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.
]]>There is an interesting article on Business Insider about Facebook making switches and routers for themselves. But now a number of telcos globally are trialing the gear. That doesn't help Cisco at all.
At the same time, the carriers and just about every other managed services provider is offering SD-WAN. These deployments are white boxes. Cisco, Juniper, ADTRAN and others are being replaced at the edge of the WAN by white boxes.
It is also hurting VADs like Tech Data, because these boxes are NOT going through distribution. They are being distributed by the carriers like EarthLink and TPX directly.
ADTRAN is making moves to stave off extinction with hardware as a service, managed wi-fi, and SD-Access.
It's interesting because Amazon's Chime is competing against Webex on the collaboration space. Carriers are competing on the WAN CPE space. It's VAR channel is modeled on hardware sales and installation. Selling software is not nearly the same business model as hardware.
This is just an observation - and it will be interesting to watch as these things shift.
]]>CenturyLink is saying that after it scoops up Level3, they will be able to compete with cable in the SMB space. Really? You are going to offer up $300 pipes?
"Basically take some market share away from the cable companies, especially on the small and midsize customers where Qwest had lost quite a bit of market share when we bought Qwest." So you broke Qwest and its ability to sell to the SMB. What makes C-Link think you will find your mojo again?
I'm certain that during the 20+ months of integration, it will be challenging for a small business to procure bandwidth from you.
Charter/Spectrum makes it very hard to order from. It takes weeks to get a quote and contract. Then the order has to be scrubbed, checked and double-checked for 2-3 weeks. Another site survey as time ticks away and the client wonders when they will see the circuit. And despite this horrendous process of 7 departments having to touch the order (probably on paper in a file folder), it will look easy compared to a combined LEC of LevelLink or Century3 or whatever you call it.
It used to just be voice that was a bitch to deal with. LNP and toll-free RESPORs were a pain with added paperwork. Then with Hosted PBX, the extension to email mapping and other PBX planning (hunt groups, ACD, auto attendant) added to the complexity. Voice has many moving parts. Now network takes as long as voice!! Or longer. Even when there is NO construction necessary.
Makes me fear selling anything complex with most carriers.
The one thing that gets missed all the time: It isn't about EBITDA or synergies or fiber. It is about the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE*!
End to end - from the time the prospect first encounters the provider until the long after the service is up and running, every touch of the prospect/customer adds to or takes away from the experience. Billing, support, admin, delays, lack of communications, handling expectations, CPE, and more are touch points where the CX could be improved.
It is interesting that a company would spend big dollars to redesign a website but not redesign its contract or quoting process or customer care service. Google Fiber was deliberate in how the sales offices would look and feel; the color of the boxes for CPE; and so much more. Their take rate and deployment were awful but the marketing details were very good.
With cratering revenues, I get why the merger mania is happening. But that doesn't solve the underlying problem that revenues are cratering and all products are a commodity. Until that is fixed, the rest of the actions - the new website, the mergers - are just distractions for stakeholders.
Our industry has new technology called SD-WAN that we have already over-hyped and turned into a commodity. It is hard to believe that it is all about cost savings already. Basically, you have explained to customers that broadband is just fine with a 4G card and an SD-WAN box in place of a Cisco or ADTRAN. So boom! there goes the Ethernet sales and MPLS can't be ripped out fast enough. Like Charlie Brown with a kite!
*CX or UX stands for Customer or User Experience
]]>On an agent webinar this morning, Windstream is beating the SD-WAN drum. I understand that SD-WAN is a boon to retail, restaurants, branch offices and rural locations. Not every business wants to pay over $500 for a pipe. They want to pay what they were paying for T1s. SD-WAN will be a boon for broadband providers - satellite, 4G/LTE, fixed wireless, DSL and cable modem. It swings the WAN back to IP-VPN. Is that a great idea in the age of Hacking?
There are other benefits for SD-WAN: ease of management; faster deployment; analytics; transparency; failover/redundancy; but the bell that most CIOs rang at the WAN Summit in NYC was cost savings.
We are going to see a bunch of locations move from dedicated Internet (DIA or MIS) to broadband. From a commission standpoint that will suck. From a vendor standpoint that will be a pain. However, if partners layer on SD-WAN from a provider plus two broadband providers, we might be able to keep the MRR close. This will become the standard configuration for many business locations.
That is the drum that is beating.
As an RLEC (rural ILEC), revenue streams heavily favored consumer services. The RLECs had USF and TDM transitions occur to shake up their business models. Also, cable starting eating their lunch. DSL didn't cut it. The RLECs had to spend to beef up the network for both better broadband and Telco TV. They just did it too late. Now they have to chase the business markets with HPBX, SD-WAN, cloud services and anything else to bring revenue in and margin back.
CLEC margins on resold network are thin. UC isn't killing it, for anyone. Managed services is where the margin is. SD-WAN is just another technology that needs to be deployed for the customer and managed (like managed router or a monitored Internet pipe).
That is why the drum is beating.
Viptela puts it nicely, "In today's fiercely competitive digital-driven marketplace, enterprises must remove complexity from the WAN. WANs need to be easier to manage, cost-efficient, more agile and available, and better aligned with an organization's computer and business needs. The SD-WAN is quickly becoming an essential component of enterprise digital transformation."
This makes it sound like WAN is complex. It isn't really. MPLS is not that hard or complicated. It is easier than IP-VPN and more secure. (Or at least it is for me.) With many network operators connected to cloud platforms (like AWS, Rackspace and Azure), adding a direct connection to a WAN is simple. (Or if the customer has a data center presence,he can tap into the cloud via a peering fabric.) There are ways to architect a secure, manageable WAN.
Partners will be selling SD-WAN, the flavor of the year. I just wish they had not all been calling it SD-WAN and had actually incorporated it into a branded service offering. That could have led to differentiation and some targeting so it doesn't become a commodity so fast. (Oops! Too late.)
]]>Was it just October that Windstream let its small business customers go? At that time didn't they tell the partner community that they only wanted deals $1250 and above? Didn't they cut commissions on Paetec customers?
This is a company that owns Allworx but pushes Mitel and Avaya on alternating months. They run both Metaswitch (and took on more seats on Meta with EarthLink) and a Broadsoft. So now they buy a 6th platform: Broadview's proprietary one. (I hope they kept the chief developer or someone will be searching through code for notes for months.).
Do you know how expensive it is to run 6 platforms? Or even 4? Ask Vonage how much that costs (they run 4).
WIND wants to compete head to head with RC, 8x8 and Vonage in the OTT market. Interesting because data demonstrates that the average OTT deal is $400, well, below the $1250 floor. Even Broadview admits to an ARPU of almost $1000.
I will get emails and calls that I am negative. Chris will ask why I can't write something nice. I'm not being mean. I am observing a schizoid strategy. Partners cannot turn their business model quarter to quarter to suit the whims of a vendor. It doesn't work that way.
A $5.4 Billion annual revenue up against $5B in debt. No more equity in CS&L, the REIT they spun off which renamed as UNITI Fiber. "Operating income was $515 million. The company reported a net loss of $384 million." This is a company that pays out healthy dividends to keep its stock afloat. It has debt payments as well, while acquiring EarthLink and Broadview (and before that data centers it then sold off.)
I hope they can at least take a note from EarthLink: Point yourself at a vertical or two and get good at it. EarthLink had captured the retail vertical with a focus and product fit unseen in the CLEC world. Windstream needs to do more of THAT.
Keep the ELNK Retail division rolling along. Leverage the Broadsoft Hospitality product to find a way to take Hospitality back from the cablecos. The REIT (CS&L) is on a tear buying up fiber and chasing E-Rate. That is a sound strategy.
I wonder if, like CenturyLink, being borne from a RLEC just makes sound strategy tough. So many fat years with USF monies pouring in and no competition that when the spigot went dry, competing just isn't in the DNA. Hint: hire Dabble Lab. Get Creative. Try stuff. Take real input.
SD-WAN is not the panacea that everyone is hoping for. If SDN is implemented the way LNP and TTU is now, oh boy! A few agents were on FB discussing ZTP (zero touch provisioning) as the end all. I remember Microsoft Plug and Play. It took years to get right. It will all depend on the CPE and the SDN implementation. And I am not counting on it. [And that is just CPE ZTP, not the handsets and UCaaS or Office365 or other software deployment. Just the WAN and CPE.]
Broadview has 20K customers, of which 7300 are cloud users. That isn't scale. That is less than one-third the of customers 8x8 has. Vonage has 650K seats; Broadview has 182K active users. Scale costs money. Scale requires talent. Scale demands process and procedure. We'll see. They didn't even finish the EarthLink integration so this should be fun.
**CRN - click through 10 slides just to read a half page story on this site! What a mess!
]]>Deloitte acquired most of the assets of Day1 Solutions Inc., a cloud consulting firm to provide deeper cloud expertise. CIO Magazine explains, "Deloitte needs Day1 for the same reason Accenture needs Genfour, Genpact needs Rage Frameworks and Infosys needs Panaya. The problem for Deloitte and for every traditional services company is that their clients do not believe they have the digital skills to lead the digital transformation journey the clients want their business to undertake."
Think about that yourself. Do you provide proof of your digital chops to your clients? Would they be comfortable coming to you for cloud migration plans or strategy or advice?
Item 2:
The Lookout Breach Report: "With over 1.45 billion compromised accounts, emails, social security numbers, dates of birth, and other data types, March was the biggest month for exposed data this year." Yes Cyber-Security is indeed needed. I personally am tired of all my data being hacked from companies that don't protect it.
A 451 Research survey on Security Pain Points and Concerns showed that "User Behavior is a top concern across companies of all sizes - while other issues such as Endpoint Security present a bigger problem for smaller companies. In contrast, Cloud Security and Data Loss/Theft pose a greater threat for very large organizations."
Item 3 is SD-WAN announcements
Coredial and Cincinnati Bell are the latest Velocloud wins. I find it funny that Zero Outages re-branded as the first SD-WAN company at their mostly unmanned booth.
Windstream is wholesaling SD-WAN now. Probably Velocloud. At this rate SD-WAN is already a commodity and Cisco/ADTRAN need to be afraid. The CPE isn't coming from them any more. It isn't being distributed by Tech Data either!
Westcon-Comstor Adds Viptela's SD-WAN Portfolio
Item 4: M&A:
After buying Hunt Telecom and Uniti Fiber scoops up pure-play fiber company, Southern Light to move itself away from just being dependent on Windstream. UNITI also bought Tower Cloud and PEG. Maybe Alpheus or FiberLight will be next.
Item 5: More M&A:
Broadvoice bought a company to add in analytics and user experience. "XBP's core strengths is in deep reporting and analytics integration, enabling customers to better understand user behavior. For example, tools like Advertising Analytics allow users to measure and follow through on outreach campaigns, from local to nationwide. Other tools like voice recording on-demand and voice-to-text conversion provide solid, searchable data that enhance successful client relationships."
]]>What do you do when a $60K MPLS network is replaced with a $40K SD-WAN network? And when some of those Internet links are not even on the carrier's network?
What do you do when 10GB trans-continental private lines are so ridiculously low?
Well, the management has to re-adjust their reality for the sales team. It isn't the salespeople's fault that price is eroding fast. That is an industry wide executive decision. There are no safe havens for high margin. Even SD-WAN which was hyped just a year ago has fallen under the I Will Save You Money banner (already).
Much of the merger mania is based on synergies - or that at scale the same amount of people can take care of more revenue, which adds margin. A few of the mergers are due to a debt burden that becomes due. That was Intermedia's problem in 2001. No one learned that lesson. Avaya faces that problem today with a debt load that cannot be serviced by its revenue.
But direct sales, channel managers and partners face declining revenues across the board. This means less commissions, less margins, less profitable quarters.
When cablecos stop paying commissions on modems sales (like ILECs did with anything TDM or DSL), what will the channel do? I ask because all the SD-WAN hype is about a branch office utilizing broadband - DSL, cable modem, fixed wireless, 4G, satellite or a combination - for lowered costs but improved performance via that special little white box of SD-WAN.
Also with the shackles off at the FCC, we will see bigger mergers and most likely port blocking will become a thing again. OTT VoIP providers will have to figure out how to circumnavigate the waters pf port blocking on broadband circuits at SOHO, branches and rural locations. It will be interesting.
But that is all down the road. Right now we face consolidation of vendors but price erosion, which may be accelerated by the MPLS to SD-WAN transition. Oh, Goody!
I say this a lot but we have to sell a lot more, faster to maintain.
We need to Land and Expand. Get the pipe but start taking apps and voice, backup, DR, security. It will become imperative to take a chunk of the whole customer IT/telecom budget to survive.
Carriers can help by stopping pushing product and going to a holistic package approach of bundling products into a turn key solution like UC + 4G + Internet + POS + Compliance + backup.
Or savvy partners will start bundling multi-vendor solutions themselves to get more of the pie. The carrier will be stuck being a component.
Co-Selling will be a see-saw. The carriers will like it to protect their own offerings and sales numbers but will hate paying twice one the sales.
We are in for a ride about as smooth as dealing with the airlines! Happy Travels! Back to CP Expo 17 now.
]]>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.
]]>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.
They are jumping on the bandwagon for a number of reasons.
One is Consolidation. The new landscape of Ethernet is cable and ILEC. The CLECs are mostly all gone. You have to expand the catalog beyond just network operators and VoIP.
The other reason is price pressure. Pricing across all telecom products - mobile, bandwidth, Ethernet, VoIP - has been declining about 3-10% year over year, creating a problem for the operators and partners. When pricing craters, you have to sell more and more and more to maintain the same commission level. At some point, just selling network isn't going to work because you can't close enough deals or even fill a funnel fast enough.
When 1GB pricing is less than what 10MB pipes were just six years ago, think about how much you have to sell and how fast.
Even the current price war in VoIP/UC isn't helping. Because there isn't enough Demand for UC - the demand is for POTS replacement and dial-tone - the price per seat has dropped. It hovers just below $20 right now.
I understand that the customer wants the cheapest price - and it is easier to take the order when you find the lowest price - but you have also just lowered your commission.
Providers are starting to cut commission points when they lower the price. Partners and Channel Managers aren't happy. Well, then sell it at rack rate.
So carriers consolidation means fewer vendors and pricing compression means less overall commission. More vendors are needed. Luckily over 600+ vendors have entered the space in the last three years while more than one-quarter of the partner channel have moved on. Retirement, M&A, and business shift/pivot have resulted in a lot less sales partners at a time when there are so many more vendors to choose from.But to be realistic choosing a UC vendor among the 2000+ available is like picking Red Delicious apples at the grocery store. They all look the same. How many do you want to smell and test for firmness before you pick one?
The cloud computing piece, as we found out two weeks ago, is owned by Amazon. AWS and S3 are hosting about one-third of the web!!!! Rackspace, CenturyLink, Azure, Google Compute, IBM/Soft Layer and the others haven't really stepped up their marketing game (even in the wake of Amazon's outage.)
Businesses are moving to SAAS, IAAS and other computing environments. Partners are in a position to offer assistance to businesses in this regard. It is uncharted territory for many, but the business model has shifted to wallet share. If you want to survive (and thrive), it is about getting more wallet share from the customer. That means selling them email, Office365, VoIP, colocation, security and more on top of the network and bandwidth that makes up the typical sale.
We have seen a number of press releases in the last 4 months about SD-WAN - mainly about SD-WAN providers signing up with carriers and with master agencies. SD-WAN the new UCaaS!!! This technology could be the next big thing, but they said the same think about IP Centrex (VoIP) over 15 years ago and about WebRTC.
Our biggest problem: We push Product. That's right. We are a bunch of Product Pushers. We would make ideal drug dealers because we don't create demand, we just push a product on someone who wants it.
We don't sell Solutions. We don't even offer Solutions. The vendors don't offer solutions either. They pimp products. It makes all of this really hard to sell.
]]>Level3 CEO and President Jeff Storey is poised to get a huge prize for selling the company off. Isn't that great? For him, yes. He gets a "$1.2 million bonus after the Broomfield-based telecom's $24 billion acquisition by CenturyLink Inc. closes. In addition to the $1.2 million bonus payout, Storey is slated to receive an accelerated stock grant worth $3 million after the transaction with Monroe, Louisiana-based CenturyLink." Agents, meanwhile, get to wonder what happens post merger. How messed up will the networks be? How convoluted will ordering and quoting be?
After both Transbeam and NITEL announced that they are adding SD-WAN, MegaPath launches SD-WAN aimed at the SMB. That is the same place that SimpleWAN plays. SimpleWAN is up for the 2017 Venture Madness business competition in Arizona.
Velocloud raised a series D round for $35M. Many startups will look at this (and the SNAP IPO yesterday at $26B) and think that doing a startup is like buying a lottery ticket. In a sense it is, but building a business -- even to sell it quick -- still requires hard work, execution of an idea AND a plan, and sales. Velocloud is signing up partner providers faster than a PR firm can add them, but that doesn't result in meaningful sales for a long while!
You can learn from failure. #startup stories.
In the heat of SD-WAN, I wonder if people realize how shaky Cisco (and other router manufacturers like Juniper and ADTRAN) are? The SD-WAN white box is not a Cisco. It is an OEM that can be a router, a firewall, an access point, a Cradlepoint, darn near anything because we just push the software update to the box and either install the card/WIC or activate the card/WIC. The white box is replacing the traditional gear. Cisco and ADTRAN are in the box business. So are VARs. What happens next? Pay close attention - it will be a lot like the PBX Business, but decline a little faster.
Satellite ISPs OneWeb and Intelsat are merging. Consolidation in every sector of the ISP market - MSO, ILEC and now sateliite.
Verizon wins top honors from Frost & Sullivan for capturing more than a quarter of the North American VoIP and SIP Trunking Services Market.
CenturyLink makes changes to its Alliances and Strategic Partnerships programs.
In the EarthLink-Windstream merger, the ELNK channel chief, Olen Scott. emerges as the new channel head. "Jason Dishon, Windstream's former channel chief, has left the company to pursue other opportunities." It is a constant state of musical chairs in telecom.
]]>
Just as they are getting acquired by Windstream, EarthLink finally gets its stuff together. ELNK announced that in six months they have deployed SD-WAN functionality to about 1700 offices for 41 customers. That is pretty impressive but the technology (SD-WAN) is best deployed at small offices, rural and branch locations. It is where the tech gets the best ROI.
FYI... SD-WAN, like WebRTC, is a technology NOT a product. Stop trying to sell the tech!!!
IPO's are on the horizon. Fuze got another bag of VC cash and hired a CEO to take them to the public land. I hear that Star2Sar is thinking the same thing.
Speaking of cashing out, my client, Hunt Telecom in Louisiana, got acquired by CS&L aka Uniti Fiber. Congrats to Jason, Kevin, Robert and Troy!!!
LUMOS Networks got grabbed by investment firm EQT for $950 million cash.
One weird acquisition: Atlassian spent $425 million on task management provider, Trello. Altassian owns Hipchat (a Slack competitor) and JIRA. It seems like a good combo.
A head scratcher: Fonality got bought by Netfortis. Asterisk and Genband.
ARRIS is buying Ruckus from Brocade because "Every carrier will need to be in wireless."
TelePacific is coming into 2017 with its acquisition of UC provider DSCI. They will be re-branding the new nationwide managed services provider at the Vegas CP show. Yesterday at a partner event, TelePacific CEO Dick Jalkut told the room that they had spent $500K on ITx and UCx demo centers around the country as well as building out a SOC (security operations center) in St. Louis. Any current TelePacific partner can visit the SOC. You might want to ask if they will pick up the airfare. TelePacific isn't giving up on network - it is what made them the regional giant that they are - but all bets for the future of the company lie with the strategic products - like security, managed IT, Office365 and a Broadsoft UCaaS offering - that DSCI strengthens with their own experience and products in those areas..
OTT UCaaS provider, Panterra, has inked another distribution deal; this time with VoIP Supply.
]]>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.
]]>Wood corrected that Velocloud decided not to sell direct but to use a variety of service providers as sales partners. These partners could be VARs or MSPs or LECs. Many providers formerly known as CLECs, like TelePacific, Mettel, EarthLink and Global Capacity, have chosen VeloCloud. So has AT&T.
Wood says each provider is rolling out SD-WAN by adding Velocloud to its own network sauce. Personally, I don't think that helps the SD-WAN term gain definition, but we'll see.
ITSPs (VoIP Providers) are also rolling out SD-WAN. Some are using Velocloud (Vonage and Mitel); others are using other vendors including SimpleWAN. It improves call quality measurably.
In the case of Vonage, they are using Velocloud technology to leave a box on-site to perform MOS scoring and monitor the call quality in the first month. Then Vonage can go back to the customer to say that the Internet performance is the issue and with SmartWAN (Vonage brand name) the call quality will improve starting now. (The white SDN box is already on-site doing monitoring and testing. Now it just gets turned up and billing begins.)
Quality + Transparency + Monitoring is what Velocloud is offering. Analytics will come later.
Velocloud has 600 customers through 150 partners, but not all providers are past the pilot stage, so Wood tells me it is more than 4 deals per partner.
Wood said that EarthLink is spinning the SD-WAN story different with its SD-WAN Concierge service.
The story of SD-WAN has to be more than spun. It needs clarity of value and differentiation. Wood pointed out that Cisco has moved into the space (iWAN) as a vendor to LECs and as a provider. Also, WAN Optimization specialists like Riverbed are spinning into the space - but without really evolving.
The benefits of SD-WAN extend from simple WAN management to zero touch provisioning to SaaS/App Performance. In between, there are features for remediation, leveraging economical broadband, and mu;ti-path/best link path determination (packet traffic cop). The MOS scoring agent is what the ITSPs like. The features don't change; it is all about how the provider packages the software (Velocloud or Broadsoft). The new year will bring more buzz and more spin. Stay tuned.
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Today, VeloCloud is selling its SD-WAN software to anyone who will buy it. They are having a problem selling it direct. Correction: they took the BSFT route of selling only through providers.
I have called UC a garbage can term often. Everyone has a definition for it. There is little agreement on that definition. It has a variety of other names: Hosted VoIP, Hosted PBX, UC&C, UCaaS, etc. It consists of many different components / features: voice, video, conferencing, collaboration, UM, etc.
SD-WAN is following suit. Load-balancing, packet shaping, circuit bonding, et al are all being re-framed as SD-WAN. It is becoming a garbage can term for a white box with a variety of functions.
As a buzzword takes off, every marketer wants to jump on-board. However, all it does is make the buzzword meaningless to the buyers. And we have to ask: Are there in fact buyers? If you had a hard time selling your box with Function A, what makes you think adding Function B and the hastag #sdwan was going to make it more appealing?
One thing to think about is product-market fit. The other is a clear value state to the defined target market. If you say 1-500 employees or 1-1000, you have no clear product-market fit. I have no idea what you told your investors about the market but it is likely a lot smaller than you think. It also will be segmented like crazy.
Some businesses will make great use of UCaaS or SD-WAN, others not so much. The sooner you identify who benefits most, the easier it will be to sell. Who benefits the most and why.
Note: If you are selling through an indirect sales channel AND you do not have a rock solid USP and target market, THAT is why it isn't selling (not because of the channel).
VeloCloud responded to this HERE.
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