On Rad's Radar Archives - Page 77 of 376

3 Big Changes Today

The first big change is at Comptel. It has re-branded as INCOMPAS under the new association management team and fairly new CEO, former Sen. Chip Pickering. With twitter, Netflix and Google as sponsors of Comptel Plus and members of Incompas, it is a whole new look for the group.

While AT&T is a platinum sponsor of the show, they are absent as they have their own partner show for APEX going on in Dallas as I write this. Nice jab since many Comptel/Incompas members are also APEX customers.

Onvoy, the Zayo voice division, bought Layered Communications. I like how the PR calls Layered: “a communications enabler for OTTs, voice service providers and MVNOs.”

“What Layered Communications adds to the Onvoy portfolio: an automated communications OSS based on REST APIs that enables voice, messaging and mobility service provisioning, including wireless porting.” It is all about the APIs. Ask Bandwidth who will be competing against the new Onvoy moreso than prior to this acquisition.

Bandwidth knows that automation (and integration) through APIs is the key to moving a step above a commodity service of just minutes and DIDs. Apparently, Onvoy wants to be the biggest as they announced when they bought Broadvox earlier this year.

The third event is Windstream sold off its data center business for $575 million to Tierpoint. Apparently, WIND needed the cash more than they needed to be in the data center business — despite going into the enterprise space.

In the channel, WIND was known for cheap T1s. Now the strategy is being pushed that WIND is looking for $1200 ARPU. Well, that is a difference, huh? You would think that data center (colo) business would help raise that ARPU. But then the RLEC space is a mess right now and the data center space is top dollar, so grab the cash and stave off a cash flow problem.

Tags: API, comptel, data center, mergers, voip, windstream
Related tags: center business, layered communications, onvoy, communications, center, business

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

What’s Up With the Data Center? – Aug 26, 2015

What Did I Miss? – Aug 15, 2014

M&A This Week – Nov 15, 2013

The New VoIP Giant – Jun 07, 2012

And So The New Year Starts – Jan 02, 2012

Wireless Combo is Merger 3 – Aug 20, 2010

GTT Buys OSN – Sep 15, 2015

Vonage Picks Up Another One – Aug 20, 2015

An Afternoon of VoIP News – Aug 05, 2015

2 Cloud Studies – Aug 03, 2015

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: 3 Big Changes Today

October 19, 2015 , On Rad's Radar

Why Your Marketing is Hurting Your Sales

I registered for a white paper and got dumped into the email automation bucket. And then the phone calls started.

I registered a domain and the emails poured in. I mark them as a spam and delete them.

I get robo-calls every week especially for Google/SEO pitches.

So why is your marketing so bad? WHY?

At one time, you probably thought: Postcards are expensive. it’s cheap to email, let’s email everyone often.

Then you decided to automate everything. You hired Marketo or Hubspot, uploaded every contact in every database that you had. And let the machine loose.

All of this is why your marketing sucks and isn’t working. Worse you have trained the prospects and consumers to ignore you. Yes, you trained them to ignore you.

They install ad-blockers. You ad technology that gets through it. That is basically saying: We don’t know how to market you except through blunt force. The result will still suck for you! How come you don’t get that?

Marketers automate social media to the point that it is useless. Facebook changes the algorithms to the point that less than 7% of your followers see your stuff and you have to pay Zuck to get them to see it. Twitter is just noise now. The new CEO is going to try to turn that around.

Marketers played games with content and click bait and so much else that Google changed its algorithm three times in three years.

Marketing isn’t a game.

It also isn’t just a broadcast. If you think that works, why not do an infomercial?

It is 16 years since Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing and still no one gets it.

Just because you have their email address does not mean you can send them stuff.

Attention is precious.

Your job as a marketer is to give value to get their attention. That isn’t easy. And you want easy. And you want a big response. And you are frustrated, so you try to game the system and hack away and push and broadcast. You get a 1%, maybe 2% response rate. Meanwhile, the other 98% dislike you and your brand.

Seth Godin wrote, “Mostly, a brand’s products begin to peak when no one seems to care. Sure, the organization ostensibly cares, but great tools and products and work require a person to care in an apparently unreasonable way.”

He also says that Marketing has to be baked into the product or service. Do we look at it that way? Zappos and Uber used word of mouth — maybe a little network effect – to become household names. Today, I hear people asking for the Uber of this and that.

Pushing your stuff on people doesn’t work. You attract them to you by creating an experience and letting word of mouth take off.

If you want to automate marketing, make it one to one. Personal and valuable and something that matters.

Every day I see marketers ruin it for others. I see why the original title was All Marketers Are Liars. It is plain lazy.

It really comes down to this: are you looking for short term results or building something for the long term?

Tags: advertising, email, marketing, seth, spam
Related tags: godin wrote, marketing, email, marketers, automate, stuff

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

The Job Jumper and His Rolodex – Jan 09, 2015

Can You Find the Bestseller Effect? – Dec 16, 2014

Is There Any Telecom Disruption? – Sep 22, 2015

On Content for Lead Gen – Aug 24, 2015

News Tidbits Part 2915 – Feb 09, 2015

About Email Marketing – Dec 09, 2014

The Cost of Attention (Advertising) – Sep 30, 2014

No More Paying For Attention – Mar 25, 2014

Some Ideas to Play With – Aug 16, 2013

Please Leave a Message – Feb 08, 2011

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: Why Your Marketing is Hurting Your Sales

October 18, 2015 , On Rad's Radar

Really Big Mergers

Dell-EMC, Charter-TWC-BHN. Anheuser-Busch InBev-SAB Miller. Big mergers usually amount to nothing good for customers. It is really about getting bigger, scaling up, too big to fail, but too big to execute.

The Charter acquisitions are facing opposition from many, many folks (and a Senator), but 80% likely to go through. Why? Not enough consumer harm demonstrated. And this is the land of Corporate Merica. Anything goes.

Bankers. It is all about the bankers.

Activist investors who call for a merger between Polycom and MITEL only do so because of the investor money that will roll out. It isn’t about building a company to last.

Investors and analysts have been telling Windstream and Verizon to sell their data centers just 5 years after they bought them. Analysts are suggesting that CenturyLink sell off Savvis! Why? $$$$

If anyone can remember a really big merger that worked, please let me know. Thanks.

Tags: cable, financials, mergers
Related tags: really

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

News Tidbits Part 2917 – Apr 27, 2015

The Cable Dominance Push – Sep 19, 2015

Charter Bulking Up – May 27, 2015

Europe Invades American Cable – May 21, 2015

The Race to Gigabit is About Business – Apr 15, 2015

Top Tampa ISPs Sell Out – Mar 31, 2015

What’s With the MSO Consolidation? – Mar 26, 2015

The RBOCs: Copper, Spectrum, Regulation and Sales – Feb 03, 2015

What Will Consolidation Mean in 2015 – Dec 11, 2014

Comcast Merger Will Pressure CLECs – Nov 19, 2014

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: Really Big Mergers

October 16, 2015 , On Rad's Radar

So Much M&A to Keep Up With

I cannot keep up with all the merger and acquisition activity happening right now. Here is some of it.

A big one for me is that Accenture acquired Cloud Sherpas. Sherpas was one of the largest Google integrators. Now they do other stuff – with 1100 employees you would have to. They are being acquired by a large consulting firm that does system integration work. Can you say clash of culture?

Barracuda to Acquire Intronis. Barracuda fame is from the days of appliances for email filtering and backup. I see their ads at airports. They have moved into security and storage. Barracuda is buying Intronis, an MSP’s data storage and backup system. Intronis has moved into the data protection space. It will probably make for a good team up.

LogMeIn Acquires LastPass for $110 Million. Last Pass is single sign-on and password management service provider.

ConnectWise acquired ScreenConnect in 1Q2015. ConnectWise is a platform for MSPs to run their business, including a clunky CRM, remote management and some other functionality. CW, based here in Tampa, also owns LabTech and Quosal. ScreenConnect will integrate free of charge with LabTech adding remote control functions to the existing platform. There is a battle going on for the wallet of the MSP. CW doesn’t have customers; they have tribe members.

Symantec spun off Veritas, a backup and DR provider, to PE firm, Carlyle Group for $8 billion! The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with $193 billion of assets under management, including Syniverse.

Dell has never been shy about acquiring companies in the IT space to expand its portfolio in managed services in order to completely replace all the hardware – PCs, servers, laptops – revenue that it used to have. Luckily, they are private so they don’t have to show how it is going quarterly.

” In addition to Quest, other key acquisitions include services company Perot Systems, storage companies EqualLogic and Compellent, cloud company Boomi, systems management company Kace, virtual desktop company Wyse Technologies, networking company Force10 Networks and security company SecureWorks.” [pcworld]

The move for Dell to buy EMC (and gain control of VMware) for $67 BILLION is bold. It probably won’t work. I hope those folks at Silver Lake realize that adding $50B in debt is a hole that you may not crawl out of. The only deal as big was the HP-Compaq deal worth $34B (that Presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina tried to execute).

In any business – big or small – there are cultures, people, leadership, management styles, talent, processes, domain knowledge that go into making a company successful. In smaller deals, there is a good chance that these factors will be assimilated. In bigger deals, there is less chance of that. In my 16 years of paying attention to telco/tech deals, not one has worked out the way anyone thought it would. Not AOL-TW. Not SBC-AT&T. Not BellSouth-SBC. Not Frontier buying AT&T/SNET or VZ assets. Fairpoint. HP-Compaq.

Heck, like Yahoo, Google and Dell, large companies do not always reap the benefits of the acquisition. How many companies has Yahoo! bought and closed? Or Google? As Rob Powell says, when was the last time you saw Force10? How is Wyse doing?

These mergers will make a few people happy – many shareholders and bankers. I feel sorry for the employees and customers.

There was noise this week about Polycom merging with MITEL because Elliott Holdings wants to make a big splash. No one I talked to thinks this makes any sense. MITEL+aastra+Polycom = a mess of debt. That means it is 75% likely to happen!

Tags: backup, dell, google, mergers, msp
Related tags: carlyle group, company, management, companies, backup, storage

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

Dell Gets WYSE – Apr 02, 2012

4 Acquisitions Noted (+2) – May 07, 2015

Spam Soap Going to J2 (with 7 Others) – Feb 23, 2015

A Quick Marketplace View – Jan 23, 2015

2 Ways to Maximize Your Vendor Relationship – Sep 16, 2014

Many Moves – Jul 15, 2014

Selling Storage in a Free For All Market – Jun 25, 2014

Tidbits and Things Part 134 – Feb 05, 2014

RingCentral IPO and Other Activity – Oct 02, 2013

Big Moves – Feb 05, 2013

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: So Much M&A to Keep Up With

October 15, 2015 , On Rad's Radar

News Tidbits Part 2920

Alan Percy at Dialogic has a nice write up of our panel about Open Source for service providers from ITEXPO. The panel discussion with Dialogic, XO and Netsapiens was so good that I am sorry it was not recorded. Read it here and at the end of the post sign up for the study data.

Fiber to the Tower is still driving growth for RLECs. Fairpoint is even seeing a need to start a construction division.

EarthLink jumped into the SDN game with the launch of its “Application Performance Optimization, a family of software defined WAN services designed to provide businesses with real-time analytics and visibility into how applications use bandwidth.” [telecomreseller]

FireEye is teaming up with VISA to provide threat analysis for businesses. “Visa and FireEye, the leaders in payment security and cyber security intelligence, present a new way for your organization to identify and respond to cyber attacks with the Visa Threat Intelligence portal, powered by FireEye. This powerful solution helps prioritize what threats you should act upon, why you should act and gives you actionable tools to address them.”

IntelePeer Acquires Advantone. Now Intelepeer’s enterprise SIP trunking customers can bundle cloud contact center. SIP trunking and cloud contact center??? Okay.

Talk about being late to the game: “Windstream’s Kinetic TV service will compete in Lexington against Time Warner Cable.” So WIND finally rolls out telco TV at a time when cable cord cutting is increasing. And right after VZ, DISH, Boingo and Xfinity launch OTT video services. No wonder you have to offer a 9% dividend.

Switch.co released its cloud-based phone system for Microsoft Office 365 users now. Switch.co is now on both ecosystems – MS and GOOG. Should be interesting to see the traction because on the OFF365 side, there are a number of players in the confusion that is Skype for Business/Lync/OFF365. It is challenging. On the Google side, there are only a handful like VZ VCE and Vonage Biz with gUnify. How will they message what they offer to the OFF365 crowd amid the noise that those users are experiencing??

Now your home phone, cell phone and tablet can all share the same phone number via AT&T’s NumberSync.

Tags: att, earthlink, managed services, microsoft, open source, ott, SDN, security, TV, windstream
Related tags: contact center, cloud contact, phone, fireeye, cloud, should