Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

This is a 3-part series that explores how Cisco Partners can increase the benefits they receive from Cisco incentive programs by incorporating reward management in both pre- and post-sales behavior and processes. Cisco Partners face many challenges when navigating through and managing the many programs and incentives that Cisco generously provides.  These programs reward Partners that align with Cisco’s strategic goals, such as moving to a subscription-based model.  Most Partners do the extra work to capture rebate rewards, but usually only for rewards they are familiar with. And they don’t always think about how reward management can maximize profitability at various stages in the sales cycle by influencing sales decisions.

The podcast series will focus on how reward management can increase profitability in the pre-sales and post-sales stages as well as for the ongoing customer relationship including renewals and up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

In this first podcast we talk about the many opportunities Cisco Partners have to benefit themselves—and their customers—by participating in Cisco’s numerous Partner sales and incentive programs.  We also discuss some of the stringent requirements Cisco programs generally have.

Participation in Cisco programs have become major strategic and financial drivers for Partners, but to receive the benefits, the Partner must stay on top of complex and changing qualification criteria. This can be a daunting task because the company details can be distributed across training, sales, senior management, and procurement organizations, just to name a few. Noncompliance in one small area, such as losing a key employee with a specific certification, can ripple throughout the organization and significantly impact Partner profitability.

In this podcast Marshall Eisenberg, a customer success advocate at Netformx, discusses the challenges of managing Cisco rewards and highlights a simple way to incorporate post-sales incentive management directly into the process, from both a systems and workflow perspectives, so that Partners can ensure they receive all the rewards they deserve.

For more details visit www.netformx.com or contact [email protected]

“We think that the winners of business communications going forward will be those who deliver the best mobility experience,” says Chris Carabello of Metaswitch, who believes that the UC environment still offers too narrow a mobility option. In this podcast Carabello outlines Metaswitch’s solutions, including MaX UC that can deliver a radically simplified user experience to overcome low adoption of mobile UC apps in the enterprise. Carabello says Metaswitch seeks to lower the “friction” involved in delivering mobility at the enterprise level. The reception of this solution has been strong among enterprise end users and among service providers. Carabello discusses the company’s strong relationship with both the enterprise community and the cloud communications service community. “A number of the Cloud Communication Alliance members are actually Metaswitch customers,” says Chris Carabello of Metaswitch.

More at https://www.metaswitch.com/

Carl Shriver, IT Operations Manager at Wachter, discusses the transition from the MPLS technology to managed SD-WAN.  They previously provide service to their 1,400 plus employees via 13 data centers costing the company $45,000 a month. There was no redundancy so when a connection went down, multiple offices were affected.

When the lines go down at night, it causes serious problems for everyone involved.  The outages helped drive the transition to the SD-WAN solution.

A great deal of planning with MNJ Technologies went into the implementation and was well worth it.  When the time came to cut over, the two-day process went very smoothly. It was as if we just flipped a switch.  One day we were MLPS based and the next SD-WAN.

His ah ha moment about the installation came when a NOC called saying that a line was down at a certain location, but because of the redundancy, no one noticed the issue.  They were able to correct problem without interruption to employee service.

Great job!

Wachter enables business transformation.

They combine innovative technologies and leading-edge integrations with traditional systems and decades of expertise to create solutions that meet your business needs today and can grow with you into the future.

And with a nationwide workforce of W2 employees, they provide most any business technology or service, for any vertical market, in any location – across the U.S.

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

Benjamin Niernberg, Senior Vice President at MNJ Technologies discusses their work at Wachter Electrical with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR Publication. MNJ helped transition Wacther from an MPLS network to SD-WAN in the cloud which can be challenging if done internally.  MNJ brings a great deal of skill and expertise to the process.

Wachter Electrical is a good example of MNJ capabilities to enable a 1400 employee company with multiple locations to SD-WAN. With redundant circuits in about only 15% of their locations, they were at risk of serious outages. They also had poor security and firewall control.

Issues addressed by MNJ:

Security

Outages

Costs

Reliability

Lack of redundancy

The customers experience is always a major concern at MNJ. They will have multiple technology experts, interface with their customers to make sure transitions to new technology run smoothly.

At MNJ, they thoroughly comprehend the challenges businesses face. They strive to not only understand your current technology capabilities but also your outstanding needs, so you can leverage IT as a business driver for your organization.

By working hand-in-hand with their clients, they are able to develop tailored solutions that provide value to your business and drive efficiencies toward your bottom line. Their highly trained and certified experts focus on you and your specific environment. You deserve best-in-class solutions and services that enable you to achieve and exceed your goals and expectations, all while reducing costs and increasing productivity for your organization. Let MNJ be your trusted advisor and help transform your business through technology.

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

“We have produced a really scalable solution,” says Anthony Minessale, CE of SignalWire. SignalWire is the next chapter in the FreeSWITCH story. SignalWire CLOUD is a platform for building advanced communications products, applications, or enterprise infrastructure, built on FreeSWITCH technology. According to Minessale SignalWire brings functionality to the cloud with a software defined approach. Recorded at last month’s Enterprise Connect, this podcast provides an overview of how FreeSWITCH and SignalWire are rising stars in the digital transformation, where siloed technologies are being replaced and retired. We also hear about ClueCon, an event scheduled for developers to be held in Chicago, August 5 to 8.

Visit www.signalwire.com

Last month at Enterprise Connect, Voyant announced the availability of interoperability tested Direct Routing with HD voice for Microsoft Teams through AudioCodes Mediant session border controllers. According to the announcement, Voyant, a tier 1 SIP Trunking provider, will offer high-quality voice service to Microsoft Teams users, enabling them to make calls anywhere in the world from any device. Voyant, leveraging the AudioCodes industry-leading solution portfolio, will provide an affordable Direct Routing solution for Microsoft Teams customers, complimenting the existing SIP trunk offering for Skype for Business. In this podcast, Matt Wilson, Vice President of Channel and Alliances for Voyant, walks us through the announcement. Wilson also provides us with a general overview of Voyant and how Voyant offers many clients a bridge to migration by offering connectivity for legacy needs such as traditional voice and fax. The firm recognizes that enterprises move at their own speed on the path to digital transformation. Wilson also discusses partner opportunities on services such as SIP Trunking, which can be an opening play in uncovering new growth for channel companies.

Visit www.voyant.com

“We like to say we don’t have a horse in the race,” says Kara Korte, Director of Product Management at TetraVX. TetraVX offers three products: nVX: UC made for the cloud, sVX an all-in-one, cloud-based Skype for Business solution, cVX: offering is a cloud-based Cisco Unified Communications solution. In this podcast Korte walks us through TetraVX’s portfolio of solutions and their consultative approach to customizing solutions for their customers. “You can give someone a shiny object,” says Korte,” but if your don’t tell them what it is, what it’s for, how to use it, and why all these bells and whistles, and what the relevance is to them, they (the end user) wont adopt it.” We learn how TetraVX helps customers make sound technology adoption decisions that connect installed improvements to the actual workforce. We learn how the company can accommodate companies in all stages of migration.

Visit www.tetravx.com

“The idea is we enable people to join a meeting wherever they want to host it, using whatever dive they want to use,” says Jordan Owens, Vice President of Architecture at Pexip. Owens describes Pexip as a “software-based video, audio and content collaboration company.” According to Owens, life without Pexip can be siloed and complex. Pexip “drains the complexity” inherent in multivendor networks, and with the use of Teams, while delivering more fully on the promise of those platforms. We also learn about the combining of Pexip and Videxio. The merger has created a better way to offer Pexip. The company can now roll with any deployment model deemed best fit for the customer.

Visit www.pexip.com

MaaS360 delivers Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) to protect company endpoint assets including:

Smartphones

Tablets

Laptops

Desktops

Wearables

Internet of Things

Juan C. Perez, MaaS360 NA-MSP Business Development leader for IBM, goes on to say that The IBM implementation that includes AI and Watson not only secures the devices, it also enables endpoints, end users, and everything in between — including apps, content, and data to be GDPR compliant. He continues by explaining to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, that the software is available to small, medium and large enterprise organizations to protect the device, the user and the data. By opening a cloud account, you can start the protection very quickly and easily.

Targeting the channel, Juan encourages Managed Service Providers and resellers alike to start a trial account.  You will see how easy it is to start as well as experiencing the security that MaaS360 provides.

For more information, go to: http://www.saasmax.com or https://www.ibm.com/security/mobile/maas360

Effectively, Accedian monitors layers 2-7 of the OSI model including:

Network performance

How the Application is delivered

All Transactions at the application layer

Jay Dosanjh, Director of Channel Sales for North America goes on to say to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, that performance visibility includes:

 

Hybrid cloud

Virtual data center

SDN

SD-WAN

SaaS Applications

Infrastructure as a service

Platform as a service

It is all about QoS and QoE, Accedian helps insure that it is delivered!

Accedian delivers exceptional end-to-end network and application performance visibility for control over the best possible user experience.

Full visibility across network services and application chains—spanning virtualized, cloud, software-defined, and physical infrastructure—empowers service providers and enterprises engaged with digital transformation to realize business goals and strengthen their competitive position.

For more information, go to: http://www.SaaSMAX.com or https://accedian.com/