More than one person mentioned how National Harbor looks like a town in a bubble or a movie set. As the CPEv show wraps up, here are highlights.
It wasn't UCaaS after UCaaS after UCaaS. It was broken up. UCaaS/VoIP is still big - and there are still too many vendors for not enough sales - but it didn't seem like every booth. At the CSNG event, it was wall to wall VoIP. It looked like the starting line for the Great Race, with teams in their matching colored shirts from almost every VoIP provider - DSCI, Panterra, Jive, Fusion, Momentum, Net2Phone, Nextiva, Vonage, Star2Star and a few others.
TelePacific is closer to finishing its merger with DSCI, which will be good for all partners as this CLEC pops out onto the national scene as a Managed Services Carrier. TelePacific will have a new line of managed services launched soon in conjunction with DSCI. SD-WAN will just be one of the new services that partners can sell nationally.
SD-WAN is making a ripple. Verizon brought the full team to its hot dog and beer session on SD-WAN. Very competent people explaining the different ways that VZ can deploy managed SD-WAN either from Cisco or from Viptela.
Ecessa is excited about the opportunities that the channel is bringing them. Both Ecessa and Aryaka told me that right now it is about education - both to the customer and to the partner - about what SD-WAN is and what it can do for the networks and productivity of the customer.
Polycom wasn't prominent at the show, but neither was Yealink. A few UCaaS providers told me that more and more UCaaS seats are beings old without phones. Jabra and Plantronics are picking up business. (I wonder if ScanSource distributes those lines of headsets?)
Level3 is still going through integration issues according to two different partners.To be expected I would imagine as they try to merge networks with TWTC and add SDN.
Quite a few carriers spent more than a little time explaining that they WERE indeed embracing the channel.
IOT was talked about, but I still don't get how channel partners will make money at it. Verizon went from $455M last year to $800M this year in IOT revenues, which is a blip in their coffers.
A lot of talk about the ScanSource/Intelisys deal. The X4/Sandler merger didn't even get to spend a week on anyone's mind. Everyone is wondering if this will be a trend. There has to be at least two deals in the pipeline right now. We'll see.
Not much else to say. Safe travels.
