On Rad's Radar Archives - Page 38 of 376

Security is the Ugly Word

I have a client suffering in a DDoS attack for a week. This is not an unusual situation. I am working to provide a DDoS Mitigation solution.

Hacks and Ransonware are becoming common. The Enterprise CIO knows this. Security keeps him up at night. Finding the skill set for cyber-security is difficult. Finding the budget is even harder.

You would think that budget for security would be easy, but it isn’t. The risk assessment is that they would rather risk the game of cat and mouse cyber-warfare.

At ChannelCon security is prevalent. So many vendors, so few partners jumping on that bandwagon. To sell it, you have to understand it – and the risks, the benefits and more.

You also have to pick a vendor or 2.That is a time commitment and a learning curve.

At some point, someone will sell a multi-vendor solution of managed security; deliver it well; and become known for it.

It isn’t going to be a SKU off a VAD that someone just picks out of 5 quotes. Too many moving parts. Too many things that can go wrong that will ruin your relationship with the client.

It is just easier to keep trucking down your own road than to learn new services and how to sell them.

Tags: CompTIA, managed services, security
Related tags: security

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August 2, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Do you remember playing musical chairs in school? The music begins a chair is removed and you circle around until the music stops. When the music stops, you try to sit in a chair and not be left standing. Channel positions seem a lot like that right now.

I have written about the massive amount of personnel shifting going on in the industry. I would like to think that all this change would mean, well, change. But it doesn’t. It means a lot more of the same.

When chairs are being removed, who is going to take a risk? Not many. Most will hunker down, hire friends who will help cover their backside, and aim for the center of the road, playing follow the leader.

I see it with features, product lines, messaging, compensation (SPIFFs) and partner agreements. The sameness is like drowning in a pool of vanilla yogurt.

As we head to two back to back channel shows, I am packing with no visible enthusiasm because for the most part, there isn’t anything to get excited about. The sameness is deafening.

There will be “newness” in the form of the re-branding of merged entities. And there will be a new term bantered about: SD-WAN.

There will be some new faces in familiar logos and familiar faces in new logos. There will be parties. (It looks like drinking is the main reason to hit DC this August – and I don’t mean because of the presidential candidates).

This industry that is hoping and praying and dreaming of moving to cloud services is in major need of a colonic.

In the UCaaS space, premise based PBX has not disappeared. The handset / desk phone has not gone away either. Cisco and Intel are still shipping boxes and chips. Laptops are still being bought (more of them by Apple than the old PC guard). The laptops come with hard drives and O/S still, not dummy cloud terminals yet. Virtual Desktop or Desktop as a Service is not on fire in North America. All those analyst predictions were WRONG!

Most discounted one big thing: No one wants change AND selling Change is Hard! Cloud is change. And it isn’t even assured change. If you have ever been involved in software deployment, you know that most of the time the desired outcome is far out of reach. In short, software deployment falls short. That doesn’t bode well for a transition from a controlled environment (NOC, servers) to a rental model (SAAS).

Are people moving to cloud? Absolutely. If you want to include Salesforce, Office365, dial-tone replacement sold as Hosted VoIP and SIP trunking as cloud services.

Telecom spend is down from 2014 to 2015. A lot of that is due to price compression. Cable voice is about $10. Some Hosted VoIP providers are selling seats at $10. This happens for two really different reasons. Cable gets to raise bundle ARPU by $10 to give you voice. It is a win for cable. Triple play sales plus $10 extra. For the VoIP player, it is revenue, any revenue. Please someone buy my services!!!!

One Broadsoft provider dropped about $3M to get to 12,000 seats. The high end is Vonage and 8×8 with just over 500K seats each. Not even a million seats after 10 years! Meanwhile Windstream has 1 million SIP trunks on its Broadsoft platform – and XO has 2 million.

It used to be that voice went to the ILEC. Then IXCs came along to rob some LD minutes and then some toll-free minutes. Then CLECs got into the game. Even at its heyday, no CLEC had more than 60K customers, except maybe some UNE-P players before they crashed. Today, voice is replaced cellphones, cable voice, SIP trunks from OTT and CLECs, Hosted VoIP by ITSPs and apps of every variety. Everyone is fighting over a voice pie that is going to ZERO.

This is the main reason why when selling UCaaS, you have to look at the whole system and not that you are selling voice. Businesses have to be omni-channel now. That is why cloud contact center is hot. That is why CPaaS is hot (twilio IPO and Vonage-Nexmo deal and my podcast with Zilkr.)

While this shift is happening, it seems no one is noticing because the talk is the same. We push products at people who don’t care because it is all the same. It is transactional. At least everyone knows the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper.

If you think a new SPIFF for your HPBX offering is going to swing the tide, it better be larger than 7X MRC because that is the new table stakes now.

Well, two conferences of vanilla pudding coming up with a noise level that should have me drinking by noon. Let’s meet for coffee. It’s easy just get on my schedule.

If you want to be green jello in the midst of all that vanilla pudding or even better, a brownie or piece of cake, give me a shout. I have a bunch of thoughts on the subject.

Next year at this time SD-WAN providers – meaning just about every LEC – will be in the same boat as the UCaaS folks unless something changes, besides the people keeping a chair warm.

Tags: branding, change, commissions, conference, expo, marketing, rant, SDN, UC, WAN
Related tags: vanilla pudding, cloud services, moving cloud, cable voice, software deployment, voice

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UC Tidbits #2441 – Jul 05, 2016

UCaaS Tidbits #2440 – Jul 05, 2016

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Getting Perspective – May 14, 2015

Look Another Road Show (and Presentation) – Oct 28, 2014

Telesphere Goes Reality TV in Booth – Mar 17, 2014

Are You Missing the Point? – Jan 03, 2014

Unsubscribe and Permission – Nov 17, 2009

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July 29, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Talking API and UC with Zilkr

In this podcast, I sit down with Omar Paul, co-founder of Zilkr, a platform for communications APIs and SDK. In the Age of Integration, the Age of the API, UCaaS providers have to start building an ecosystem. When apps like Slack and WhatsApp are enabled for voice and video calls, UCaaS providers have to offer value and integration or be marginalized to sometimes used dial-tone.

CPaaS is hot. Twilio just IPO’ed. Nexmo was just acquired by Vonage. Apps like Uber, Slack and so many more are adding comms. But not from the VoIP provider, from the CPaaS platform provider.

If you can’t see the podcast player above, you can download the mp3 or listen over at Soundcloud.

Tags: API, podcast, UC, voip, webrtc
Related tags: ucaas providers

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What Are They Feeding Enterprise? – Mar 09, 2016

Full Circle: Switch.co Re-Names as Dialpad – Mar 07, 2016

A View of UC from Broadvoice – Sep 24, 2015

An Exchange Alternative with UC – Jul 09, 2014

Why You? – Jul 22, 2016

PlumUC Pipes in on Skype4B for Partners – Jul 19, 2016

A Big Shift Coming to Telecom – Jul 05, 2016

UCaaS Tidbits #2440 – Jul 05, 2016

Selling UCaaS as a Solution with Velis4 – Jun 17, 2016

The Telecom Long Tails – Jun 07, 2016

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July 28, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

What It Means to Master an Agency

After rumors swirled at CP Expo in Vegas in March, the announcement is finally here: Sandler Partners is acquiring X4. This will create an entity that is doing $65M in revenue, referenced as second only to one master agency.

It is interested that some media call it a master agency, when in the press release, Sandler Partners described themselves as America’s Fastest Growing Distributor Of Connectivity & Cloud Services. X4 is called a master agency though.

I asked around about the term Master Agency. Regional organizations definitely use that term. Telarus does a ton of SEO around the term “master agent”. In fact, until recently, they hosted a community on TMC around that term (see here; available now*). However, they also describe themselves as a value added distributor and offer circuit monitoring.

MicroCorp is the Premier Value Added Distributor of Telecom and Cloud Services.
COLOTRAQ is the only master agency purely focused on Data Center Infrastructure.
GCN recently coined the term Connectivity Integrator
PC Connections says they are an MSP.
TBI is a third-party technology distributor
AVANT is the premier distributor of next generation IT technologies and also the leader in channel sales enablement of next-generation IT technologies.
Acuity Technologies is a master agency with a managed services arm.

No wonder vendors are chasing Jenne, SYNNEX, Tech Data and Ingram. If the masters are now just VADs, they might as well chase big VADs.

Just to offer how Jenne describes itself: “Jenne, Inc., a value added distributor of technology products and solutions focusing on voice, video, data networking, premises security and the cloud.”

I have said that masters would slam into the VAD wall soon. Just the share size of the product catalog would mean that they would have to start looking at the VAD model. Plus business model wise, they are similar with both being driven by vendor co-marketing dollars and margins.

The big difference between the VADs that distribute hardware traditionally and the VADs that were slinging T1s traditionally is one of Demand. The bigger vendors – Cisco, IBM, HP – create demand that the VADs distribute. They are a logistics business for boxes and software licenses. As we move to an As-a-Service model for everything (including hardware and Microsoft Surface), delivery and logistics change immensely as the price per sale drops (from one-time with maintenance to MRR).

Masters have some vendors with true demand – cablecos and the big 4 LECs, but for everything else they expect the demand to be created by the channel partner. That didn’t work for the number 2 and number 3 power backup companies behind APC.

It didn’t work for Juniper or Foundry. They had to create demand by building a better devices and offering training.

VMWare doesn’t leave it up to the channel for demand. They brand, market, advertise and work the channel. There’s a lesson there for the next level providers.

I am told that there will more mergers like Sandler-X4 coming. I don’t doubt it. Many traditional masters are ready for retirement. Some don’t want to be bothered with this cloud craze. Others are looking for scale to wield some leverage with the vendors.

This is the first acquisition for Sandler Partners. X4 is geographically distant. It will be interesting to see how that factors into the success of this transaction.

A branding expert writes “study after study puts the failure rate of most M&A deals at a stunning 70-90%…. The most common reasons for failure: people, politics and a failure to drive “buy-in” and alignment of all stakeholders.” Culture and Buy-in of ALL employees will be factors in success.

No layoffs are pending, but a deal of this magnitude can’t work without “Synergies”, which is the banker code for layoffs. Curt Allen of X4 is staying on as President but the other 3 co-founders of X4 are not staying after integration. There will attrition with employees that don’t buy-in, I suppose.

Sandler Partners now has a combined 40 channel managers and 140 direct vendor relationships.

Stay tuned.

* Yes that was a blatant plug but this blog is on the TMC webiste and the keyword is available. Email me or Anthony Graffeo for more information about a TMC community and content marketing.

Tags: master agency, mergers, VAD
Related tags: master agency, sandler partners, added distributor, value added, cloud services, master

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The Channel Target Cycle – Apr 08, 2016

Agent and Reseller M&A – Oct 01, 2014

Two Sides of the Street – Sep 10, 2014

Some Tampa Bay Telecom Tidbits – Aug 18, 2014

Many Moves – Jul 15, 2014

Vendor Buys Its Platinum Partner – Jun 09, 2014

VADs, VARs and Cable: How Does That Work? – Apr 02, 2014

Telecom Tidbits Part 133 – Jan 16, 2014

The Mobile Master Agent – Jul 02, 2012

MicroCorp Acquires Another – Dec 07, 2011

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July 25, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Why You?

This was another Me-too week in press releases. It was ILEC SD-WAN week with announcements from AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon. It was another handful of VoIP product launches. It was a handful of notifications that various master agencies inked agreements with UCaaS and other vendors. Oh, and another UCaaS player or two signed up with a VAD*, All business as usual. All noise. Serious noise.

Throughout all of this I have to WHY?

Why is it so me-too?

On a webinar, the slide showed 13 vendors for Office365. How do you decide who to go with?

There are so many VoIP Providers that I have never heard of half of them (and the websites are lacking). This is a small fraction of the VoIP Providers available to the average partner.