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 Couple of M&A Items

September 9, 2011

It seems that Apple put in a bid for Dropbox for $800M (for $100M in revenue). But Dropbox decided to get another round of funds and think IPO instead. [BusinessInsider]

Cablevision will resell Sprint wireless service through its Optimum Business unit. Quad play for SMB.

WAN optimization is buzzing.
Posted in broadsoft, cellular, cloud computing, conferencing, fiber, hosted uc, mergers, smb, unified communications, wireless, wireline
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Grasshopper Co-Founder Talks Entrepreneurs

April 18, 2011

An interview with Grasshopper Group CTO and co-founder, David Hauser about virtual phone systems, entrepreneurs, Chargify, Grasshopper and the Ambassador of Buzz.

Posted in Marketing, PBX, smb, technology, 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

IBM's New(er) Strategies

March 29, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

At IBM's Lotusphere this year (Feb. 1), IBM rolled out strategies for Cloud and Social Media.

IBM identified 5 ways that partners could benefit from the Cloud. They are as follows:

Cloud Application Providers - deliver business apps via a subscription model through the cloud such as SAAS Cloud Builders - design, build and manage clients’ cloud needs, typically integrating with existing infrastructure. Cloud Infrastructure Providers - provide a public cloud infrastructure or Platform as a Service (PaaS) on which app can be hosted. Cloud Services Solution Providers - resell multiple public cloud services and offer complementary services such as training and integration. Cloud Technology Providers - provide the tools, services, and technologies, such as cloud management, billing metering and monitoring — that help clients use the cloud more effectively.

These are ways for VAR's to stay in the business of providing applications and associated services.

According to some PR sent my way, " IBM is the largest consumer of social technologies. As a company, IBM takes social networking seriously - to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities.

Posted in VAR, Web 2.0, broadsoft, cloud computing, communications, conferencing, hosted uc, im/chat, linkedin, saas, smb, social network, twitter, unified communications
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Thoughts on Deploying Cloud

March 7, 2011


In this 13 minute interview with Dale Frohman of The Frohman Group , we discuss Cloud Deployment in the business.

Deployment of Cloud services is much easier in the small business space (under 100 employees), because typically this is not a complex network infrastructure. The first hurdle to Cloud Deployment is the complexity of the network environment.

Some systems just can not be moved to a cloud platform. Medium businesses (100-500 employees) may have legacy systems (like COBOL) that may take more work than is cost effective to shift to either IAAS or PAAS. Other application systems may be tied to other databases, which may mean moving one will require moving two or more applications or databases. It may be like pulling a string on a sweater.

Jim Meltzer of Ashton Metzler & Associates, says, "In order to successfully deploy Cloud-based services, Communications Service Providers need to develop a detailed business plan, a data center architecture and a management strategy."

Steven Taylor of Webtorials adds, "As we move toward cloud-based solutions, one of the most difficult tasks is defining how the network services that are used to access the cloud-based service and the cloud-based service itself interact.

Posted in apps, cloud computing, data center, organizations, smb, technology
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VAR's in the Cloud with HyperOffice

March 7, 2011



A podcast interview with Farzin Arsanjani, President of HyperOffice, discussing the opportunity for VAR's in the Cloud. HyperOffice is a SAAS provider that recently released a white paper that focuses on reseller opportunities in cloud messaging and collaboration, one of the fastest growing cloud markets. The largest opportunity for VAR's is to be the Trusted Advisor to businesses, who do not know what cloud provider to choose; whether or not cloud is for their business; and what a cloud deployment looks like (and how it will change their business process.
Posted in VAR, agents, channel, cloud computing, smb
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My EarthLink Strategy

March 4, 2011

When I analyze the four CLEC components of the new EarthLink Business, I wonder what Atlanta will do with it.

Deltacom had a huge fiber network (IFN) that essentially went under-utilized. In my experience, many employees did not know about IFN. Assets like lit buildings, collocations, colo gear, and the fiber maps are crucial to revenue generation from those hard cost assets.

Essentially, Deltacom was competing on price in the T1 space. It's two core products - Metro-E off IFN and the MVNO - were not marketed well. It's Channel strategy was bipolar - first terminating agents, then out courting them.

Admittedly, I did not have much experience with ONE Communications.

Posted in CLEC, Marketing, PBX, VAR, agents, broadsoft, channel, cloud computing, colocation, ethernet, fiber, mergers, mpls, sales and selling, sip trunking, smb, telecommunications, wireline

ATTB2B

February 23, 2011

This is what Ma Bell is pushing through sales channels:
 
·         Hosting & Cloud Services
·         Application Services for Small Business
·         Mobile Applications
·         Small Business Bundles
·         Unified Communications

Notice what is missing?  Internet Access, Voice, WAN. Welcome to the end of the PSTN.
Posted in cellular, channel, cloud computing, smb, unified communications
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The Emergence of Cloud Telephony

February 2, 2011

So my panel this morning on Trends and Future of VoiP/Telco 2.0: the Emergence of Cloud Telephony with Cbeyond and Dialogic was standing room only. The slide deck is here:ITEXPO-East-2011-Emergence of Cloud Telephony.

We discussed the trend of SMB to move to the Cloud for not just Voice. We hit on deployment, security, Fax over IP, and benefits. One of the big benefits is that Cloud (or Hosted PBX) takes the technology out of the way for small businesses.

Posted in cloud computing, economy, hosted uc, saas, smb, technology, unified communications, voip

Verizon Changes Commissions

January 31, 2011

Shockingly, Verizon has dramatically changed their commission structure for 2011.

The changes are effective for all orders issued into Verizon's legacy system after 1/1/2011.

Commissions have moved from a Residual and Acquisition structure, to an all Acquisition (up-front) structure.

Commissions for all products will be capped, being paid as if they were 1-year-term deals.

Commissions are due to be paid 90 days after service completion date.

For commission purposes, Verizon is differentiating between customers that have no service at all and additional services sold to existing customers. New logo customers will receive a new logo incentive on Strategic and Foundational products.

Product Categories are:

Strategic  Foundational (replaces Growth)  Core/CPE   Renewals

The following products are now non-commissionable:

Dial tone line  Stand Alone LD PICs   ISDN BRI    FlexT  Flexgrow/Rider  DirecT   Ring Service   Frame Relay/ATM   VzB Dedicated LD Data   VzB DSL (out of territory DSL)

This means Agents will likely have to sign on with Granite Telecom or MetTel or another POTS CLEC.

To get paid for Dynamic T1 services, Agents will need to look to CLEC's.

For Frame or ATM, I would suggest offering MPLS from a number of carriers including AireSpring, XO, Level3, MegaPath and ACC Business.

For Dedicated LD, Global Crossing, Qwest and AireSpring (and other IXC) would love that business.

This follows the path that VZ is on to become just a Cloud and Mobility company. So if you aren't selling Cloud or Mobility, VZ is not the place for you. And even if you were selling Cloud with all the changes that VZ makes to the Indorect Channel, it probably still isn't the place for an Agent.

You know who really wins here? Comcast, Bright House Networks and TWC who are actively looking for Business Voice and Broadband bundles as well as Enterprise Voice via SIP Trunking.

Posted in CLEC, agents, cellular, channel, cloud computing, commissions, fiber, sip trunking, smb, telco, wireless, wireline
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