Peter Radizeski is Founder and President of RAD-INFO INC. He is an accomplished blogalyst, speaker, author and consultant. He has helped many service providers with sales training, marketing, channel development and business strategy. He is a trusted source of knowledge about the telecom sector. His honest and direct approach make him a refreshing speaker.

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MSP Tidbits (#2437)

The MSP (managed service provider) sector is set for growth as IT becomes more vital to a business – and the vastness of the IT umbrella overwhelms both the IT department and business owners.

Last year, HP broke up into 2 units. Now one of those units is in a mega-merger. USA Today reports that, “Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), run by Meg Whitman, late Tuesday said it was spinning off its enterprise services business, and merging it with Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), to create an IT services firm with $26 billion in annual sales.” This will create the world’s third largest SI with 5000 clients. IBM and NTT are probably taking notice.

NTT’s Dimension Data acquired Ceryx Inc., a Microsoft-based service provider out of Toronto. Everyone needs to add a Microsoft division to cover Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business.

AirTight Networks, a vendor for EarthLink, renamed as Mojo Networks, which is kind of confusing because we already have Mojo in telecom. The company has tightened its focus to cloud managed wi-fi.

More re-branding: Dell Technologies is the new name for the company being formed from last year’s merger of Dell and EMC. Went out on a limb there with that one.

Tech Data Launches Cybersecurity Unit for Channel Partners. It will showcase all the cyber vendors in one section. TD resellers “will gain access to customer enablement tools, including security assessments and professional services, to build security practices and increase their overall knowledge of the market.” Yeah, and that just like that everyone is selling security.

If Cox thinks that Netflix and a few other OTT players have made its life rough, wait for the roll out of SD-WAN. Once that happens, businesses will have reporting to know what the throughput really is on their circuits. And the SLA credits will mount. Usually to get an SLA credit a business has to catch the carrier breaking the SLA, open a ticket and then chase down the credits. Now, with SD-WAN or with circuit monitoring that a few companies have launched, businesses will have the reports to show to the carrier on the mess that is the network today.

If every OTT player graded carriers like Netflix does, carriers couldn’t hide any more. That kind of transparency would force a better network.

BIG RUMOR

Avaya was taken private in 2007 by two private equity firms, TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners, for $8.2 billion. Since then, Avaya has acquired Esna, Radvision and Nortel assets, while not exactly gaining ground on the changing landscape of global UCaaS, which is becoming dominated by Microsoft and Cisco. So the PE firms are exploring a sale! They are looking for a valuation between $6 billion and $10 billion, including debt, based on “adjusted (EBITDA) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization last year reaching $900 million. However, its interest expense of more than $400 million every year has been pushing it consistently into loss.” Yeah, might have to take a haircut on that one.

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    MSP Tidbits (#2437)

    The MSP (managed service provider) sector is set for growth as IT becomes more vital to a business – and the vastness of the IT umbrella overwhelms both the IT department and business owners.

    Last year, HP broke up into 2 units. Now one of those units is in a mega-merger. USA Today reports that, “Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), run by Meg Whitman, late Tuesday said it was spinning off its enterprise services business, and merging it with Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), to create an IT services firm with $26 billion in annual sales.” This will create the world’s third largest SI with 5000 clients. IBM and NTT are probably taking notice.

    NTT’s Dimension Data acquired Ceryx Inc., a Microsoft-based service provider out of Toronto. Everyone needs to add a Microsoft division to cover Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business.

    AirTight Networks, a vendor for EarthLink, renamed as Mojo Networks, which is kind of confusing because we already have Mojo in telecom. The company has tightened its focus to cloud managed wi-fi.

    More re-branding: Dell Technologies is the new name for the company being formed from last year’s merger of Dell and EMC. Went out on a limb there with that one.

    Tech Data Launches Cybersecurity Unit for Channel Partners. It will showcase all the cyber vendors in one section. TD resellers “will gain access to customer enablement tools, including security assessments and professional services, to build security practices and increase their overall knowledge of the market.” Yeah, and that just like that everyone is selling security.

    If Cox thinks that Netflix and a few other OTT players have made its life rough, wait for the roll out of SD-WAN. Once that happens, businesses will have reporting to know what the throughput really is on their circuits. And the SLA credits will mount. Usually to get an SLA credit a business has to catch the carrier breaking the SLA, open a ticket and then chase down the credits. Now, with SD-WAN or with circuit monitoring that a few companies have launched, businesses will have the reports to show to the carrier on the mess that is the network today.

    If every OTT player graded carriers like Netflix does, carriers couldn’t hide any more. That kind of transparency would force a better network.

    BIG RUMOR

    Avaya was taken private in 2007 by two private equity firms, TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners, for $8.2 billion. Since then, Avaya has acquired Esna, Radvision and Nortel assets, while not exactly gaining ground on the changing landscape of global UCaaS, which is becoming dominated by Microsoft and Cisco. So the PE firms are exploring a sale! They are looking for a valuation between $6 billion and $10 billion, including debt, based on “adjusted (EBITDA) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization last year reaching $900 million. However, its interest expense of more than $400 million every year has been pushing it consistently into loss.” Yeah, might have to take a haircut on that one.

    Tags: , , , , , , , ,
    Related tags: , , , , ,

    Related Entries

  • Telecom Tidbits (Part 2431)Mar 29, 2016
  • So Much M&A to Keep Up WithOct 15, 2015
    mergers-ma.jpg
  • Dell Gets WYSEApr 02, 2012
  • What Happens in VegasMar 17, 2016
  • Lessons from the NGC15Dec 10, 2015
  • The Monitoring Master MoveNov 20, 2015
  • A Couple of Things Oct 06, 2015
  • AOL Gets a Surprise from VerizonMay 12, 2015
  • 4 Acquisitions Noted (+2)May 07, 2015
    mergers.jpg
  • M&A Rumor MillMay 04, 2015
  • TrackBacks
    | Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: MSP Tidbits (#2437)


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    Open Letter to LinkedIn

    What started as a neat online rolodex evolved into a business networking site, but now is a lousy version of Facebook. (I am not alone in this opinion, see here and there.)

    timesuck2.jpg

    People have a shortage of time, because we have to do way more per day to keep above water. Social media is an admitted time suck (see Hubspot story; or the nextweb post; or this article about social ruining your life; and wired’s social is a waste of time.) So why would a business social network make it more noisy; more of a time suck?

    Discussion is missing in many of the groups. I belong to the maximum allowed – 50 – and very few have posts that are anything but links. For a SOCIAL network, the social is gone. Now LinkedIn is just a broadcast medium, but is ANYONE LISTENING?

    The Pulse is that anyone can publish anything. And much of it is just press releases or other pitches. You couldn’t curate the Pulse? Or like Reddit have articles voted up or down?

    If you are going to copy another social network, why Facebook? Because of the numbers? Those numbers indicate that LI stinks in most categories. And these numbers show that engagement and reach are down.

    Here are some ideas:

    • Get cleaner design – like G+ and Instagram.
    • Less is more in every essence of design.
    • Stop auto-playing videos.
    • Curate Pulse “articles”.
    • Maybe have a Featured section or something with the Best of.
    • Pay for Community man

    agers to get discussions back in Groups.

    Not every Liked update should show up. Have a share button. Because people like everything, which floods my feed with stupid sh!t. Important Note: That results in me not liking the person liking all that stupid stuff.

    I have had to go back to an egg timer for social media with 10 to 15 minute intervals to jump in and jump out. See more time management tips here.

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    Apex Technology Services
    Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

    Windstream Complains About XO-VZ Deal

    Windstream (and a couple other telcos) is complaining about the acquisition of XO by Verizon.

    “About 50 percent of the Ethernet circuits Windstream buys from XO, or about 32 percent of its Ethernet expense with XO is provisioned as EoC. By using XO’s EoC services, Windstream can provide symmetrical bandwidth of up to 100 Mbps to business customers.” So XO is a vendor for Windstream for EoC. They want to preserve the supply of EoC, not something that VZ cares about. Verizon is allergic to copper.

    Meanwhile Sprint is really pushing its wireline portfolio, something that it had forgotten about for ten years. Sprint’s new Ethernet strategy involves two new options — Ethernet over Copper (EoC) and Ethernet over DOCSIS (EoDOCSIS). Sprint must have struck a deal with Charter and TWC for EoCoax is strictly a MSO offering.

    This FCC complaint is just another lever of negotiations. XO used it when Level3 was buying Global Crossing. It happens often.

    I’m surprised that either Global Capacity or GTT haven’t stepped up to offer WIND and Transbeam EoC services, although maybe the price point isn’t as low as XO was offering. Who knows?

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    It is Nice that Acquires inContact

    Israeli software company Nice Systems said it would acquire inContact on Wednesday morning for about $940 million. Another Billion dollar deal in the UC&C space. (PGi got picked off by private equity for a billion late last year.)

    inContact is a cloud contact center platform that is the partner for Siemens Enterprise Communications (which re-branded as Unify, later acquired by Atos for $400M). This is not a small company. They have done global 50K seat deployments. And that hard workhas paid off to the tune of $940 mill.

    The omni-channel contact center has been leap frogged. This “acquisition marks the first time that one vendor offers both contact center cloud infrastructure as well as the full range of WFO (workforce optimization) applications and Analytics, providing a seamless integrated environment.” [source]

    “The Experience Center. Infusing Analytics into each and every element of the contact center allows organizations to re-invent customer service in new and intelligent ways, adapting their interactions in real-time to both employee persona and the understanding of customer intent across the omni-channel journey.” It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off. The market is about 5000 customers – the Global 5000. Who else can afford it? Most companies are still outsourcing to foreign lands their call centers.

    When I said there was consolidation still coming, I thought it would be more like yesterday’s deal of FV-GoDaddy.

    inContact was a big channel vendor. It will be interesting to see how that division plays out in the coming months.

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