Heading into ITEXPO next week, I am prepping for my session on Differentiation for SPs (Marketing) as well as my Women in Tech panel. The week after that I am in Nashville for FISPA speaking on SD-WAN, Marketing Fiber (FTTx) and a couple of other marketing topics. Then I am speaking at a sales kick-off on SD-WAN and more. That’s why I want to take a quick run down on emerging technology.

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. 8×8 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.

Tags: channel partners, cloud computing, IOT, IT EXPO, itexpo, m2m, msp, SDN, WAN, webrtc, women
Related tags: premises private, private cloud, overall spending, cloud vendors, cloud spending, cloud

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On Wed., 2/8th at ITEXPO, there will be a panel discussion titled Women in Tech. One of the panelists is Karin Fields, CEO & COO of master agency, Microcorp. Here is a brief interview we did together.

ME: What is the significance of this panel for you?

KF: Being a woman in technology has afforded me the life I wanted. I have been able to have a great career but more importantly be the mom I wanted to be. It’s important for me to evangelize that this can be a good career for woman and to help encourage more woman to get into our industry.

ME: What one takeaway do you hope the audience will get?

KF: Diversity is essential for sustainable growth. For the men in the audience, it’s important they step up to ensure women get the support they need to grow within our industry. For the woman in the audience, this is a good industry to be in and have they life they want.

ME: Why is it important to have more women in STEM and/or Tech?

KF: Women bring a different perspective to the table. We often look more at the human element not just the facts. Woman tend to be better listeners and hear what is being said and what is not being said. All diversity is important especially in a global economy.

To her point, Harvard Business Review wrote about a study that has shown Firms with More Women in the C-Suite Are More Profitable. “When we examined the profitable firms in our sample (average net margin of 6.4%), we found that going from having no women in corporate leadership (the CEO, the board, and other C-suite positions) to a 30% female share is associated with a one-percentage-point increase in net margin — which translates to a 15% increase in profitability for a typical firm.”

Join us for the session.

Tags: itexpo, microcorp, women
Related tags: women, woman, important, industry, being, audience

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Is it because the top 3 cable companies are launching an MVNO business? Or is it because AT&T bought DirecTV and now TimeWarner? Or is it because last year Verizon had a net loss of 282,000 Broadband Customers? Why is Verizon reportedly courting to buy a cable company?

Verizon over the last 7 years has sold off three chunks of its wireline business to Frontier, Fairpoint and Frontier. Did they need the money to buy all the spectrum that they have been hoarding?

They had Verizon Business (VZB) up for sale. That old MCI division. Then they bought XO, supposedly for the access to spectrum leases.

VZW was even the cheerleader for 5G, saying that it would replace wireline broadband. (Others ask that question HERE).

Maybe it is merger mania consuming Lowell (VZ CEO). Maybe he wants to invest in Liberty Media now that they own Live Nation, Formula 1, the Braves, SiriusXM, and more. “The Formula One Group consists of Liberty Media Corporation‘s subsidiary Formula 1, its interest in Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., other minority investments, including Time Warner Inc. and Viacom Inc., and an inter-group interest in the Braves Group.” With $115 Billion in debt at approximately 5%, VZ is using up cash to pay $6B in interest payments per year. Maybe they want a good investment that will bring in more than 7% annually (and Yahoo! and AOL just won’t cut it).

We’ll see. Who knows anymore? The M&A is coming faster than anyone can keep track.

Tags: cable, mergers, rboc, vz, vzw
Related tags: liberty media, verizon, formula, business, cable, interest

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“The deskphone market has been left for dead by many but there is still room in the space for the device to evolve and become become a more integral part of your UC strategy,” writes TMC’s CEO, Rich Tehrani. The thing is: they will need to change drastically to do that. It is still pretty much the same device that we had 20 years ago. It is still the equivalent to the original brick of a cell phone.

With less than 25% of businesses on VoIP according to TechNova Consulting, then there is still time to make them relevant again.

Meanwhile Verizon is asking the FCC for permission to shutter more legacy SS7 voice switches. The TDM to IP transition is marching on. Frame Relay and ATM are mothballed. Soon SS7 as we are used to will be. I wonder if 9-1-1 centers have caught up yet?

AT&T told the FCC that “AT&T is progressing with its TDM-to-IP voice service transition in two cities in Florida and Alabama, telling the FCC that on a combined basis 50% of total customer accounts have voluntarily migrated to one of the telco’s next-gen wireline and wireless voice services.” [source]

OTT communications is growing so wide that it is now being reported on by analysts! “The VoIP market (e.g., Microsoft Skype), the IP messaging market (e.g., WhatsApp), a portion of the social networking advertising market (e.g., Facebook), Unified Communications (e.g., Cisco) and Cloud communications markets (e.g., Twillio) make up the OTT communication market.” [source]

Broadsoft has 38% of the global UC market with 15 million UC lines, but that isn’t a significant portion of the global business voice market. The analysts have now estimated CAGR in UCaaS at just 10% (down from the 20+% they were cheerleading for a few years ago).

Riddle me this: If the IP transition is going so well, how is the growth so slow (<10%) and the market penetration so small (15M = 38% or <25% of biz) when there are so many VoIP Providers out there?

Tags: att, broadsoft, fcc, ott, tdm, UC, voip, vz
Related tags: market, still, voice, transition, communications

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“Most businesses, whether B2B or B2C, don’t cater to just one type of customer, even if they do only sell one product or service,” writes Pamela Vaughan of HubSpot.

The same messaging to VSB, small and medium business just won’t work, especially for UCaaS. The pain points are different. The buyer persona are different. As I have said before: when you say you sell into the 1-500 or 1-1000 employee space, that is several segments of the market.

Seth Godin has an excellent short post about Almost No One buys from you. There are 27 million businesses in the US. If you have 10K business customers, that is 0.037% of the market — or almost no one.

So when you say “I sell to everyone”, you are fooling yourself. You have customers. Profile them. Duplicate them. Engage them.

“We think we’re designing and selling to everyone, but that doesn’t match reality. It makes no sense at all to dumb down your best work to appeal to the longtime bystander …” [or the critic or the shopper than doesn’t want any of your features or who wants to pay as little as possible]

It isn’t about a scatter shot approach to sales and marketing. It is about being an archer or a sniper.

Fiber network operators and fixed wireless providers know this better than other service providers because you can’t sell what the fiber or tower don’t touch. However, it is a lesson that CLECs never wanted to learn.

Tags: fiber, marketing, sales, sellecom, selling
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