Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Everyone has, at some point, bought a list of leads, only to discover people from the wrong companies, holding the wrong job titles, and all that, often no longer up to date. “It’s one thing to get a lead, but if you cannot properly follow up, you will have a very low conversion rate,” says Zamir Javer of Jumpfactor. In this podcast, Javer discusses effective tactics to take now to enable customers to find your business online, and in the social media spaces the target customers are spending their time. Javer discusses how his company guides people on both how to get more leads and how to improve their success with each customer. Javer also points out the critical nature of response time. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, according to Javer, the ROI on your inbound lead apparently begins to go stale, almost exponentially, as time goes by. Being prepared to reply quickly is a key part of the picture.

Visit www.jumpfactor.net

MSPs have grown up with multiple billing systems or produced their own. Today’s MSP needs a revenue management platform not a disparate collection of software modules.

JK Chelladural, CEO, and Sunitha Shetty, VP at OneBill and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale FL. JK presents the current conditions of the MSPs when it comes to the back office when dealing with multiple services supporting multiple customers. MSPs have to think of the whole process order to cash. He stressed that automating the revenue processes leads to preventing revenue leakage, reducing errors, saves labor, and enhancing the sales processes. Sunitha continues with the discussion pointing out the common MSP problems such as scaling the business and the complexities and pain point of taxation. She also discusses the control and payments of commissions to agents.

OneBill is an intelligent platform that powers the entire lead-to-revenue generation experience. Through OneBill, businesses can easily scale complex product and pricing offers, automate the service activation process, accurately manage billing and accounts receivables, configure unique offers for partners/ resellers and provide a superior experience for customers through their subscription journey. OneBill now has a global presence in 4 continents, across 14 industries and close to 100 best-in-class engineers and business consultants driving the new way to do billing.

“There’s no way in which the existing operators could continue to deploy current solutions as is,” says Bejoy Pankajakshan, EVP, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Mavenir. “They will all need to cut costs… and they all need to drive additional revenues on their network.” In this podcast, Pankajakshan discusses how Open RAN based network, “…is the future” and how it enables carriers to achieve lower costs, better revenues, and the delivery of more solutions. We learn about Dish Release, a major milestone in developing the most advanced cloud-native 5G Open RAN network. Pankajakshan walks us through Mavenir’s recent DISH, Telefonica Hispam and AWS announcements, and what these developments mean. Mavenir provides cloud-native Open RAN packet core, IMS, voice, messaging, and orchestration components. We learn how these recent developments are in keeping with the firm’s long-standing posture of bringing forward technologies to enable partners to do more, while cutting costs, and eliminating vendor lock-in. Mavenir’s Open vRAN supports all generations (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) and is built from the ground up to be cloud-native, with fully containerized microservices allowing it to be deployed easily on any cloud, private, hybrid or public.

Visit https://www.mavenir.com/

Martello and Mitel, a relationship going back a decade, has been renewed for another three years. In this podcast we learn about how Martello has continued to position itself as a trusted resource for users on several platforms and stages in migration. “If you can’t make telephone calls, and now with Office 365 being dominant, you can’t send emails, that’s your productivity,” says John Proctor, CEO of Martello. Proctor argues that you need a single go to resource that can handle your issues across the network, and across the vast, remote, network hybrid working. There will be meshing of on-prem, and remote, of Mitel and Teams, a spectrum of available resources and infrastructure, and unnumerable ways that such a network might fail. Martello can pinpoint problems and deliver real time problem resolutions. Proctor points out that organizations such as a hospital might have multiple environments: on-prem, off-site, work from anywhere, all with security, privacy and stability being major mandates.  Martello can handle these diverse work landscapes. Proctor further points out that user expectations of the ready use and available communications, are generally high, even as the respective network turns up unprecedented concurrent challenges. Modern IT teams will need a partner that is ready to tackle all of these environments, together.

Visit http://www.martellotech.com

Living through the evolution of M2M to IoT, Noam Lando, Co-Founder and CEO of Webbing walks Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, through the requirements of each phase of the development and what is important to the MVNO, the manufacturers and the consumers. It is not just connecting devices that is important.

Companies make decisions based on portability in the sense of moving a device or a car from the United States to Germany or Japan. What are the effects on the IoT devices, and can they automatically reconfigure in the new location? Devices are intended to be used for 10 to 15 or more years. The carrier a company starts with may not be the carrier they continue with for service.  Thus, reprovisioning the unit to work with a new carrier is vital. Zero hands on is a major concern when contemplating millions and millions of devices.

Noam Lando

Listen in to Noam as he discusses past and present IoT trends, the role of eSIM, adopting of eSIM, eSIM trends and more.

Webbing is a full MVNO that delivers innovative enterprise grade, global connectivity and IoT services. They have a distributed core network with its own infrastructure and security. The Webbing network fully supports all cellular technologies from 2G through to 5G. Their secured network of 600+ mobile carriers across more than 200 countries, ensures superior data connectivity between business, people and things wherever the device is located.

Today Webbing’s portfolio consists of WebbingCNCT and WebbingCTRL. WebbingCNCT is a global data connectivity solution that delivers the reach of a global carrier with the quality of a local one with a single carrier that has flexible offerings, low latency, and sustainability at competitive rates. WebbingCTRL is their innovative eSIM solution. It is an eSIM with a management portal, that can easily and remotely be configured as any wireless carrier’s profile, thus eliminating network provider lock-in.

For more information, go to: https://webbingsolutions.com/

The Technology Advisory Board adds a critical component to the MEF organization. Until now, MEF was comprised of a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers. Pascal Menezes, CTO of MEF explains to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication how TAB came about. Pascal continues “TAB will bring important senior executive vendor perspectives to the strategy and work of MEF augmenting the leadership of it service provider-oriented BoD.”

Pascal Menezes

It is all about the experience and TAB will be representing the users giving valuable feedback about what is needed to make their operations more productive, cost effective, and secure while providing service to their end consumers.

Listen in as Pascal reviews TAB composition, what TAB will bring to the industry, what enterprise pain-points TAB will address and more.

MEF is a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers. Together, they drive network transformation to power the digital economy. They provide a framework for digital service providers to develop, monetize, and scale services across an automated, inter-connected ecosystem.

The MEF Technology Advisory Board (TAB) brings critical technology perspectives to the strategic work of MEF. Through extensive collaboration with the Board of Directors and MEF membership, the TAB further strengthens MEF’s mission to accelerate enterprise digital transformation through a better-together ecosystem of service, cloud, and technology providers.

For more information, go to: https://www.mef.net/about-mef/

MSP customers are looking at or getting into the Internet of Things (IoT) support. There are multiple services available and a wide range of edge devices, sensors, and actuators. The choices keep expanding and evolving.

Mike Anderson, Director of Product Management at GetWireless and Gary Audin recorded this podcast at the ITEXPO show in Fort Lauderdale FL. GetWireless is a distributor that deals with MSPs. In this role, they support MSPs who are working on IoT projects. Mike mentioned that security, control, and reporting are major issues when deploying and managing IoT solutions. GetWireless provides consulting education as well as marketing support services. They provide many case studies of IoT deployments so that the MSP can grasp where there are opportunities for business.

Established in 2001 and based in Minneapolis, GetWireless is a leading Value-Added Distributor of cellular solutions that connect the Internet of Things. By supporting a strong portfolio of embedded modules, end-device modems, intelligent gateways, and cellular boosters, GetWireless is able to supply the most advantageous cellular solution for each new IoT application.

Peerless Cloud PBX Hospitality, New offering for hospitality

“We’re connected to every major carrier in the US,” says Rick Knight, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Peerless Network. At last week’s MSP EXPO, Knight and Peerless EVP, Jim Brewer visited the TR Podcast station for a fast update on Peerless and the MSP community. In this podcast we learn how the Peerless acquisition of Infobip is moving through its final regulatory stages, and how that expansion will benefit Peerless’ community of partners and customers.

We learn about the roll out of Peerless Cloud PBX Hospitality, a UCaaS for hotels product that utilizes Jazzware. In place of an old-style PBX, Cloud PBX Hospitality, fully integrates a hotel’s Property Management System (PMS). Because Peerless owns and operates their own network, the cost structure is very competitive, especially in this vertical where every hotel room must have a phone, by law, while the rest of the facility typically have other places requiring an instrument including retail, dining, room service, administrative functions, housekeeping, parking, concierge, and of course front desk. Peerless can offer a state-of-the-art solution, but at a price that is sensitive to the special needs of hospitality property owners and managers. “This is a good opportunity to modernize,” says Brewer, who notes that hotels offering a certain type of hospitality experience need to consider the presentation and functionality that an aging phone may send in contrast to an otherwise updated room.

Visit www.peerlessnetwork.com

Bandwidth and Alianza have partnered to accelerate cloud migration for communications service providers (CSPs). Under the partnership, Bandwidth’s network platform and APIs, combined with Alianza’s full-stack CSP platform, will enable CSPs to transform their legacy infrastructure and remain competitive by offering high-growth, cloud-based voice, messaging and videoconferencing services.

Already serving more than 50 CSP customers in the U.S. and Canada, the partnership gives CSPs a tool as they work to combat the threat of over-the-top providers eroding their customer base. By offering a solution that is practical and cost-effective, and that eliminates the complexity and expense of maintaining existing legacy systems, the partnership allows CSPs to build upon their long-standing relationships with local business and residential customers and keep and grow their customer base with differentiated services.

In this podcast Alianza CEO and Founder Brian Beutler discusses the drivers behind the Bandwidth/Alianza partnership, the benefits it is providing to CSPs and end customers, and also what’s next for the companies.

Visit the Alianza website or Bandwidth webpage for more information.

“What happens when you keep the customer?” asks Dr. Vasudeva Akula, co-founder and the head of data science at VOZIQ AI. “The customer keeps on paying, that’s the value of recurring revenue.” Akula notes that when a paying customer is retained, the value can be enormous based on the long-term value of all the monthly payments. In the era of recurring revenue, reducing the number of customers leaving can be even more valuable than new sales.

Reducing customer churn by a few percentage points is perhaps the biggest business growth opportunity for any recurring revenue business because of the compounding effect it creates over time. Studies suggest that the average churn rate among U.S. companies is about 20%. That means a company with 1 million customers and an average customer revenue of $500 per customer would end up losing about $100 million in revenue each year if they don't act quickly. The problem is even worse in the telecommunications industry, where dynamics are constantly changing, competition is intense, and customer switching is high.

Today, we have with us Dr. Vasudeva Akula, co-founder, and the head of data science at VOZIQ AI. VOZIQ AI is helping many recurring revenue businesses in achieving retention and customer lifetime value breakthroughs with their AI/ML-powered predictive customer retention solution. In this podcast, Vasudeva talks more about how VOZIQ AI is helping their clients re-imagine customer retention using their end-to-end business solution.

Visit https://voziq.ai/