Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Unified collaboration and cloud enabled security offers are among the opportunities Michael Glickman, SVP, Cisco Global Service Provider, sees as important growth areas for the service provider community. In this podcast, Glickman offers the example of Telecom Italia, who had been experiencing customers calling with disrupted services, where hackers had actually caused the service interruptions. Cisco provided a product called Umbrella, which Telecom Italia offered as a two Euro per month opt out service. Glickman reports that the company experienced less than 1% churn and discovered that a necessary security service can also be a revenue opportunity. We learn about new SaaS offers from Cisco and how the subscription model means revenue for service providers and channels. We also learn how these changes are freeing up resources at the enterprise level, handing complexity to the service provider community. Glickman also discusses wireless and mobile opportunities, as the market sees new applications for IoT. Glickman also dives into the issue of MSPs and policy as a new added value offering.

Visit www.cisco.com

“How do all these different (access technologies) come together to provide not only the enterprise’s requirements and needs but also what service providers are doing, and how do we actually combine these enterprise and service provider networks to provide a better service for students, to customers, to employees to contractors depending on where you are and what venue you are offering that service?” This podcast reports on how Matthew MacPherson, Wireless CTO at Cisco approaches that question as Cisco plots a path towards offering a new generation of wireless services, products and options. In this podcast we take a closer look at OpenRoaming, a beta technology, that Cisco says, allows mobile users to automatically and seamlessly roam across Wi-Fi and cellular networks including Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and 5G. MacPherson discusses the “new frontiers “of wireless for the enterprise including WiFi6, CBRS and 5G. MacPherson outlines offering heterogeneous access, as the various wireless networks overlap.

Visit https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/index.html

“Cisco’s SD-WAN comes in two flavors: Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki and Cisco SD-WAN powered by Viptela,” says Imran Idrees, CNG Staff, for Cisco. In this podcast Idrees and Kiran Ghodgaonkar, Market Manager for Cisco, outline Cisco’s offerings and thinking on SD-WAN. We learn about the application of the two “flavors” and about the reasons for the broad appeal for SD-WAN.  Ghodgaonkar says that as more and more traffic arises from SaaS, there is an increasing need to optimize customer experience. We look at trends in SD-WAN and a better understanding of Cisco’s vision of SD-WAN. We hear about use cases and examples, and gain an understanding of how Cisco is addressing challenges from the digital transformation of the enterprise. Idrees and Ghodgaonkar make the case that Cisco’s two portfolios best enables enterprises to find just the right SD-WAN solution to meet its needs. Cisco also offers a large dealer network, and the company itself offers a lot of depth for support.

Visit https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/enterprise-networks/sd-wan/index.html

Companies need to continue to focus on the corporate network border and internal network security, but when your security is breached – what then? Your data is totally exposed - especially data that is in use. Alexander Mueller, the CEO and Founder of Capnion, who also holds a Phd. in Mathematics, speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication about data security.

Alexander Mueller

Capnion allows corporate entities to totally secure their data via encryption. So, what’s new? With their Ghost PII, personally identifiable information can be shared and acted on with external companies while encrypted. Permission can then be provided to the external company so they can access only certain data while it is still encrypted. This allows pharmaceuticals to access insurance information without actually seeing the data. This is a real breakthrough!

The Capnion goal is to allow you to exchange data with your partners (almost) as you would before, and to grant you an added ability to use cryptography to exercise fine control over what is revealed in that data. They accomplish this in a way that is

More secure,

More powerful,

More flexible

 

than comparable existing technologies. Their approach is to assist you encrypting your data in a special way before you exchange it, and then granting access to special “Answer” keys that allow you to compute the answers to certain questions but not decrypt. The Capnion API is, in fact, a key hosting and generation service, and they provide client-side software for interacting with it efficiently. They accomplish what follows WITHOUT...

seeing or holding your data, encrypted or not, at any time

requiring you to change your process for transmitting data

permitting either side to see more than agreed.

The Capnion approach is symmetric, with both parties running the same algorithm on the same encrypted dataset. The results on each side differ only in the part of the dataset they are able to decrypt and interpret in the real world.

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

AI, with over 200 parameters, is the backbone of Voicesense’s predictive technology.  CEO, Yoav Degani discusses the technology and the implications with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.

The technology will not only provide sales feedback after about 1 minute of a call so the salesperson will know how to increase sales potential, but Voicesense will also be able to predict the persons future actions in repaying mortgages and other key future decisions.

Yoav Degani

This works with all languages and while accurate now, it will improve accuracy as this new technology evolves.  A screen is provided for the user to view the real time analysis of the conversation providing immediate options for the salesperson to discuss with the customer prospect.

The technology can be used in any corporate department and can improve operational results and success.

Blending clinical psychology expertise into the mix they formed their first-generation product. This technology decoded sentiment by analyzing a person’s speech and was designed for call center operations to monitor customer dissatisfaction. Their extensive multi-faceted research has deepened the way they understand speech – revealing not just momentary sentiment changes but much deeper aspects of personality. These aspects which are stable over time and encompass a wide range of life domains such as risk taking, purchasing, work, health and more. This past year, they have launched their 2nd generation product – a predictive speech analytics platform that leverages state of the art AI models to predict future behavior based on typical speech patterns.

They are constantly developing new solutions and ideas as they extend their reach into new markets and geographical areas.

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

Murad Kablan, CEO of Stateless and Simon Wheeler, Director of Product Management, describe their new Luxon product which is a software defined interconnect (SD-IX) software to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication. Providers can now deploy layer 3 plus services like routing, security and automation.

Murad explains that they have used a new approach. Instead of replicating a complete hardware solution in software, they replicated each of the applications features. In this way, the solution is completely customizable and can then me replicated in large scale solutions across networks

Murad Kablan

Simon Wheeler

Simon goes on to explain that there are four key benefits:

Multitenant

Automated

API-Driven Visibility

Evolvable

SD-IX versus SDN & SD-WAN 

SD-WAN has been focused on building endpoint to endpoint networks, and SDN has been focused on intra-data center traffic management and orchestration.

SD-IX provides intelligence and functionality beyond the data center through Layer 3+ network services.

SD-IX gives users complete control over routing, switching and security of every connection without deploying individual network appliances for each tenant or burdensome orchestration and management layers.

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

This week at CiscoLive, Dean Manzoori, Vice President, Global Cloud Communications at Masergy and his team will be showcasing a number of announcements featuring their flagship CloudCollab, a product Masergy partnered with Cisco to develop in order to provide what Manzoori describes as, “… a no hassle path to cloud communications…”. According to Manzoori, “The technology is a good as the people deploying it…” and in this podcast we learn about how Masergy combines its offerings with what Manzoori describes as a consultative process. Manzoori provides an overview of CloudCollab and discusses what he sees as trends in the UC, CCaaS and Teams collaboration market. Manzoori points out how Masergy continues to earn a high net provider score, meaning people continue to trust Masergy for their friends and colleagues.

Visit www.masergy.com

(And yes, the swords are back at CiscoLive)

“Much more of an engagement at the persona level, not just to the enterprise at large but how can we help people with their specific roles with what they do every day,” says Jeff Lindholm, CEO of Plixer. In this podcast recorded just before CiscoLive 2019, Lindholm outlines a refreshed vision for Plixer, a company Cisco users have turned to for many years for a deeper data insight into their networks in connection with understanding security risks. Lindholm will be presenting at the show on the topic, “The richest source of security data is the network you already have”, Lindholm shares with us some of that presentation among with a big overview of Plixer as a company with new ownership, but with a familiar mission to help the Cisco community with security needs and its flagship Scrutinizer system. Lindholm lays out the company’s value proposition, critical verticals served and news. At CiscoLive, the company will also have an SD-WAN story.

… and yes, Plixer is back art CiscoLive this year, with its famous free sword give-away at booth 3021

Visit www.plixer.com

“We’ve been spending a lot of time with users and try to work out to find out what experience they are seeking,” says Mark Roberts, CMO of PGi. “We have been spending a lot time just working on that user interface, and making sure it’s as simple and delightful experience every time you actually use it rather than trying to pack as many features as you can which I think is a pitfall that many that many of have…”. According to Roberts, there are three “mega trends”: a frustration with application overload, the devolution of the IT department toward risk management, and the way in which “freemium” model applications gain popularity and footing inside the enterprise.

In response to these trends PGi has been striving to create a frictionless full stack communication offering, featuring easy to use conferencing. In this podcast we learn about how this point of view went in to PGi’s GlobalMeet, a unified communication as a service (UCaaS) offering. With GlobalMeet, customers receive cloud voice services and business messaging capabilities. Customers of GlobalMeet can replace existing PBXs and other phone systems and consolidate their business communications and collaboration services onto a single, unified solution and user experience. The platform offers expanded smart collaboration capabilities using artificial intelligence (AI) to help users save time and improve productivity through automation.

The podcast also reviews channel opportunities, where Roberts says,” The channel has a huge role to play…” in terms of helping with network assessment and offering sound advice is deployment.

Visit www.pgi.com

This week, in the run up to CiscoLive, Nectar Services Corp., announced it has achieved certification on Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration System (HCS). In this podcast Nectar’s Tim Armstrong discusses what Hosted Collaboration System (HCS) Certification means and why the challenging standard creates a unique offering for Cisco users. Armstrong also discusses Nectar 10, a powerful way to create collaboration across multi-vendor platforms. Armstrong discusses the company’s commitment to a pipeline driven by customer demand and experience.

Visit www.nectarcorp.com