Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

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Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News episodes

July 06 TERRA Members Now Part of ITAD Association, Podcast
TERRA Members Now Part of ITAD Association, Podcast, “For our membership that we have really been blessed with over the last seven years since we started this endeavor, we found them a good home,” Napoli said
TERRA founder Stephen Napoli says the move gives members “a good home” while bringing two important communities together in the electronics reuse, recycling and ITAD ecosystem.
In a special ASCDI podcast, Doug Green spoke with Stephen Napoli, president and founder of TERRA, about a milestone moment for the ITAD community: TERRA’s members are now becoming part of ASCDI — The ITAD Association.
The move brings approximately 80 TERRA companies into ASCDI, joining two communities that have long worked in the same orbit: ITAD, electronics reuse, e-scrap, certified recycling and the circular economy. Napoli said TERRA will cease operations, but its members will move into ASCDI with continuity, visibility and a larger industry platform.
“For our membership that we have really been blessed with over the last seven years since we started this endeavor, we found them a good home,” Napoli said.
Napoli founded TERRA to give certified electronics recycling and ITAD companies a stronger voice. The organization helped promote the value of certification, especially around standards such as R2 and e-Stewards, and worked to help customers understand why responsible reuse and recycling matter.
As Napoli explained, certified ITAD and recycling companies do more than process used equipment. They protect data, support reuse, keep electronics out of landfills, advance the circular economy and help make sure equipment is handled in ways that protect both people and the environment.
Asked why ASCDI — The ITAD Association was the right next home for TERRA members, Napoli pointed to ASCDI’s long-standing reputation, advocacy and history in the technology reuse market.
“They’ve been in this space for a long time and they have a very good reputation,” Napoli said. “They do a very good job of advocating for people that are in this space, which is what we’ve been doing. So it really was a natural fit.”
Napoli described the transition as bittersweet. TERRA began as an idea seven years ago and grew into a community of certified and allied companies across the electronics recycling and ITAD landscape. Now, he said, that work can continue through a larger association.
“I’m forever grateful,” Napoli said. “And really happy that it’s just not coming to an end, that I’m able to pass it along to the benefit of them and to another organization in the space to make this industry stronger.”
The conversation also reflected the personal side of the ITAD community. Napoli said that while companies in the space may compete, there is also a family quality to the industry, with many people sharing a common commitment to reuse, responsible recycling and doing the right thing with technology at the end of its first life.
“I found a gem,” Napoli said, reflecting on his entry into the industry. “It has been the joy of my career to be part of it.”
Visit ASCDI — The ITAD Association to learn more.
12 min
July 02 SmarTrak.ai Turns Cisco Data Into Partner Growth, Podcast
SmarTrak.ai Turns Cisco Data Into Partner Growth, Podcast
Cisco 360, AI, refresh cycles, and multivendor migration are creating new openings — and SmarTrak.ai says partners have a timely opportunity to grow more strategically.
“We help them manage their practice, grow their practice, and increase their profitability around it,” says Ted Lee of SmarTrak.ai.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, recorded following Cisco Live, Doug Green speaks with Ted Lee of SmarTrak.ai about the company’s expanding role in helping Cisco partners turn Cisco data into actionable business intelligence.
Lee describes SmarTrak.ai as a platform built to help Cisco partners manage their Cisco practice by ingesting data from Cisco APIs and other sources. The goal, he says, is to give partners better visibility into customer environments, including hardware assets, software, services, service contracts, subscriptions and enterprise agreements.
For end customers, SmarTrak.ai provides visibility into Cisco infrastructure and spending, helping organizations optimize their environments while giving partners a more strategic way to support long-term customer retention.
The discussion focuses heavily on Cisco 360, one of the major themes at Cisco Live. Lee says SmarTrak.ai announced a Cisco 360 module designed to help partners understand how they can perform under the program, identify opportunities to improve their scores, and increase profitability with Cisco.
“We announced at Cisco Live that we had a 360 module that we are releasing that gives predictability into how they can perform, how to optimize it,” Lee says. “Since we have their entire estate with every one of their customers globally, we can then give them opportunities with which they can raise their scores in order to increase their profitability with Cisco.”
Lee also points to a larger market moment for Cisco partners. With major refresh cycles, end-of-life events, new AI-enabled products and changing customer infrastructure requirements, partners have an opportunity to move from reactive selling to more strategic planning.
SmarTrak.ai is also putting that intelligence directly into the hands of sales teams. The company announced a mobile application designed for sellers and solutions engineers who are meeting customers in the field, giving them access to forward-looking intelligence around sustainability swaps, end-of-life replacements, AI replacement SKUs and other Cisco-driven opportunities.
“Sales reps are not sitting at their desks,” Lee says. “These partners are out with their customers, and we are putting this wealth of intelligence in the hands of their sales reps and their solutions engineers.”
The podcast also covers SmarTrak.ai’s multivendor migration capabilities. Lee notes that customer environments are rarely Cisco-only. Partners often encounter Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Aruba, Ruckus, HPE and other installed platforms. SmarTrak.ai’s migration platform allows partners to ingest those install bases and build forward-looking roadmaps for when it may make sense to replace other platforms with modern Cisco solutions.
Lee says the platform can help customers budget, help partners quote more effectively, and help move opportunities toward higher-level Cisco buying programs such as enterprise agreements.
The conversation also touches on audit readiness. Lee says SmarTrak.ai has helped partners pass CX Expert and advanced audits by providing the visibility and health scoring needed to support certifications, partner status, rebates and incentives.
“We are a full Cisco practice engine to help them take advantage of the wealth of data and opportunity in front of them and turn it into revenue and profitability with the end customers,” Lee says.
AI is also part of the SmarTrak.ai story. Lee says the company was founded in early 2023, as large language models were becoming more widely accessible, and recognized an opportunity to use AI against Cisco’s large data universe. SmarTrak.ai is SOC 2 Type II and is pursuing ISO 27001 certification, Lee says, emphasizing that the company is “security first” while using AI to help partners analyze data faster and identify new sales opportunities.
Lee describes the result as “agentic lifecycle intelligence,” enabling partners to generate forward-looking Cisco practice plans, budgets, replacement strategies, enterprise agreement eligibility, and takeover opportunities across large customer bases.
“One of our customers has nearly 10,000 Cisco customers,” Lee says. “They can view any customer in the world with a few clicks of their mouse, and they can create a five-year forward-looking internal or external Cisco practice plan.”
The podcast offers a look at how SmarTrak.ai is positioning itself as a Cisco partner growth platform: helping partners make Cisco data more usable, make customer conversations more strategic, prepare for Cisco 360, manage refresh cycles, and turn infrastructure intelligence into recurring revenue opportunities.
Learn more at smartrak.ai.
0 min
July 02 Airsys: Steve Brock on Why Cooling Is Becoming Critical Infrastructure for AI and Telecom Networks, Podcast
Steve Brock, Senior Vice President of Sales at Airsys Cooling Technologies, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, about a growing infrastructure challenge that is often overlooked: cooling. As AI workloads, 5G deployments, and increasingly dense telecom equipment drive power consumption higher, Brock explained why efficient thermal management is becoming as important as the computing infrastructure itself.
Airsys has specialized in mission-critical cooling for more than 30 years, serving telecom operators, modular data centers, and edge infrastructure around the world. Brock noted that the industry has moved beyond simply installing air conditioners in telecom shelters. Today's operators are demanding intelligent systems that combine variable-speed technology, economizers, advanced controls, and predictive maintenance to reduce energy consumption while maintaining reliability. "Remove the thought process from 10 or 15 years ago that cooling was an afterthought," Brock said. "Let's spend time on the most efficient solutions."
The discussion explored how AI and next-generation wireless networks are changing infrastructure requirements. As 5G evolves and AI workloads move closer to the edge, telecom shelters and remote network sites are becoming significantly more power-dense. That creates new cooling challenges in locations where maintenance is difficult and uptime is essential. Brock explained that operators are increasingly looking for longer-lasting equipment, better energy efficiency, and systems capable of identifying maintenance needs before failures occur.
Brock also described Airsys' continued investment in manufacturing and customer support, including its new 300,000-square-foot production facility in Woodruff, South Carolina, where products are designed, manufactured, and customized for customer requirements. Combined with global manufacturing operations, parts availability, and hands-on training programs for contractors and channel partners, Airsys is focused on supporting mission-critical environments where reliability is paramount.
Learn more about Airsys: https://airsysnorthamerica.com/
17 min
July 01 Spirent: 6G Is Coming Sooner Than Expected, Podcast
Spirent: 6G Is Coming Sooner Than Expected, Podcast, Pre-commercial 6G trials could begin in 2028, with commercial deployments arriving as early as 2029
“Six G leaders are now going to be judged on how resilient the network is, how adaptive, how quickly it can recover from an issue,” says Stephen Douglas of Spirent, a Keysight company.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Douglas about the accelerating 6G timeline and why service providers may need to begin planning for 6G business models sooner than many expected.
For years, 2030 was widely viewed as the point when the industry would begin looking seriously at 6G. Douglas says that assumption is changing. Pre-commercial 6G demonstration systems are now being discussed for 2028, with the first commercial 6G equipment and operator deployments potentially emerging in the mid-to-late 2029 timeframe.

The shift is being driven by rapid movement in standards, including 3GPP work on 6G radio, core network architecture, security, APIs, application enablement, management, orchestration and AI-based operational support. Douglas says this creates a compressed window for operators, vendors and ecosystem partners to test, validate and prepare for a new network generation that may arrive sooner than expected.
The podcast also looks at how 6G may differ from previous mobile generations. Rather than treating AI as an add-on, Douglas describes 6G as an AI-native network architecture, where AI is built into operations, orchestration, security, APIs and even the radio layer itself.
“What you’re seeing is a big shift, and AI is at the heart of that,” Douglas says. “That big shift is moving from an AI-assisted network to an AI-native network.”
That could allow networks to predict congestion, reconfigure network slices, detect threats, expose capabilities to third parties in real time and support new AI-driven services at the edge.
A major theme of the discussion is monetization. The 5G era delivered important technology advances, but many operators struggled to translate those advances into new revenue. Douglas argues that 6G gives service providers an opportunity to avoid repeating that pattern by developing new services, ecosystems and pricing models during the deployment phase, rather than waiting until after the network is built.
The conversation highlights several emerging 6G opportunity areas, including AI and communication, integrated sensing and communication, ubiquitous connectivity, immersive communication, massive communication and hyper-reliable low-latency communications. Douglas points in particular to integrated sensing, where the network could support services that use radio infrastructure to understand objects, environments and movement while also carrying traditional communications traffic.
Douglas also discusses the growing role of edge AI. As more AI inference moves from centralized data centers toward edge locations, devices and regional infrastructure, operators may have an opportunity to participate more directly in the AI economy. Instead of acting only as transport providers for AI traffic, service providers could support sovereign AI, low-latency inference, industrial computer vision and other AI-as-a-service models.
The key message for operators is that they do not need to wait for 6G to begin preparing. Douglas says 5G Advanced can serve as a bridge, allowing operators to test business models around sensing, edge compute, AI services and network-based awareness today, while building a roadmap toward 6G.
The winners in the 6G era, Douglas says, may not simply be the providers with the fastest networks. Success may be defined by intelligence, sensing and resilience — and by the ability to turn 6G capabilities into services that customers are willing to pay for from day one.
Learn more at keysight.com.
25 min
July 01 TTS Company: The Feedback Conversations Managers Wait Too Long to Have, Podcast
“If you don’t give feedback, you’re not helping them improve,” says Julie Thiel of TTS Company.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Julie Thiel of TTS Company in the latest installment of an ongoing series on leadership, hiring and better management practices.
This episode focuses on one of the most common leadership challenges: the feedback conversations managers often delay. Thiel says many managers avoid these conversations because they hope the issue will resolve itself, they do not want to create awkwardness, or they simply do not know how to begin.
But waiting has a cost. Small performance issues can become repeated habits, and repeated habits can become larger organizational problems. Thiel says managers may also become increasingly frustrated, while employees are left unclear about what needs to change.
“One small action becomes ten small actions, which becomes a big problem,” says Thiel.
Thiel recommends a practical rule of thumb: if something happens once, give the employee some room. If it happens twice, there may be a knowledge or skill gap. By the third time, the manager needs to address it.
The conversation also offers a simple preparation framework for managers before giving feedback:
What specifically needs to improve?
Why does it matter?
What support can I provide?
What does success look like?
Thiel says feedback should not be viewed as criticism. Done well, it is a way to help the employee succeed, strengthen trust and build a better team.
“It really does build trust because people know where they stand,” says Thiel.
The podcast also discusses how managers can protect the relationship while giving feedback. Thiel encourages leaders to stick with observable facts, assume positive intent, listen as much as they talk, and ask questions such as, “What am I missing?”
TTS Company helps growing companies get HR and people issues off the plate of CEOs and founders, while also supporting larger HR teams with projects and added capacity. Thiel also previews The Vault, a leadership development community designed to provide practical, ongoing support for technology leaders.
Learn more at thettscompany.com
13 min
July 01 YouMail Protective Services Offers Telecom Resellers a New Way to Sell Robocall Protection, Podcast
“The regulatory environment is actually forcing everybody to take some action,” says Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast for the Cloud Communications Alliance, Doug Green speaks with Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, about a new reseller opportunity around YouMail Protective Services.
Quilici says YouMail’s mission is to protect phone numbers. While YouMail is widely known for its consumer app that blocks robocalls, scam texts, spam calls and unwanted voicemail, the company is now bringing that intelligence to telecom providers, enterprises and resellers.
YouMail Protective Services uses data from consumer reports, app activity and the National Spam Reporting Center to help carriers and enterprises see what is happening with phone numbers from the outside. Quilici says this gives providers a broader view than traditional honeypot-based monitoring.
“Bad guys will target real consumer mobile phones,” says Quilici. “They’ll never show up anywhere else.”
The podcast outlines four core services: Score, a phone number reputation service; Watch, which monitors carrier networks from the outside; an enterprise version of Watch for call centers and business numbers; and Quash, which helps disrupt bad actors impersonating brands.
For resellers, Quilici says the opportunity is to add YouMail Protective Services to existing carrier offerings, including phone numbers, SIP trunking, compliance tools and robocall mitigation services. The services can be white labeled and integrated through an API into existing dashboards.
“This is a natural extension of more monitoring, more compliance,” says Quilici.
Implementation can be simple. Quilici says Watch can begin with something as basic as an SPC code, allowing YouMail to provide feedback on calls associated with that carrier identity. More advanced integrations can include phone number lists, CDRs and API connections.
Quilici says demand is being driven by regulation, compliance exposure and the growing need for carriers to demonstrate that they are taking robocall mitigation seriously.
“You can’t just point and say it’s somebody else’s problem,” says Quilici.
For resellers and MSPs, YouMail Protective Services offers a new way to help carriers and enterprises protect phone numbers, improve compliance and identify bad behavior earlier.
Learn more or request a demo at youmailps.com.
11 min
June 29 Virtuozzo Makes the Case for AI-Ready Cloud Infrastructure, Podcast
Virtuozzo Makes the Case for AI-Ready Cloud Infrastructure, TR Podcast
0 min
June 29 Virtuozzo Helps Service Providers Build AI Infrastructure Without Starting From Scratch, Podcast
“We call it the AI trio: by AI, with AI, and for AI,” says Kurt Daniel, CEO of Virtuozzo.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Kurt Daniel, CEO of Virtuozzo, about AI infrastructure economics, GPU demand, VMware migration pressure and the opportunity for service providers to build new AI offerings.
Daniel describes Virtuozzo as a hyperconverged software platform that brings together compute, storage, networking, virtualization, OpenStack and Kubernetes support in a single platform. He says that approach is becoming more important as service providers face rising infrastructure costs, hardware constraints and VMware price increases following the Broadcom acquisition.
“In some cases, with VMware, those Broadcom acquisition prices for our customers have gone up up to ten times,” says Daniel.
Daniel also explains Virtuozzo’s “by AI, with AI, for AI” strategy. “By AI” is how Virtuozzo builds its products. “With AI” is AI-driven automation across infrastructure and management. “For AI” is enabling providers to deliver AI services, including GPU as a service.
For MSPs and service providers, Daniel says Virtuozzo offers a practical path to AI infrastructure without having to build everything from scratch.
“It does enable MSPs to do AI, to do the cloud, and to do it efficiently,” says Daniel.
Daniel’s advice is to start small, choose platforms that can scale and avoid overly complex architectures.
“People need to move really fast,” says Daniel. “Start small and go from there, and lean on people who have the expertise.”
Learn more at www.virtuozzo.com.
0 min
June 29 TNS Helps CSPs Modernize Voice Infrastructure Without the Rip-and-Replace Risk, Podcast
By Doug Green
“The telecom industry is really in a state of need to migrate and evolve into a new state,” says Joe Dechant, Vice President of Product Transformation at TNS.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Dechant about why communications service providers are rethinking voice infrastructure as legacy switching environments age, maintenance costs rise and specialized telecom expertise becomes harder to find.
“Voice is still mission critical,” Dechant notes, and that means modernization has to happen without disruption. CSPs are under pressure to support modern services such as UCaaS and CCaaS, but they also need to protect the reliability customers expect from core voice services.
Dechant discusses how TNS Voice Transit and Hosted Cloud Connect give providers a managed path away from aging infrastructure, helping them simplify operations, reduce complexity and move toward more flexible, cloud-based architectures.
The conversation is not just about replacing old switches. It is about giving CSPs a foundation for trusted, secure and scalable communications.
#Telecom #TechnologyResellerNews #CSP #VoiceInfrastructure #CloudCommunications #UCaaS #CCaaS #ManagedServices #NetworkModernization
0 min
June 28 Fornix: Are Vendors Getting What They Should from Marketing Development Funds?, Podcast
Fornix: Are Vendors Getting What They Should from Marketing Development Funds?, Podcast
“We are too close to the problem. Help us audit what we’re doing because we probably aren’t getting what we think we’re supposed to be getting.”
That is how Fornix CEO Charlene Ignacio describes the question many vendors are asking as they move into Q3 and Q4 planning. Marketing Development Funds are supposed to help vendors and partners drive growth, build market awareness and reach the right channel audience. But Ignacio says many companies may not have a clear enough view of how those dollars are actually being used, measured or translated into partner impact.
In this podcast, Doug Green, publisher of Technology Reseller News, speaks with Ignacio about Marketing Development Funds, channel execution and the need for a more disciplined look at what is working and what is not. As Channel Partners recedes into the rearview mirror and ChannelCon and other MSP events approach, the conversation focuses on how vendors can use this midyear moment to reassess their MDF strategy before the second half of 2026 gets away from them.
Ignacio says Fornix is helping vendors step back, audit their channel activity and better understand whether their programs are delivering the results they expect. That includes looking beyond activity alone and asking whether campaigns, partner outreach and MSP engagement are actually moving the needle.
The discussion also looks at the MSP audience Fornix serves: business owners who are trying to get out of the day-to-day seat of handling sales, marketing, PR and business development on their own, so they can focus more directly on partners, technology and preparing their businesses for AI.
Learn more at Fornix: https://fornixmarketing.com/
20 min