Next Level BizTech

In this episode of Inside the Win, Jason Kaufman sits down with Senior Field Solutions Engineer Joshua “Haas” Hazelhorst to unpack a real-world cybersecurity win. Learn how engineering expertise and creative partner playbooks turned a stalled, capital-intensive firewall refresh into a fully managed, 100% Opex service — delivering stronger security, predictable monthly revenue, and a delighted customer. We break down vendor deal-registration pitfalls, SD‑WAN vs. next‑gen firewall tradeoffs, financing challenges, and how to position partners as trusted advisors.

What you’ll get from this episode:

• Practical tactics to convert transactional hardware deals into recurring managed services
• How to navigate vendor registrations and partner politics without losing the deal
• Real examples of financing options and operational considerations for small customers

Who this episode is for:
Technology Advisors, MSPs, solutions architects, and cybersecurity leaders who want to increase MRR, reduce sales friction, and deliver real risk reduction for customers.

The AI race just flipped. For years it was all about building bigger models. Now the center of gravity has moved to serving those models fast, cheap, and everywhere. Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering, breaks down the “Inference Flip” in plain English: what training vs. inference really mean, why today’s models “think” before they answer, and how that shift pushes the hard problem—and the money—into real‑time inference.

What you’ll learn

• Training vs. inference, explained simply (write the textbook once, read it billions of times)
• Why letting models “think” increases tokens 10–100x at answer time—and shifts cost to inference
• The memory wall: why moving data, not math, bottlenecks GPUs
• New hardware built for inference: wafer‑scale systems (e.g., Cerebras), LPUs (e.g., Groq), and system‑level designs
• What changes in the real world: costs fall, latency drops, and AI moves to the edge (“physical AI”)
• Where trusted advisors win as customers face more diverse AI deployment choices

Practical takeaways

• Real-time use cases become feasible: voice agents without awkward lag, live translation, multi‑step agents, instant fraud checks
• Edge/onsite AI gets viable for latency, cost, or data‑residency needs
• Reopen “shelved” AI projects—math and performance assumptions may have flipped

The conversation explores the challenges and implications of implementing AI tools in business, particularly focusing on budgeting issues that arise after initial success. It highlights a real-world example involving Uber, where the rapid adoption of an AI coding tool led to unexpected budget constraints, prompting a reevaluation of financial planning and resource allocation.

In this episode of Inside the Win, Telarus VP of Cloud Chad Muckenfuss sits down with Jay Hanley, Head of Solution Architecture at Mobile Mentor, to break down a major Microsoft Copilot win in the enterprise healthcare space.

What started as a small Copilot deployment quickly grew into a large-scale AI adoption strategy for 7,500 users. Jay explains how Mobile Mentor helped the organization address data security, governance, user enablement, business use cases, and ROI before expanding Copilot across the health system.

Learn how Mobile Mentor used Microsoft technologies like Copilot, Purview, and Defender to help a healthcare organization move from AI experimentation to secure, scalable adoption. This episode is a practical look at how technology advisors can uncover bigger Microsoft opportunities by helping customers unlock the full value of the tools they already own.

What can technology advisors learn from NVIDIA’s near-misses and ultimate success? Josh Lupresto shares how Jensen Huang and team navigated setbacks—like product pivots and industry disruptions—to become a leader in AI. Discover practical advice for navigating tech shifts, leading with discovery questions, and being the trusted guide clients count on no matter how fast technology changes. Perfect for advisors facing complex changes in AI, security, and cloud.

Mike Baillargeon from Telarus interviews James Cammareri from Call Center Power about a successful multi-phase partnership deal. The conversation covers Call Center Power's capabilities as a contact center consulting and technology enablement company, focusing on a specific win with a home security company in Charlotte. The project started with a $42,000 Genesys Cloud CX implementation and grew into an ongoing managed services contract worth significant monthly recurring revenue. James explains how Call Center Power differentiates itself by being vendor-agnostic while offering implementation, integration, and post-go-live management across platforms like Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud CX, Zoom Contact Center, and Zendesk. The discussion also covers their BPO brokerage network of over 230 vetted providers and how trusted advisors can generate revenue through various engagement models including implementations, managed services, and outsourcing solutions.

95% of enterprise AI projects deliver little to no measurable impact — and it’s not the model that’s failing. In this solo episode of Next Level BizTech, Josh Lupresto (SVP, Sales Engineering at Telarus) explains why the hard part has moved from building models to deploying them inside messy, real-world environments. He breaks down the recent push by major AI labs to embed engineers on customer sites, why forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) are reshaping the market, and what that means for advisors, MSPs, and VARs.

Listen for:

• Why deployment — not the model — is the real product
• How channel partners can turn the deployment gap into a competitive advantage
• A practical playbook: build AI fluency, stay vendor-neutral, and own the integration layer

If you sell or advise on technology, this episode reframes AI as an opportunity. Subscribe to Next Level BizTech and share this with someone who needs to hear it.

In this episode of Inside the Win, Graeme Scott from Telarus interviews Justin Lyle-Purdy from Graphiant about network as a service (NAS) and how it's changing the way customers buy network solutions. They discuss a recent customer win that started as a simple request for a single circuit connection between two locations for a medical manufacturer but evolved into a 600-connection solution. The customer needed to connect their headquarters to Azure with an express route but faced 90-110 day lead times from traditional carriers. Graphiant's network as a service solution provided same-day connectivity using the customer's existing public internet infrastructure. The win expanded when they discovered the customer was paying over $20,000 monthly to connect 600 doctor's offices to their Azure environment through business-to-business VPNs. Graphiant's secure network fabric could replace this expensive managed service solution while providing the same connectivity with professional services included. The discussion highlights how NAS represents a fundamental shift in networking, comparable to previous transitions from frame relay to MPLS to SD-WAN and SASE, and positions it as the next major revolution in network connectivity.

In this episode, Jason Kaufman interviews Michael Luttenberger, Field CTO of Modern Work at Netrix Global, about AI implementation challenges, best practices, and future trends. They explore real-world use cases, common pitfalls, and strategic advice for successful AI adoption.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to AI and Its Importance

05:01 Mike Luttenberger's Journey into Technology

10:11 Understanding AI: Basics and Complexities

14:59 Use Cases of AI in Business

19:55 Common Pitfalls in AI Implementation

22:12 Real-Life Use Cases: Training and Adoption Challenges

30:43 Data Governance: The Key to Successful AI Deployment

35:12 Advice for Partners: Taking a Step Back Before AI Implementation

36:41 The Future of AI: Wearables and Augmented Reality

Jason Kaufman and Trevor Burnside discuss a successful upsell case study on their podcast 'Inside the Win'. The opportunity began as a basic Exchange Server 2008 to Microsoft 365 migration for a client with an analytical CEO who demanded a flawless transition. Trevor leveraged this email migration conversation to identify cybersecurity gaps by asking simple questions about email security and endpoint protection. The discovery revealed the client lacked proper endpoint protection and 24/7 SOC monitoring, creating significant risk exposure. By educating the client about these vulnerabilities and available solutions, Trevor helped build a business case for comprehensive managed security services. The engagement ultimately expanded from a one-time professional services project to include ongoing managed services with ECI as the partner, resulting in nearly $8,000 monthly recurring revenue on a three-year contract. The episode demonstrates how trusted advisors can naturally pivot from infrastructure discussions to cybersecurity opportunities by asking the right questions.