Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Phone.com keeps it simple on-top while adding muscle below

“People are going to work smarter, they are going to use technology in a way that is effective for themselves, and their organizations, says Joel Maloff, Senior Vice President/Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) at Phone.com. In this podcast Maloff offers a look at how one of the cloud’s pioneering firms is exploring new ground both in platforms in use and verticals being served. Phone.com started with the smallest businesses looking for communication and soon began selling to larger firms as well through channel partners. Today Phone.com is migrating much of their services to AWS cloud, a step the company feels is in keeping with its model of providing firms of many sizes the most up to date set of services. Through all the changes that have occurred to the market, Phone.com continues to keep a simple message and model face forward to the users, while adding muscle, more powerful capabilities below. In this way Phone.com has mirrored the thinking that has brought us more sophisticated devices that don’t require a user manual. Now, Maloff reports, Phone.com is moving beyond conferencing that’s simply thrown up based on what’s available to providing HIPPA compliant telehealth. As we look at 2021, Maloff offers a message of opportunity and progress as Phone.com continues to partner with its channel team to invent and customize solutions for customers, with a company big enough to take on complex projects but small enough to offer individualized service and offerings.

Visit www.phone.com

“Cloud has become more important than ever,” says John DeLozier, Senior Vice President & Global Channel Chief at 8x8. Reflecting on a year when companies scrambled to enable contact centers and office staff to work remotely, 8x8, according to DeLozier was able to hand their partners a competitive edge in a market that offers choice. “We are one integrated platform… it’s all here,” says DeLozier, reflecting on 8x8’s ability to tie together the various ways people communicate with each other and the outside world, across many verticals and company sizes. In this podcast, DeLozier discusses how the 8x8 platform provides analytical visibility into customer usage and needs. DeLozier says that, “… we bring our partners opportunities” through analytics and programs designed to simplify the process of identifying and supporting customer opportunities. We learn about 8x8’s Open Communications Platform, 8x8’s products and services, and we hear about how the firm has recently gained industry recognition at several events including the ScanSource Intelisys channel event -- held virtually this month. DeLozier sees the trends of 2020 to be sustainable as we move from an international pandemic into recovery.

Visit www.8x8.com

This month the Cloud Age Solutions Podcast Series with some hope: sports is back, and its making people feel a little bit more normal. Bob Norberg, CMO Cloud Age Solutions reflects on how that sense of “normalcy” is starting to appear in the business world as well. Norberg sees a trend: companies are adapting not just to survive the pandemic, but changing for the better long term. Norberg sees the cloud and the cloud communications community as a dynamic agency of change and valuable resource for companies making these changes. Sports, according to Norberg, is telling us that you have to adapt, that there’s more than one approach to delivering products and services, and that good data is more important than ever. Norberg comments on Cloud Age Solutions’ approach which includes a cloud native, SaaS platform called gpxcloud, which he says offers the visibility, data, automation and other features that will help companies to reinvent themselves.

Visit www.cloudagesolutions.com or send an email to [email protected] to learn more about gpxcloud.

“We sell to 30,000 VARs in North America,” says Tony Sorrentino, President of North American Sales for ScanSource. In this podcast we learn how one of the world’s largest distributors in the communications industry helped their partners this year succeed under extraordinary circumstances. “We are all about helping our partners be successful as they deliver technology solutions to the end customer,” says Sorrentino. In this podcast, Sorrentino is joined by Ansley Hoke, SVP of Global Marketing and Ray Nelson, SVP of Technical Sales and Services as we learn about how ScanSource brought, what Hoke describes as, “…an A-game to the virtual stage”.  Hoke says that the conference represented ScanSource’s commitment to helping partners make connections with the right people, resources and partnerships to help them succeed, “…no matter what’s going on”.  Hoke describes how ScanSource curated content that was carefully chosen based on partner input. Verticals were examined, including challenges faced in education and in related fields. Nelson discusses how partners were offered new ideas and how ScanSource’s timely acquisition of Intelisys is helping the VARs see, understand and execute on opportunities in the subscription model. This podcast offers a glimpse of a prominent distributor that is helping their partner community to migrate not only to selling new products but in helping their customers rethinking their customer’s industries. We learn about upcoming events being offered.

Virtual Partner Conference, visit https://vpcmainevent.scansource.com/

Additional information on PowerHours and the upcoming PowerWeek (which is the follow up to Virtual Partner Conference) https://www5.scansource.com/scansource-powerhours

Voxbone specializes in offering customers local presence in 64 markets around the world. In all cases the service is compliant enterprise-ready voice and SMS on flexible SIP trunks with access to local phone numbers. Now Voxbone customers will have visibility with Voxbone Insights. Voxbone Insights offers a dashboard where users can view the quality of service on calls, error reporting, and Voxbone has added a monitoring stack and an alerting layer. “We want users to have full visibility,” says Matt Brown, VP Product. “We’re seeing more and more companies want to move away from a toll-free number and really provide their customers with a local experience…” says Brown. In this podcast Brown describes how Voxbone and tools such as Voxbone Insights can help companies step up their game in multiple national markets around the globe. Insights offers a transparency that Brown argues, has no parallel in the industry.

Visit www.voxbone.com

CounterPath offers tools that help users pull together their communications needs

The conferencing revolution, that commenced with the moving of millions of workers to remote, has plateaued. The question for end users and channels is, what now? In this podcast, Todd Carothers, CRO of CounterPath offers a guide to augmenting the VoIP services that companies and channels have set up for customers with collaboration offerings. The time has come to make at work communications come together in a more coherent way. Carothers discusses how this can be achieved and notes how CounterPath’s Bria offerings are designed to hand end users a single app where they can utilize all the communications options available to them. We discuss what this looks like in specific verticals and how CounterPath partners can resell Bria even under their own branding. Carothers idea is offer end users and channels a medium- and long-term view of what comes next in a year and era of rapid change.

Visit www.counterpath.com

In a year where companies scrambled to move workers to remote, video meetings went prime time, and streaming services became part of the education landscape, SMP and Cisco’s Flex 3.0 offers to put a lot of the pieces of a compressive communications solution together, into one bundle for a price as low as $27. In this podcast, SMP’s Collaboration Architect, Dan Farrell and VP of Client Solutions, Sean Wilson discuss Cisco Flex 3.0 and what it offers customers. In this podcast we learn about the Cisco UCaaS Bundle with fully installed Webex Cloud Calling, designed, delivered, and managed by SMP. The package includes PSTN and e911 services. At as little as $27, packages can include Webex Cloud Calling licensing, RedSky e911, PSTN Services, Webex Meetings, Team Messaging, Cisco Softphone, SMP Professional Services (design and implementation), End-user Training and Adoption, SMP Managed Services (monitoring, remediation, MACD, analytics, solution lifecycle management). SMP offers special offers on phones to help on migration costs and there are packages for educational organizations that begin at $25 per seat. SMP is also offering flexible paths going forward by allowing organizations to use their licenses whether temporarily situated remote workers will remain remote or are returning to the office. We hear how the long-term Cisco partner is applying its deep understanding of the traditional on-prem Cisco world to helping customers of every type of migration path.

Visit https://www.smp-corp.com/collaboration/cisco-webex-calling-offer-oct2020/

More on SMP at https://www.smp-corp.com/

Join SMP for an overview of significant changes in Cisco’s Collaboration licensing with Cisco Flex 3.0: Webinar https://www.smp-corp.com/whoweare/events/

Michael Rezek

It might be a case of what you don’t see might hurt you. According to Michael Rezek, VP Business Development and Cybersecurity Strategy for Accedian, green lights on a screen monitoring application on your SD-WAN should not be confused with great customer experiences. In this podcast, Rezek makes the case that SD-WAN requires more visibility into how applications are preforming at the use level. Rezek argues that better tools needed than to do this, beyond what is often deployed, to provide real visibility down to where the user is using an application. Knowing what’s happening, real time visibility, can help IT managers deliver better QoS across the board and improve security as well. Rezek offers a plan to resolve common errors, and the “biggest mistake” you might be making on your SD-WAN.

Visit www.accedian.com

Wix has been making website development easy for business over the last 14 years. Their tool bag has over 1000 innovative features and has templates tailored to virtually every business profile. As a result of COVID-19, Anthony Scaglione, EVP of Wix Channels Global Sales, tells Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, the business website changed from a “Nice to have” to a “Must have” for small business.

Anthony Scaglione

With their new Vodafone partnership, Wix is focused on England first. They will then launch an effort in Italy, Spain, and other European countries next year. As they establish their presence, they will also localize their support and sales organization.  Currently they are supporting offices in London, Dublin, Berlin and Vilnius.

This is a textbook case for channel partnering and servicing the end customer who in this case is the business entity. Having previously partnered with NTT in Japan and Turk Telecom in Turkey, Wix knows how to build teams to support the local businesses well. Listen in to find out about some of the secret sauce – which includes a lot of Wix company character.

Wix is leading the way with a cloud-based website development platform for over 180 million registered users worldwide today. The Wix website builder was founded on the belief that the Internet should be accessible to everyone to develop, create and contribute. Through free and premium subscriptions, Wix empowers millions of businesses, organizations, artists, and individuals to take their businesses, brands and workflow online. The Wix Editor, Wix ADI, a highly curated App Market, Ascend by Wix and Corvid by Wix enable users to build and manage a fully integrated and dynamic digital presence. Wix's headquarters are in Tel Aviv with offices in Austin, Be'er Sheva, Berlin, Cedar Rapids, Denver, Dnipro, Dublin, Kiev, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, São Paulo, Tokyo and Vilnius.

For more information, go to: https://www.wix.com/

Aryaka WAN platform delivered as-a-service, company is setting award winning growth

Recently, Aryaka, a leader in managed SD-WAN was named to Inc. Magazine’s Annual List of Fastest Growing Private Companies. The award put the spotlight on the $2.00B SD-WAN market which is expected to reach $4.6B in the next 26 months, by the end of 2023. In this podcast, Aryaka’s Chief Product Officer, Shashi Kiran discusses his company’s ongoing success in this market along with a larger overview of today’s WAN, with a focus on cloud provided services. “The hybrid workplace environments are really the order of the day,” Kiran says, noting that his customers are recognizing that the temporary move to remote in March and April, are now becoming permanent, at least for a block of users in each company. Kiran comments on the move to smaller corporate footprints, moving more demand to the edge, and the impact of these changes. We cover Secure access service edge, or SASE, cybersecurity, how security is intersecting with the network, and the future of MPLS in the enterprise. Kiran also looks at Service Level Agreements. Is throwing bandwidth at the WAN going to solve some of these issues? Hear what Kiran and Aryaka Networks thinks.

Visit www.Aryaka.com