Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Phil Bower, Senior Marketing Manager at Grandstream speaks with Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, about Grandstream’s support of Ribbon Communications and how their phones will all be certified in a couple short weeks. This will enhance their partnership and provide Ribbon carriers with another phone source.

With all of the 5G activity and the move to the edge, Grandstream currently has WiFi phone.  They will be releasing cordless WiFi phones shortly.

Another advancement soon to be launched is the cloud provisioning. This will allow phones to be shipped directly to the customer from the distributor. When the customer plugs in the phone, it immediately goes to Grandstream in the cloud get its next redirect instruction. At that point the phone goes to the managing carrier or reseller for provisioning information. From that point on, it is ready to use.

Grandstream Networks, Inc. has been connecting the world since 2002 with SIP Unified Communications solutions that allow businesses to be more productive than ever before. Their award-winning solutions serve the small and medium business and enterprises markets and have been recognized throughout the world for their quality, reliability and innovation. Grandstream solutions lower communication costs, increase security protection and enhance productivity. Their open standard SIP-based products offer broad interoperability throughout the industry, along with unrivaled features, flexibility and price competitiveness.

Grandstream products are available through their established global distribution channels. They are a private corporation headquartered in Boston, MA USA with regional locations in Los Angeles, CA, Dallas, TX, China, Venezuela, Morocco, Malaysia, Spain, Ukraine, Israel and Colombia.

For more information, go to: http://grandstream.com/

With their software being used in 195 countries, OrecX actually has their product operational in every country in the world. Steve Kaiser, CEO at OrecX tells Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how the software is being used by 10s of millions of users.  Much of the use is with the free version Oreka GPL.

OrecX does OEM their software to numerous major carriers and software providers. For example, their Recording Platform as a Service (RPaaS) is a part of the optional add-on platform of a very large carrier serving 12% of their customers.

Basically, if a new carrier signed up for the service, they would expect to see 7% to 15% of their customer base sign up for the service. Customers sign up for a number of reasons including:

Compliance Performance

Risk

Convenience

New regulation

Analytics

Listen in as Steve talks about how to make money with the recordings.

Mission: To power the recording of the business world’s spoken communication and make the data accessible and meaningful to increase business value.

Vision: OrecX designs the world’s most open, usable, and lowest-cost call recording solution, which helps businesses of all types and sizes benefit from increased productivity, improved quality of service, and better risk management.

For more information, go to: http://www.orecx.com/

EdgeConneX Phill Lawson-Shanks, Chief Innovation Officer, explains to Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how their decision 5 years ago to go into the data center market was the correct decision.  Especially targeting markets that had not been serviced previously. Initially, they provided content, but that quickly changed to servicing edge devices with very low latency.

While originating in the US, EdgeConneX covers the Americas and into Europe. At each new location, they bring an eco-system together based on:

Content

Cloud

Network

Augmented Reality

Autonomous Vehicles

Edge Services provide Space, Power & Connectivity to deliver digital content like never before. With EdgeConneX, data delivery is optimized by placing Edge Data Centers®, Edge Small Cells and Edge PoPs® at the most critical locations—as close as possible to the end user’s point of access. With their services, digital content can be delivered with enhanced performance and lower latency to any device, anywhere.

They maintain that innovation is possible only when a company moves as fast as the technology driving data today. At EdgeConneX, they’re keeping pace. Since late 2013, they have built 31 Edge Data Centers® across North America and Europe, creating a new Edge of the Internet. EdgeConneX moved the Internet to where it is most needed yet has never existed before – into local markets across the country and soon the globe.

For more information, go to: http://www.edgeconnex.com/

Kevin Riley, CTO and EVP Advanced R&D at Ribbon Communications reviews their latest product with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication. Ribbon Protect serves a dual purpose.  The first, it has an analytical side which monitors the network operationalization including:

Voice quality

Network quality

This is per call every call monitoring to see if there is a quality dip and to answer the questions of where and why if there is a quality dip. An SLA can be put in place for the technology.

Ribbon Protect also allows end to end network trouble shooting. It can pull out information from each node to let you know how it is working, instead of logging into each box.

Ribbon Protect mitigates:

Denial of Service

Nuisance attacks like Robo Calls

Anomalies in the network (potential network breaches)

While the product is prices around the amount of data processed, it is subscription-based pricing bought directly by enterprise, by the service provider for the enterprise, by the service provider to monitor and manage for customers.

For more information, go to: https://ribboncommunications.com/  or  https://ribboncommunications.com/products/enterprise-products/security-intelligence/ribbon-protect

With a shortage of people to fill positions in telecommunications, having an expert organization helping you recruit employees is a great benefit. Reuma Halal Shibi, founder of Pair Recruitment provides some information on her personal experience and describes how she plans to operate Pair Recruitment to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.

Reuma served as the Human Resources Commander as a Lieutenant in the Army. She has the experience to identify the various positive qualities in and individual.  She also has 10 plus years in wholesale marketing allowing her to asses the level of experience an individual has for the sales, marketing or product management position.

Pair Recruitment works for both the employer as well as the employee. If you are looking for a new position, Pair Recruitment can help you find it.

Pair Recruitment is a boutique recruitment company, helping the wholesale telecom industry to pair between people and companies. Founded in 2018 by an experienced entrepreneur, who recognized the need for a specific recruitment firm in the wholesale environment. It is a privately-owned company.

Their goal is to minimize the time employers spend on recruitment providing quality interviews rather than just interviews. They carefully select the candidates and put forward only relevant people that fit the role and the organization's culture.

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

Every once in a while, a company takes a new perspective on problems and comes up with a totally unique and creative way to solve a problem.  Braidio is such a company. Iain Scholnick, CEO at Braidio speaks with Don Witt of The Chanel Daily News about the process that is involved with their technology. First, tribal knowledge is the knowledge that is held within each individual or department that is unwritten.  When employees join a company, they may go though training.  Everything that employees learn after the training through employee & customer interaction is lost by the company if the employee leaves..

Through Braidio’s technology, companies can capture the knowledge.  Let’s take support for example.  Braidio would monitor the lines and identify what were the most prevalent problems and also identify the answers.  It would follow how the customer addressed the problem and ultimately solved the problem.  The whole information process is monitored and categorized allowing management to capture the real time communication information which provides the map for customer’s transitions or support’s resolution process.  One of the more important aspects of this is that it can be done over time.  This will allow management to watch shifts in patterns based on new management rules that may have been put in place or from new competion.

If Braidio is not installed and operational, you are really flying by the seat of your pants. With Braidio, you have solid data that will allow you to make solid decisions and make course corrections when necessary.

Braidio's cloud-based Collaborative Learning Suite focuses on three basic human activities - learning, networking and collaboration - to establish an employee-driven learning economy within your organization.

Their content delivery approach enables your employees to organically integrate learning into their daily workflow while allowing the employer to build and monitor learning metrics with the ultimate goal of sustained learning.

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

Netformx and Cisco have collaborated once again to provide solutions to improve the Cisco Partner experience and increase profitability. The newest addition to the Netformx Suite of Applications, the Netformx Partner Incentive Tool, enables solution providers to see how to best leverage Cisco promotions and incentives during the presales process while deals are being formulated.

This simple, straightforward, and valuable tool saves time and identifies promotions that may have otherwise been overlooked. The partner can quickly choose the preferred discount stack that is most applicable to the customer opportunity and that will enhance their competitive position and overall profitability.

The Netformx Partner Incentive Tool also enables managers to maintain a 360-degree consolidated overview of seller and deal desk user activity. For more details visit www.netformx.com.

“We’re not a household name, but we are a part of your household,” says Greg Zweig, Director of Solutions Marketing of Ribbon Communications. “We connect half of all calls because we are the name that is behind most of the infrastructure that connects together much of the public telephone network, both fixed and mobile.” In a podcast recorded at Ribbon’s annual Perspective’s conference Zweig offers a large overview of Ribbon Communications, the role of Ribbon behind today’s real time communications and the way Ribbon will be working with its partner companies to migrate real time communications into the cloud while maintaining security and dependability. Zweig walks us through Ribbon Protect. “I think the cloud is inevitable,” Zweig comments. Zweig discusses how to face that inevitability as an opportunity to improve communications within the enterprise and as new opportunities for the channel.

Visit www.ribboncommunications.com

“It’s really the first new way we’ve had of staying in touch since email,” says Kevin Isacks, Vice President of Software as a Service Solutions for Ribbon Communications. Isacks is describing how he feels Microsoft Teams is a milestone in real time communications. In this podcast, Isacks how the Ribbon Session Border Controller (SBC) family now integrates with Microsoft and how that opens up many new options and growth possibilities for enterprises, MSPs and the channel. Isacks describes Ribbon’s long-term relationship with Microsoft and makes that case that the company’s certified SBCs are a strong choice for networks looking to begin taking advantage of Teams as a general communications solution.

Visit www.ribboncommunications.com

Rob Hornish, President of Americas Sales for Polycom, discusses the acquisition of Obihai with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication.  The acquisition is a major benefit for Polycom.  There are support benefits, logistics benefits and sales benefits.

First, the product can be shipped by a company like Amazon. No inventory maintained by the manufacturer or the channel.  Send designated carrier information to a Obihai server in the cloud, and when the arrives and phone is plugged in, it goes to the cloud server, receives information about where its new network assignment is and goes there to receive its new provisioning information. Once received, the phone is ready to go.

The technology has many advantages:

Reduced operation costs:

o   At the manufacturer – no inventory – provisioning is automated

o   At the reseller – no inventory – provisioning is automated

Reduces support costs

o   Maintains all Obihai/Polycom phones at the same software release level

o   Reduces installation start up issues

There are many more which Polycom customers will see over time.

Companies choose Polycom for solutions that enable their geographically dispersed workforces to communicate and collaborate more effectively and productively over distances. Using Polycom telepresence, video, and voice solutions and services, people connect and collaborate from their desktops, meeting rooms, class rooms, and mobile settings.

For more information, go to: http://www.polycom.com/