Yesterday I mentioned that Gladstone is the new landlord for one of Expedient's data centers. Today, zColo (of the Zayo Group) "acquired MarquisNet's data-center business in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 28,000 square foot data center, located at 7185 Pollock Drive, will be the twelfth zColo Colocation facility," according to the release.

And the Channel dumping InterNAP buys Voxel for $30M. "Internap, the leader in intelligent IT Infrastructure solutions, has joined with Voxel, the "go to" partner for scaling demanding web applications to provide you significantly enhanced IT Infrastructure." It just adds some virtualization and apps to the mix, along with some revenue. InterNAP needs the revenue, since it canned its Channel last year.

I have been reading some good stuff that I want to share.

Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, writes about Apple hardware versus the rest of the computer/tablet business. Kindle sold 4M units in December alone. The Amazon Kindle Fire is based on Android. It adds to the Android family. Rich points out that Apple products are still expensive, but competitors are selling units due to price points.

Another post is by Dan Rayburn about the Akamai deal to buy Cotendo, but the interesting stuff was his take on AT&T and CDN.

It amazes me wonder why there is always so much speculation about AT&T but very little about VZ. sure, recently we have the "Will VZ buy Netflix?" but with AT&T it's always something - cell, wireline divestiture, CDN, International, cloud - maybe its because AT&T moves so slow. Perhaps if the company wasn't a labyrinth of silos of legacy business - SBC, LD, Ameritech, BST, etc. - it could do business more efficiently and not piss off so many people. Then again, probably not.

NY's Broadsoft based Hosted VoIP Provider, Stage 2 Networks, started the new year with the acquisition of the Hosted VoIP Division of Consolidated Technologies, Inc., a New York City area Avaya partner. Stage 2 needed the growth is my take from the PR comments from CEO Joe Gillette. There will be more of this in 2012, because there are too many VoIP Providers and most have very little growth. This transaction is similar to Telovations grabbing FeatureTel. It costs money to run a Broadsoft. Organic sales aren't coming fast enough to hit scale, so buy some customers and some revenue.

With 2012, the market will see the MSO Giants - Cox and Comcast - start crushing it in the Hosted VoIP space. They own the network to deliver QOS and to price beat any competitor.

IN data center news, the REIT (real estate investment trust) Gladstone purchased the 20K square foot data center at 810 Parish Street in Pittsburgh, home of Expedient Communications, for $4M.

It will be a busy year in 2012 as all the carriers try to synergize their mega-mergers and get their back-office in order so that we can actually place orders.

Besides selling the traditional circuits - POTS, T1, SIP, PRI - there are some interesting things for an Agent to look at in 2012.

M2M is growing. We are seeing that the 3G/4G system is creeping in everywhere - from broadband backup systems to surveillance systems to fleet management to home healthcare monitoring to security monitoring. There are an unlimited number of ways that devices and the wireless network can interact. Think about the Kindle. There is money to be made in M2M.

More wireless but mixed with TEM. If you haven't moved your big accounts to TEM, 2012 may be the year you think about it. Auditing has increased in the last two years as governments (local, county, state) and medium businesses look for ways to reduce the ever-increasing telecom bills. (Cellular/3G/4G is big and growing, which is increasing the total cost of telecom spending.) Telecom Expense Management (TEM) can help accounts that spend more than $5K per month. It also makes the Agent the point person all the total telecom spend. It's a great way to become vital to the organization.

In addition, you can add Mobile Device Management. If a company has more than 250 employees, it likely needs help tracking laptops, data cards, cellphones and the like. There are software platforms for this to make an Agents life easy. This is yet another way to become integral to a clients business. Notice I'm not suggesting selling cellphones, but manage those assets for the business.

Lastly, there is Cloud and Managed Services. I'm going to skip cloud unless you want to sell apps to businesses. If you sell within a vertical, I would suggest that you certainly start selling apps into that vertical, because it will add revenue for you and make you the go-to person for all things IT and Telecom for that Vertical!

In Managed Services, we are seeing a few trends: hacking is increasing; security is lax; IT is pervasive in today's business environment but there is not enough money or staff to handle it all. That's where managed servcies comes in. If the company has a lot of empployees and a small IT staff, managed servcies would be a fit. Things to ask:

• "What task would you like to relieve yourself of?"
• "What routine task could we outsource to your ISP to free up your staff's time?
• "You are consuming a lot more bandwidth, what are you doing about firewall and other security?"
• "How are you tracking wireless spending and devices?"
• "What would you do if a company laptop was stolen or lost?"
• "How much private company data is on a smartphone or laptop? How much access does either device have to your network?"
• "Do you backup your data regularly and off-site?"

You have to adjust for the changing times, unless you just want to push pipes. But your customers are under a strain to handle devices, billing, auditing, tracking as well as security and more. You can make some extra money -- and become more than just a sales guy -- if you move beyond the pipes and help your customers with the rest of the story. HUH? They buy those pipes from you for a reason. Help them with that.

Happy New Year!