Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Summer is over.  The kids are back in school.  Vacations are a distant memory.  Fall is when we turn our focus on what really matters in life – how our favorite NFL team is going to do this season. But even if you don’t follow professional football, Bob Norberg, CMO of Cloud Age Solutions says the game of football has things to teach us – especially when it comes to expense management.

In this podcast, Norberg looks at three areas where businesses can apply lessons and observations from NFL teams that will ultimately lower telecom and technology expenses and make their expense management operation more effective: speed (and saving time); certainty (and reducing errors); and insight or turning raw data into usable information and actionable intelligence.

Finally, he explains how his company’s gpxcloud platform can help make on-going telecom cost management a seamless part of businesses day-to-day operations.

You can download our latest white paper “Winning Through Cost Management: A Guide for Communications Service Providers” here - https://cloudagesolutions.ac-page.com/sp-lead-magnet-lp-091521

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As enterprise leaders restructure their corporate spaces to better support transient teams, there are a number of new design and technology needs that they must consider if they want a sustainable and streamlined workplace. The offices of the past are no longer appropriate for a hybrid workforce and as demand for traditional office space erodes, the spaces still surviving must be properly equipped with UCC tools to support the shift to collaboration-first work.

In this podcast, we are joined by Andrew Gross, the Vice President of Enterprise Sales for Crestron, a leading manufacturer of workplace collaboration technologies. Andrew is a longtime veteran of the enterprise technology space and he dives into how the needs of corporate workplaces have changed and how technology can be used to meet those needs.

Visit www.crestron.com

By Gary Audin

Not everyone is using a mobile phone. There are many locations where a fixed wired connected phone is necessary. They may be connected through legacy cabling to a carrier or PBX or directly to a local area network. Selecting a phone vendor as a partner is more than picking the best products on the market.

As a channel partner you are a reseller but you have a stronger and deeper bilateral relationship with the phone vendor. A partner program is more than just a purchase agreement.

Watch this 6 minute EDUbrief video “Pick the Right Phone Partner” produced by Gary Audin. This EDUbrief presents the thought process when an MSP/reseller/provider wants to partner with wired phone vendor.

When you select a partner, it has to be more than just selecting a product. You have to look at that partner and see if it provides capabilities to you that you don’t have that will help you improve your marketing support of a new product.

In this EDUbrief, you will learn:

Evaluating if a phone vendor is ready for a partnership

Measuring partner value

Pre- and post-sales support

What decisions you have to make

The partnership agreement

This EDUbrief video was sponsored by Telecom Reseller. If you would like to sponsor an EDUbrief, contact [email protected]

“We were in the thick of it and we were glad to help many of our customers in making it easy for them to adapt to this change that happened,” says Sanjay Bhatia, Ribbon Communications’ Vice President of Solutions Marketing and Strategy. Over the last 18 months, Ribbon Communications has rolled out several innovations that make it easier for enterprises to leverage Microsoft Teams, move systems to the cloud, protect real-time communications and analyze network traffic. In addition, Ribbon’s focus on integrating ECI Telecom’s solutions into its enterprise strategy has enabled the company to deliver IP Optical offerings for homeland security, utilities, transportation and more. Trusted by enterprises across the globe, the company has played a significant role in solving capacity, bandwidth and security challenges for these organizations during the global pandemic and shift to remote work. In this podcast Bhatia, will discuss the company’s enterprise communications innovations in-depth, including the strategy behind them, how businesses are currently using them and how they will help organizations succeed in a post-pandemic world.

Visit www.rbbn.com

“It’s not going to be the same,” says Joe Santucci, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Poly. The world before the pandemic was a place where Poly looked at conferencing as a conference room to conference room exercise. The pandemic brought us the now familiar gallery mode. Where once the Poly strategy was to prepare for a future that featured the huddle room, now a new reality has arrived of work form anywhere teams, hoteling and hybrid approaches. In September, Poly took on these new realities with the imminent prospect of a return to work, albeit a very different return.

Earlier this month, Poly issued an announcement regarding what it describes as pro-grade offerings in the conferencing market. Conferencing, once a niche play, is now ubiquitous as organizations turned to conferencing as a means of holding meetings for their now distributed workforces. In the announcement, Poly said that its Poly Studio X70 and Poly Studio E70 feature Poly Director AI technology, includes Acoustic Fence, and NoiseBlockAI, giving your meeting the feel of a real live broadcast quality production with an in-room director. The Poly Director AI is described as the brain behind Poly’s cutting-edge video experiences. “Poly Director AI perfects the hybrid working experience by seamlessly connecting those in the meeting room to those joining remotely,” the release said. In this podcast Santucci discusses how these announcements are connected to the return to office process.

Visit www.poly.com

“There are other technologies that will be complimentary,” says Niall Norton, General Manager of the Networking Software at Amdocs. Norton thinks that as mobile carriers continue to build their 5G networks, new opportunities beckon for the cloud service providers (CSPs). As with other major technology steps forward, 5G’s advance comes with an array of theories that argues that 5G will sweep away all other communications platforms. A wired world without wires, awaits. However, in this podcast Norton argues that the communications scene will be diverse, and that CSPs will continue to grow and thrive, often by creating experiences for users that integrate various platforms. A new level of economic productivity will be achieved as 5G converts whole industries and undertakings into less labor-intensive models. Working with 5G, offering innovation, support, and fresh ideas to customers, CSPs can monetize the opportunities ahead, while using a variety of technologies to solve problems such as labor shortage issues that some end user customers now face.

Visit https://www.amdocs.com/

“We need to get people to safe harbor,” says Mark Iannuzzi, President of TelNet Worldwide. In 1933, the federal government established a regulated monopoly regime that held for sixty years. Iannuzzi takes us on a tour for how almost a century of change led to the development of the T1, and its widespread installation, and now a pending set of regulatory changes that will lead to big price spikes for T1 users. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a set of orders, has granted AT&T, Fronter, Lumen and Verizon (Incumbents) permission to cease providing wholesale access to the copper wireline network throughout the US. Moreover, the incumbents are retiring these services all together. Since the incumbents have a monopoly on the copper wire network, the prices are expected to increase at least 400% and there is no bound to how high they could go. In this podcast we learn about this “T1 time bomb” and how cloud communications companies can reach out, now, to still installed T1 users, to make the change. Iannuzzi see a great opportunity for the cloud community to reach out to new and even existing customers, to help them make the change, prevent sticker shock as T1 prices rocket to the sky, and gain entrance to organizations who are long overdue for a communications refresh.

Visit https://www.telnetww.com

“IntelePeer is taking our concept one step further,” says Brent Earlewine, Senior VP of Indirect Channels at IntelePeer. In this podcast episode, we learn about IntelePeer’s recent partnerships with IBM, Cisco and Zoom and other company highlights presented at Enterprise Connect. Earlewine explains how its omni-channel CPaaS solution is now available within IBM’s Watson Assistant – a major proof point of IntelePeer’s powerful platform and contact center experience capabilities. He also discusses IntelePeer’s new integration with Webex by Cisco that enables organizations to “achieve in minutes what previously took days,” as well as IntelePeer’s involvement in the new Zoom Phone’s Provider Exchange Program offering. With IntelePeer’s powerful CPaaS platform even more intertwined with these large UCaaS providers, get an inside look into how IntelePeer uses embedded AI, omnichannel automation and self-service and deep analytics to create a new customer experience for customers across the board.

Visit https://intelepeer.com/

“As Zoom has become a verb, the 260 series will accompany it and help the customers that are using it,” says Jeff Stillings, Field Engineer for Western Region US, about an enhanced relationship between EPOS and Zoom. Since 2019, EPOS has developed a strong portfolio of Zoom-compatible headsets and speakerphones, with 2021 marking an exciting milestone with the certification of ADAPT 130 USB-C II, ADAPT 160 USB II, ADAPT 231 and ADAPT 260 for Zoom Personal Workspace. As one of the most important platforms for virtual collaboration, the strategic alliance with Zoom offers customers a high-quality, video-first UC platform, together with premium audio solutions from EPOS. The enhanced Zoom relationship comes with several other notices from EPOS. In this podcast we also discuss the launch of EXPAND Capture 5 - a new Intelligent speaker for Microsoft Teams Rooms that will enable professionals to meet the reality of the hybrid workplace and unite colleagues efficiently by taking virtual meetings to the next level. We also discuss the launch of the EXPAND Vision series and its first product member, EXPAND Vision 3T - a video bar certified for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android (MTRoA). These major announcements are being showcased EPOS at Enterprise Connect this week.

Visit www.eposaudio.com

“How do you make it channel friendly,” asks Mike Mitsch, Sales Director, UNIVERGE Cloud Strategies at NEC Corporation of America. According to Mitsch, UNIVERGE BLUE not only delivers enterprise grade cloud communications as a service, but it’s also been tailored to the needs of the partners who historically, literally, installed the NEC base, and that base’s customers. In this podcast we learn how UNIVERGE BLUE helps end users successfully meet their cloud migration plans while enabling the partner to remain close to the customer and effectively “own” the relationship, even as the customer moves to the service model. Mitsch describes a synergistic suite of services, combined with excellent partner training. Mitsch also points to NEC as being one of the early adapters to have UCaaS integration with Teams, signaling to the partner community that NEC America is a path into the Teams market, with a package that’s designed to anticipate an on-prem network and the adoption of Teams by the customer. We also look at significant industries which will remain in person such as hospitality and significant portions of healthcare and education. These verticals have a long history with NEC and UNIVERGE BLUE is now helping major organizations to move to the cloud.

Visit https://www.univergeblue.com/