On Rad's Radar? - TCA Archives

The TCA Has a New Board

2013-02-27T17:17:07Z

This was my last TCA Channel Chief Summit. Five years after co-founding this non-profit trade association for channel partners with Dany Bouchedid of COLOTRAQ, Ian Kieninger of AVANT (but then at CDW) and quite a few others, the last of the founders leave the Board. We left it in capable hands with Jeff Ponts of Datatel as president and Dave Wallace of Aligned taking my VP slot. Black Box, CDW and PCG are all new faces on the Board who seem eager to take TCA to the next level - and they have Mark from WTG to help them, as WTG, since Vince Bradley helped found TCA, has been a big proponent of TCA (and it shows. Thanks Vince!)

All of the founders worked hard - as did each Board member since - but this organziation would not have gotten going without Dany's efforts especially in the beginning. It has been a pleasure working with him these last long 5 years!

Who Do You Want to Be?

2012-11-29T17:07:40Z

Yesterday I presented the Secrets of Running Your Agency as a TCA webinar. A major part of the session was the mindset of the agency owner and the agent. For small businesses (employee size wise), the business owner or agent determines the fate of the business. Sometimes, we forget that it is a business. I look at all the companies that have crashed and burned - Kodak, Blackberry, Sears, K-Mart, CompUSA, numerous CLECs - as examples of poor strategic leadership.

In retail, we have a couple of examples of similar companies - Borders and B&N, CompUSA and Best Buy - one is surviving (not thriving) and the other one BK'ed. Why? Poor Leadership. The executives can blame it on Amazon or whatever, but the CEO and his chums on the board are supposed to figure out the strategy for competitive success and execute on it.

Xerox, Blackberry, Microsoft, the entertainment industry have all blinked and missed opportunity. For some of these companies, it is because they are too big to be nimble and flexible. For others, it is because the current way they make money is enough (until it isn't).

Samsung is like Napster in a way. Samsung took a gamble on patent infringement but it paid off. Sure, it cost them $1B but they leaped into second place for just $1B! Napster disrupted the music industry with its copyright infringement. The industry hasn't been the same since. You can't put the genie back in the lamp!

In telecom, we are at a similar point. Why all the consolidation and M&A? As margins get squeezed, the only way to keep the plates spinning is to increase scale (size) and cut costs to the bone. In telecom, those plates include a lot of debt but also the two competing networks - PSTN and IP.

The acquisitions of cloud and IT services is due to 3 things:

buying new skills, new services and a new stream of revenue;
there isn't time to build it themselves;
the old business model of telecom is crashing.

I spent a lot of slides on mindset because that is what has to change first in order for Agents (and the rest of the telecom industry) to Play Bigger! Or at least to decide to make the shift with the vendors from TDM to Cloud. Come be a Net-Head!

One last point: The channel HAS to move the revenue needle on cloud in order for the indirect sales channel to survive!

No joke. If the Channel keeps selling what it has always sold, it won't survive, because the vendor/carriers/providers have a new set of metrics and it isn't TDM - it's cloud.

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.

More Agents Getting Certified

2012-09-25T17:54:25Z

The Technology Channel Association has announced hitting two milestones: over 500 members and 200 members registered for the Certified Telecom Professional certification program. Those that have passed are listed on a special page. Why? Pride in being an Agent who takes this business seriously.

CompTIA has many certificates including a cloud one. Other organizations are putting together certificate programs - some for revenue, some because it will take a lot of education to move the needle on cloud revenue sold via the channel.

One of the reason for the need for certification is the change in telecom. For years, telecom was TDM. A PRI was a PRI, a standard with just two configurations available. Everyone knew what they were getting. Today, it is a miss-mash of TDM and IP - and a lot of grey area in the middle. If you are running a fax server, for example, a PRI that is actually a SIP Trunk with PRI signaling in the IAD is just not going to cut it. Some companies don't even know that is what they are delivering until it is turned up - and doesn't work! Then the real mess begins.

SLA's are all over the map, but are a feature that appear on many RFP's.

Certificates are about education. A certified professional is someone who takes pride in his (or her) business and understands that it takes ongoing education to do the job well.

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.

The VAR/Agent Comparison

2012-09-12T13:41:32Z

At Channel Partners Expo in Orlando for TCA. Our first member networking event last night went very well with a good sized crowd. Today we have the TCA's 6th Channel Chief Summit with guest speaker John Zanni of Parallels.

The top Channel executives and even the bigger Master Agencies are all chasing VAR's. And this show is so cloud themed an agent would be hard pressed to find a telco element, which I think leads to less Agents, but perhaps not more VARs, since they have their own shows, including DreamForce this week.

While taking with one channel head, he mentioned that the numbers guys always want justification to continuing paying on that line item called commissions. What does an Agent do that a direct can't do? It is this thinking perhaps that leads to VAR - value added reseller. The Channel would like more value add from Agents. Supposedly. But do they really?

I think not. For example, when I was consulting heavy for about 14 months, the number of quotes that I asked for dipped a lot. Many channel execs asked WTH? So they still have quota out gunning value.

Recently, a CLEC, who purports to have a big fiber network, wouldn't quote out a GigE fiber route for a consulting client. It was not a price issue. We were creating two diverse physical routes to Atlanta to two different data centers. This CLEC had the west route. They didn't quote it, but their Carrier guy showed up and sold it. So how was I not adding value?

I have news for the CLEC's and Cablecos: VAR's don't have these issues with their vendors. You want to compare VARs to Agents. Well, let's compare Carriers to other Vendors.

I was a VAR for three years. HP, Intel, Microsoft and Novell NEVER snaked a deal on me. CLEC's - as often as they can - and ILEC's even more often.

I never worried about commissions selling hardware or software. Why do you think VAR's want upfront? No need to track the commissions - and no holding it over company as Damocles' Sword.

Also, Cisco, Novell (at the time) and Microsoft are household names. It is easy to recommend household names.

So the next time you want to compare the two channels, maybe look at how carriers are different from vendors.

During the recession, I was at a Tech Data/Cisco event in St. Pete, where Cisco basically told their Gold Partners that they would help them through the economic slump. Cisco paid for audits for a year, so they would have data for when the economy came back and companies needed to refresh hardware. Cisco made certain that its partners wouldn't fail. Have you ever heard of a carrier doing that??

The problem that I have seen for 13 years (with a couple of exceptions) is that while the carriers talk about Partnership, it is mainly talk to get the unpaid sales force to sell their stuff, but when HP, Xerox, Cisco or Microsoft say partner, they mean we are in this together and we will help you succeed, because when you succeed, so do we.

Final note: if you want more value from Agents, where are the webinars or courses on network design or VLAN structure or Hosted PBX deployment?

Channel Moves

2012-09-05T17:49:39Z

Zayo decided to keep the AboveNet channel intact with Angelo Germani in charge. Zayo announced that zColo's products and services will join Ethernet, Wavelength and IP products for sale via channel partners.

Windstream is partnering with Lifesize (a division of Logitech) for HD Videoconferencing equipment. Paetec has long offered equipment for lease to SMB to go with services.

Windstream has hired Anne Brogan, formerly at NITEL, as National Channel Manager, just about 6 weeks after the channel head, Dan Sterling, was let go and Jeff Howe assumed his duties. Good Luck, Anne!

CloudTC, the Android based IP desk phone that debuted at StartupCamp a couple of years ago, has rolled out to the Channel.

West IP (formerly Smoothstone) has a really cool new website. Luv the madness screamer! With the website revamp comes MediaCloud, a Microsoft Lync offering.

8x8 is going global - to Canada and the UK, according to UC Strategies. A lot of that info was covered in these two blog posts - CMO interview and Agent interviews.

The timing on this announcement couldn't be better: RadioShack launches MVNO service! They are so good at customer service that they have become a service provider. Lucky for them, telecom - much like airlines - has a very low bar for customer care. Oh, they answer the phone and quote you policy but that's about it. RS will fit right in.

Once upon a time, OC-192 networks were the way to measure a network's manhood. Now it is 100G. XO rolled out 100G nationwide.

IRONY of the Day: The guy I wrote about that thought Agents work part-time, just got a new gig as a channel manager. I guess that part-time agency plan went down the tubes. I just hope he works full-time as a channel manager - just not as MY channel manager.

If you will be at the CPExpo next week in Orlando, let's meet up. The TCA is holding its 4th year Anniversary on 9/11 at 7:30 in Orlando. Register here. See you there!

Offices Are Moving to the Cloud

2012-08-23T18:15:37Z

On the TCA agent member webinar today, premiere vendors M5/Shoretel and Alteva presented on Hosted UC.

Both companies expressed that Hosted UC is ultimately about simplicity for the user, especially the salespeople. Guy Yasika of Alteva mentioned that worlers don't want to be "Fighting the tool". Dan Hoffman of M5 talked about a Brilliantly Simple Experience. Cloud is really about UX - the user experience - and meeting their demands for tools, apps, data where they need them. Hoffman mentioned that the idea of the office is changing, well, actually it is going away. Amnesty International and Newspapers/Media companies are examples of clients that don't have (or want to have) offices for employees. Hosted UC is all about mobility.

In sales management, CRM is important for forecasting and other reasons. The hardest part of CRM is getting the sales team to actually use it and enter current data. Hoffman explained that Voice is still the closer. When Hosted UC is integrated with CRM, the manager can check the dashboard to see that the "hot" prospect has not been on the phone with an account person in 3 weeks. The manager knows this won't close without a phone call. When Hosted UC is connected to CRM, management can get the same metrics from other departments that they have been able to get from call centers. Call analytics can improve forecasting.

Both speakers emphasized that this is not a cost savings tool in the traditional sense. There isn't a savings off the bill, but there is a savings in employee time and productivity. We live in "Internet time" and the market's expectations of response time is getting shorter. Presence is a tool that can help shorter the wait time.

Who benefits the most from cloud? Knowledge workers.

Is premise cheaper? In terms of dollars yes. Yasika noted that IP-PBX's now run on servers, which will not have a ten year shelf life like the legacy phone systems. The software on that server will need to be patched and upgraded during a five year term. The hardware may give out. The number of moves, adds and changes happening in a business office have increased. These are hidden costs that the premise PBX owner won't consider. The other consideration is how you manage remote workers with a premise based solution. All of that is handled for you by a Hosted solution. This is something that agents should mention in the discussion.

Desk phones are in danger, too. Mobility and virtual offices are heading into mainstream. I get that as Tampa Bay has seen co-working spaces sprout up and I am writing this from a co-working space in New Haven in a conference room I rented for a couple of hours. Although I would have liked a desk phone since my Android re-booted 3x during the webinar.

TCA Moves

2012-08-09T20:40:43Z

The TCA, the only non-profit trade association for the channel partners (VAR's, agents, inter-connects, YOU), has a lot going on in the next two months.

Heading into CPExpo in Orlando, the TCA will hold its fifth Channel Chief Summit. The CCS is an opportunity for the top channel executives of our service provider members to meet face-to-face to learn and share. This time round, Quest CTO Mike Dillon and Parallels SVP John Zanni will be presenting to the participants.

The TCA's first member networking event will be held on September 11.

A month later, the TCA will be putting on a regional member educational event in Chicago. Details will be coming soon.

Later this month (August 23), the TCA monthly webinar series continues with a panel on Cloud Communications with Premiere members - Alteva and M5.

In the shifting channel, the most important factor for success is an educated sales force.

Good News from CenturyLink Channel

2012-07-10T18:21:05Z

Sat in on the CenturyLink Channel Alliance - Get back in the Game Roadshow in Tampa this morning. It was nice to see Stacy Conrad from Microcorp; Josh Anderson and his co-workers from Telephony Partners; Dale Tucker from CCA; and put a face to an old Qwest SE, William Hobbs, now a CCA Emerging Sales Technology Consultant (ETSC) for Florida. Hobbs did a nice job on Why VPDC and The Benefit of Cloud over Colo. The roadshow had 3 parts (Hobbs did part 2):

New Savvis-CenturyLink Phase II Rules of Engagment overview;
Cloud/Hosting Solutions portfolio;
Third Party Data Center Updates/E-Line;

Dale Tucker went over the Rules of Engagement, You definitely need charts and glossaries to follow along the categories and acronymns. Basically, colocation, managed hosting, virtual private data center (VPDC), public cloud, private cloud, and managed servcies (like Hosted Microsoft Exchange) are all available to the Channel to sell at full commission - unless you engage an account exec - then it is HALF!

For agents used to working with AE's, this will be a bummer. However, half is better than zero. Also, with the ETSC as your godfather inside the C-Link-Qwest-Savvis beast, you won't need the AE.

A lot of colo and data center business comes from the Channel.

And for those that do not know how to sell Colocation and Data Center, the TCA has done quite a few webinars, including Getting Your Arms Around the Cloud by Allan Watkins of Total Telecom Management n Atlanta and Let's Talk Colo, moderated by Khali Henderson of Channel Partners magazine and featuring Dany Bouchedid of COLOTRAQ and Chris Palermo of GCN.

Tucker did mention that Savvis is working on a sales certification for colo and hosting. This silo will be a huge focus for C-Link it seems, especially with 54 data centers

Hobbs spoke about not talking about the technology of cloud, but about the business side of cloud, especially cloud services like VPDC and Compute-on-demand. It's about right sizing the data center. It's about OPEX versus CAPEX. It's about DR/BC. It's about getting out of the IT business and back to their own business focus.

C-Link also has an initiative to light up data centers with C-Link network - wave, IP-VPN, MPLS and Internet Bandwidth. There are 154 data centers now. In Jacksonville, FL, C-Link is putting in a ring to connect CSX, Peak10, Colo5 and the C-Link data center on a metro fiber ring. C-Link is also connecting 4 data centers in Charlotte on a metro ring. AboveNet did something similar in Atlanta by connecting almost all the data centers on a metro fiber ring. Agents can easily sell ELine, IQ Port, Private Port and WAVE into these 154 lit buildings.

Hobbs pointed out that the integration is going well with CenturyLink-Qwest-Savvis.

Top 5 Reasons to Work With an Agent

2012-06-04T14:19:17Z

One thing you may have to answer as an Agent is "Why should someone buy from you?" They could call the carrier directly. Here are the top 5 reasons a business customer should work with an Agent.

Number 1: Saves time! Instead of calling around to collect quotes, the agent can do that more efficiently.

Number 2: Meeting Your Needs. The Independent Agent will be able to present a telecom solution more aligned with your needs. The Agent is not beholden to any one product or carrier.

Number 3: Translation. Telecom Agents can help make sense of your bill and the quotes from other carriers in order for the prospect to make an apples for apples comparison.

Number 4: Insider Knowledge: The Agent is familiar with the provisioning process and the carriers to provide the prospect proper expectations.

Number 5: Customer Advocate. The Agent has the customer's best interest at heart. Directs tend to come and go, but the Agent will be there for the Customer in the long term - and will always be looking for ways to add Value to the Customer. This is the main answer for me: Continuity. I've been doing this for 11 years and in that time I can barely keep track of the employee rotation going on at any carrier at any given time.

Number 5.5: Usually the same pricing and without cost to the customer as the carrier pays the Agent for sales. There are two caveats here. One is that I have seen cases where directs got better pricing (by working the system better than me). Two, there are times I will charge to procure bids for customers, especially if I don't ahve a relationship with the carrier.

Another great reason to get your TCA CTP: If you have a certification, you look more like an expert and you have a solid foundation of knowledge.

Channel Manager Best Practices

2012-02-17T17:10:58Z

On Tuesday, March 27 at 11:30AM PT, the Technology Channel Association (TCA) will hold the first ever Channel Managers Best Practices Forum at the Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

TCA's mission is channel education. The TCA holds monthly webinars for members and has developed a Certified telecom Professional program. In Vegas, the TCA will be holding our 5th Channel Chief Summit alongside this Channel Managers forum. With this event, channel managers will have the opportunity to network and learn from their peers. Four Rock Star Channel Managers will discuss some of their best practices such as:

Balancing 80/20

Maximizing the MMR of the Agent

What is your #1 job responsibility?

How do you balance agent business interest with corporate interest?

Internal relationships

Setting Agent expectations

Lunch will be provided!*

The 4 Channel Manager Rock Stars chosen by TCA members are:

Charles Lomond of Airespring

Crystal Farley of Megapath

Sherrie Hiller at Telepacific

Chris Schubert of Telnes Broadband

Space is limited. Register today!

(*Most of the ticket cost is the lunch from Caesars.)

Best Channel Managers

2012-02-03T06:20:06Z

Do you think any of your channel managers are good enough to tell other channel managers how to do better at the job? If so email their name and email and why you think they are so good. (pradizeski @ tmcnet dot com)

BTW, Regan would like some votes.

Look for me in Miami Beach Next Week

2012-01-26T17:59:23Z

Next week is ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami Beach at the convention center. I arrive around 11 AM on Tuesday for Editor's Day. There are a number of all-day events going on Tuesday like InsightPRM's Sales Management training and the Avaya seminar.

Not surprisingly, most of the buzz around the show is on Startup Camp Comms, which is Thursday at 4 PM with keynote from Sir terry Matthews, founder of MITEL. Four start-ups will be pitching as well.

I have 5 slots this time.

Wed. night on the show floor at the CVX Expo stage, three agents - Dan Vidal, Josh Anderson and myself (fueled with cocktails) will answer questions from Martin Vilaboy, Editor-in-Chief of Channel Vision magazine about issues facing the Channel. Consolidation, Competition, Commissions, Cloud, UC, and the decline of the PSTN. The fun starts at 6:30. Straight from the Shooters: Candid Conversations on Issues Facing the Channel. Details here.

Wed. at 11 AM, I moderate the panel, Social Media Channel Integration, about contact centers integrating social media into the work station in room B210. The discussion will be about business drivers for social media; 4 steps to utilize social media in the enterprise; and hurdles to incorporating SM in the contact center.

At 2:30 on Wed., in room B116, I will be moderating a panel titled Educating the Channel with Industry Standard Certifications. It's a topic that is close to me because the TCA, which I helped found, is all about educating the Channel and rolled out a certification program last year. This will be a good conversation about how we need to education the sales channels as well as the marketplace in order to sell services like UC, Cloud and managed services.

The fun panel will be on Friday morning at 9 AM: Does Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy? Chief Head of Lettuce Antony Francis is an old pal, who likes to get cranky with me, so this panel will rock. You will leave with more info than you thought possible at 9 AM on a Friday in room B210.

At Noon on Friday catch me at the 4GWE session about Fixed Wireless as a wireline replacement (in room A109). Do you think fixed wireless can replace copper?

Look for my tweets from @radinfo and say HI if you see me.

End Caps

2012-01-21T14:49:32Z

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. If we did, would the feds have been able to fly to New Zealand to arrest the owner of MegaUpload? What was he arrested and renditioned for? Online piracy.

Not for nothing, but don't we have more important things to be spending federal dollars on? We are a nation with lost priorities.

And yet another carrier joins the CLOUD: "US Signal recently released an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) product offering, what US Signal calls Managed Data Center. Customers have increasingly requested US Signal to host their applications, for financial reasons, scalability, security, and more."

Yesterday, TCA held its monthly agent webinar with Netwolves presenting on Managed Services. With most of the telcos offering Managed Servcies, we at TCA thought it was time to give an overview of what Managed Services are from carriers, who is buying them and how does an Agent sell them. How does an Agent start that conversation with the prospect about managed services? The webinar was recorded and TCA members can play it back at any time.

Nemertes Research predicts a shortage of colocation space in the U.S. beginning this year. That is likely because some colo space is being used for PAAS and IAAS. Also, some colo houses don't want to sell colo any more because there is more cash in xAAS. (Or so they say.) I have seen that trying to find single rack colo slots are getting more difficult. Personally, I thought that when Amazon, Facebook, Google and others built their data centers, a lot of space would be opened up in other data centers.

The other issue with colocation is that Equinix, InterNAP and now Savvis have cut the channel out of selling their space. Other data centers - like Vegas' SwitchNAP - are difficult to deal with. That kind of affects colo sales, too. Luckily, ViaWest and TELX are still agent friendly.

Code 42 Software, a cloud backup service named Crashplan, got $52M in funding from Accel Partners. It seems a massive amount of funding for an online backup company.

Is 5G around the corner? Heck, most of the US is still in 2.5G-3G land.