Agents shouldn't be shifting their business. Lord knows that the way it is now, it is extremely tough to make the living we are used to while selling what we are used to. So a shift has to come. I just don't think it will be to the same carriers that make it in the future. When you look at things like commission adjustments, contract disputes, channel segmentation, and the like, Agents might want to try another silo of vendors to see if they get a better shake.

There is a tremendous amount of competition for the attention of Agents and VARs. That means that there will be price competition, commission shopping, and other things that the providers do not want to have to deal with right now.

The only providers who can afford to be exclusive right now are vertical cloud providers and cablecos - both have an almost exclusive product to offer.

Everyone else is selling the same stuff - MPLS, SIP, backup, managed network security, blah, blah, blah. That means the Channel can shop around. And as you can see from the ecosystem diagram, there are a lot of places to shop - VAD, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, ILEC, CLEC, Cableco, MSP, Rackspace, Web hosts, Parallels, ITSP's, and so much more. And Agents can just partner up with a VAR or MSP to sell their own services, leaving the CLEC's out to dry.

It's a matter of control. Do you want to build yourself a business with white-label partners (like VAR Dynamics) or do you want to trust that the telco that is having trouble delivering telecom services reliably will be able to provide you and your customers with unparallelled service delivery of cloud services?

We'll see. In the mean time, be nicer to the Agents. They may be all you have left.

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!

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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.

A Fun Chat with VAR Dynamics

2012-02-01T05:51:08Z

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. Go figure!

VAR Dynamics is the geeks in the cloud that run the servers that run the software that VAR's and service providers then re-label and sell to end-users. Back in the day, they would be labeled Master MSP as they enable MSP businesses. I called then an MSPE - a managed service provider enabler. Tony disliked that immediately. They are like the VAR Viagra - get them up and running on the Cloud in a day, fully turn key and automated through the magic of open API's. Tony didn't like that either, but his VP of Marketing, Darrek Porter, a man who was in politics once upon a time, did. This system allows VAR's to consume and re-purpose cloud apps in a self-service atmosphere.

I like it when the discussion is lively, more like buddies chatting over coffee than telling me your talking points. VAR Dynamics has almost 200 partners, which include telcos, VAR's and MSP's. What's the difference between VAR and MSP? Mainly mindset. Break/fix versus MRR (monthly recurring revenue).

VAR Dynamics white labels a lot of Microsoft products like Exchange, Sharepoint, CRM and soon Lync Lite. They also white label Blackberry Enterprise Server and Zimbra. Why Zimbra? "For those that don't like Microsoft." They have add-ons like archiving and "Compliancy", which means help complying with the myriad federal regs like PCI, HIPAA, GLBA, SOX, etc.

Francisco did name drop Autotask, ConnectWise, Jamcracker and Reflection as current or future partners -- again through the magic of well coded open API's.

Are you a company with a base of customers looking for MRR - "and control of their future"? Then VAR Dynamics wants to talk to you.

How do you control your own future? By selling white-label services, you are the provider - no carrier deciding that the bottom looks better when they stop paying commissions - so the monthly commission isn't going to get cut off, unless the customer leaves you.