Whether it is TPX CEO Richard Jalkut or other channel executives, providers are impatiently waiting on the channel to jump off selling network and start selling other things.

The products that have been launched recently sit in big buckets titled IOT, Cyber-Security, Managed Services, SD-WAN and of course UC (UCaaS, UCC, WCC).

Rich Tehrani has a nice read about AI and analytics transforming companies like Vodafone.

COLOTRAQ has a new IT Risk/Cyber-security Assessment and Planning Service. They even brought in some talent to delivery it in Victor Zamora.

MetTel launched a single SIM for IOT. One VAR I spoke with said that they are going to run with this to the end-user because it is a niche that is almost without competition.

Level3 consistently emails me about selling cyber-security, especially their DDoS Mitigation service.

EarthLink is still around? They launched a secure public Wi-Fi connections with Norton WiFi Privacy (basically VPN). Considering how often businesses use Starbucks, hotel, airport and other public wi-fi, this should be a no-brainer sale.

Panterra rolled out Streams, an ode to Slack, but integrated into a secure, encrypted full unified comms platform.

VZW has One Talk, one of the few mobile UC plays out there.

When TelePacific re-branded as TPx, the highlighted products were managed IT, security, UCaaS and SD-WAN.

Aryaka just rolled out a clientless SD-WAN: “SmartACCESS – the first-to-market SD-WAN for remote access, with built-in dynamic CDN.” In the US, Content Delivery Networks are how a majority of users get their Netflix chill on.

Verizon announced that they are selling more MPLS due to SD-WAN. CenturyLink has said that SD-WAN is not a quick fix. So there is a lot of room for expertise and advising in these projects still.

AT&T says that enterprise clients want a hybrid solution to managed services. (Nothing new here). Some of the services will be outsourced to the likes of AT&T and some will remain in-house. That is the way it is for cloud as well – HYBRID, according to an Evolve IP survey. Private for mission-critical, Public (AWS, Azure, SaaS) for mass market stuff and VPS for DevOps. Pulling that together requires some expert help. Is that you?

All of these vendors are just waiting for Channel Partners to pickup the ball and run with it.

It will take more than the Twitter approach to launch. Twitter put there platform out there and waited to see what people would do with it. Years later, Twitter still has no idea what the business case or financial model is. Don’t be Twitter!

It isn’t about just throwing your toy into the yard so someone will stumble along to play with it.

We want to be spoon fed who IS buying it; why are they buying it; etc. (As I have written about ad nauseum.) It is all about the Stories! Ignoring this means that we will leave that toy alone on the ground over there.

I understand that channel partners have to innovate, change, transition, etc.

With network revenues steadily declining and telecom being a broken mess, partners spend all day selling bandwidth at lower rates – and lower commissions – and then having to navigate the many layers of Dante’s Hell that is a carrier today to get it installed (and then fixed – yes I am talking to you ACC Business and GTT!)

In the midst of this mess, on-going consolidation and the accompanying musical chairs is making a partner’s job harder, not easier.

Much of these products require new knowledge and some training. That is not time that is always available to partners. I know, Go Make Some Time before you become Extinct.
You see, we’ll have time when we are extinct.

Besides compelling stories, buyer profiles and the WHY, we will also need new sales skills. Selling dial-tone or network is replacement. Selling Cyber-Security or AI requires a different sales approach.

MSPs understand how to sell managed IT but some VARs do not. (Hence why they are still VARs!)

While many of these products allow a Partner to enter a green field with little competition, maybe the business model for the partner has to be demonstrated as well.

And maybe instead of launching more services, you figure out how to deliver on the ones you have. If you can’t deliver the easy stuff (Network), I will never give you a shot at the complex!

Just some food for thought while you wait on the Channel.

Tags: channel partners, earthlink, managed it, msp, sdwan, security, sellecom, selling, UC, VAR
Related tags: cyber security, waiting channel, channel partners, managed services, selling cyber, selling

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Some stats from 451 Research

Enterprises buy a variety of computing services from public to private along with VPS, hosting and everything in between. “It’s easier for enterprises to develop, test, operate and migrate workloads across hybrid architectures when the CSP’s public and private cloud code base is the same, or at least virtualized and functioning identically.” However, they cannot procure this variety from Amazon or Google. They would to go to the likes of IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

“Consumer tablet demand continues to shrink. Apple is the only manufacturer seeing an improvement in buying.” Not good news for the cellcos.

“Future data centers will include technologies such as advanced data center management software, distributed resiliency, prefabricated modular (PFM) components and dexterous robots.” Meanwhile Telcos are exiting the data center business (WIND, C-Link, VZ).

PE firms own many of the data center companies, including Peak 10 which acquired Via West from Shaw today for $1.7 Billion. In addition, Dupont Fabros merged with Digital Realty. That is along of transactions and consolidation in the space.

Upgrade those pipes!

Cisco’s report on Internet traffic growth is out with many pretty graphs. “Globally, Internet traffic will grow 3.2-fold from 2016 to 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 26%. Globally, Internet traffic will reach 235.7 Exabytes per month in 2021, up from 73.1 Exabytes per month in 2016. Global Internet traffic will be 7.7 Exabytes per day in 2021, up from 2.4 Exabytes per day in 2016.”

What is an Exabyte? “Global Internet traffic in 2021 will be equivalent to 707 billion DVDs per year, 59 billion DVDs per month, or 81 million DVDs per hour. In 2021, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross the Internet every 1 minutes.”

According to Akamai, “Slow IPv6 adoption is a conundrum in light of IPv4 address exhaustion.” Global Average Internet Connection Speed = 7.2 Mbps. Yet “U.S. speeds averaged 18.7 megabits per second compared with 28.6 Mbps for global leader South Korea.” Most of that is cable modem download speeds since MSOs have the lion’s share of broadband customers in the US. DSL is dragging us down.

The Duopoly is looking to strip Net Neutrality rules, claiming they stifled growth. OOPS! “Broadband speeds have soared under net neutrality rules, cable lobby says.”

“Fiber is basically the nervous system of the networks of the future,” Malady said and Verizon is making big investments in it.” Good insight.

Tags: broadband, cellular, cisco, cloud computing, data center, internet, mergers, net neutrality
Related tags: internet traffic, globally internet, global internet, public private, neutrality rules, internet

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VZ Buys Terremark for $1.4B – Jan 28, 2011

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I hear Channel Managers (CM) mention how easy it is to be a partner. Recently, one CM told me that he was going to start being an Agent part-time.

Someone I met in Vegas was a laid off CM who was discussing how exciting it was to launch her partner business. I hadn’t heard from her and just checked on LinkedIn. She is back in the W-2 world of being a carrier channel manager.

Over the years I have met a handful of CMs who had been doing Agent business on the side to build up enough MRC (monthly recurring commissions) to make an easy slide over to the independent side.

There are a couple of executives to made the leap into master agencies by bring a deal in their back pocket big enough to start them off.

It takes a while to find a prospect, ink the deal, get it installed and then get paid. Number porting for anything voice and fiber installation for anything network can push out delivery dates. The other problem is that if you sell a 100MB pipe $995, after waiting 120 days for install and turn up, you get that commission check of $150. That isn’t going to go far. You need to be selling deals every week. Not dabbling in it looking for a whale.

So while I understand the side hustle on being a partner, I don’t know how anyone can look at it and call it easy.

An Agent is often described as a lifestyle business, too. Sure there is flexibility and monthly recurring commissions help, but you only get to eat what you kill. Time off comes with an opportunity cost.

That lack of a guaranteed check accompanied by those luxurious benefits are usually the deterrent to a switch from CM to partner.

Tags: agents, channel managers, channel partners, commissions, sellecom
Related tags: recurring commissions, monthly recurring, partner, agent, business, being

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

The VADs (value added distributors) are feeling the pinch of the growth of cloud, SAAS, SD-WAN, managed services – amid the decline of laptops, PCs, hardware and software licensing.

Last year, Tech Data negotiated to acquire Avnet Technology Solutions for $2.6 billion. Avnet TS brings in $9.65 Billion in revenue and will increase Tech Data’s share of data center revenue from just 29 percent to 45 percent. This move also gives Tech Data a presence in Asia-Pacific.

Tech Data competes with Ingram, ARROW, SYNNEX, Westcon-Comstor and to a lesser extent Jenne, ScanSource and CDW.

“Westcon has struggled in recent quarters, with revenue falling 10 percent to $2.26 billion and earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) falling 18 percent to $42.9 million,” according to reports. This is not unusual in the VAD space. ScanSource and other VADs have been facing declining revenue and margins due to the turbulence of the IT space.

“SYNNEX has reached an agreement to buy the North American and Latin American Westcon-Comstor business from Datatec,” according to Seeking Alpha. The financials of the deal are complicated and range between $715 and $915 million depending on earn out.

Most analysts have commented that this is a as good a fit (Westcon+Synnex) as TD-AVnetTS. It fills in holes both in line cards as well as geography.

Consolidation is happening at every level of the IT/tech/telecom sector. Less choice for the partner and customer is one result. The other is usually a disorganized organization.

The other blockbuster deal is in the Data Center space. Digital Realty Trust (which acquired TELX) is now buying data center wholesaler DuPont Fabros for $7.6 billion. “DuPont Fabros operates 12 data centers in three major U.S. markets, including Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia, while Digital Realty operates 145 data centers globally.” Dupont Fabros is the data center landlord to Yahoo, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. Those are nice tenants to have if you are DRT.

This is more than either CenturyLink or Verizon received for selling their data center business. C-Link sold 57 data centers to a group of PE firms for $2.15 billion and a piece of the new firm (now known as Cyxtera Technologies). Cyxtera is a combo of Savvis and Qwest data centers that C-Link paid much more than the $2.5B C-Link paid just for Savvis. (Buy high sell low!) VZ sold its 24 data centers to Equinix for $3.6 billion, which it bought from Terremark for $1.4B.

Dany Bouchedid, CEO of COLOTRAQ, the data center master agency, said, “This definitely establishes DLR in the wholesale colocation space more than ever. Dupont’s data centers are enormous with next gen gear and mechanicals. In addition, Dupont owns their PPE (property plant and equipment) with some of their sites having a decent amount of land. Their PUEs are industry leading and their cooling and UPS technologies are ahead of their time. DLR will be a great platform for them to further market their capabilities.”

Data Center is still a hot sector with PE firms swooping in as well as consolidation by the REITs.

Tags: collocation, data center, ingram, mergers, tech data, VAD
Related tags: dupont fabros, westcon comstor, falling percent, digital realty, center, centers

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