Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News’ Moshe Beauford spoke with Nathaniel Stearns, Splunk and cybersecurity consultant at Keos Technology, to discuss Cisco’s integration of Splunk following its landmark acquisition and what it means for partners navigating the next era of AI-driven security.

Stearns explained that Keos Technology—Splunk’s largest professional services provider in the United States—works closely with resellers, distributors, and channel partners to provide pre- and post-sales support around Splunk implementations. “Cisco has been making very accelerated leaps to integrate all of Splunk’s products into its existing portfolio,” Stearns noted. “It’s expanding their security capabilities in a really powerful way, and there’s a large amount of education happening across the partner ecosystem.”

As Cisco weaves Splunk into its infrastructure and security portfolio, Stearns emphasized the growing role of AI integration. “Artificial intelligence is all the buzz these days, but when it comes to driving business outcomes, AI has to be well integrated into valuable tools,” he said. “Cisco is doing a uniquely good job of connecting these tools—networking, security, observability, collaboration—and adding AI to make each one stronger.”

For partners, this evolution represents a major opportunity. Stearns explained that Cisco’s combined suite—including ThousandEyes, AppDynamics, and now Splunk—offers unmatched visibility, security, and operational intelligence. “Cisco has done a tremendous job bundling these all together and making it the single marketplace you want to go to for your security solutions,” he said.

Looking ahead, Stearns predicts that Splunk’s integration into Cisco will double its impact across the enterprise landscape. “Splunk was already a strong platform, but now that it’s part of Cisco, there’s an opportunity to double its business because it fits so perfectly within Cisco’s ecosystem,” he added. “Resellers will have a unique opportunity to package these tools together and deliver holistic security and observability solutions.”

Learn more about Keos Technology at https://www.keostechnology.com/.

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News’ Moshe Beauford spoke with Jeff Drury, Director of Engineering at CVE Technologies Group, about how Cisco’s expanding AI portfolio is reshaping partner enablement, education, and customer strategy across the channel.

Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with offices in Oregon and Hawaii, CVE Technologies Group has been a trusted Cisco partner since 2002. The company provides technology solutions, engineering support, and technical services to customers across the Intermountain West and beyond.

Discussing the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, Drury described AI as “the new buzzword — it’s replaced ‘cloud’ as the vaguest but most talked-about trend in technology.” He explained that customers are approaching AI adoption in three ways: by using built-in AI features within existing tools, leveraging large language models (LLMs) to improve workflows, and developing proprietary AI solutions — with the last category being the most complex and skill-intensive.

Internally, CVE is also adopting AI to streamline operations. “We’re looking at how to ‘dog food’ our own AI initiatives, especially around LLM integration, to improve business processes and make us faster and more agile,” Drury noted.

Education and enablement remain central to CVE’s approach. “Cisco’s been very good about providing enhanced and focused training once we show initiative and investment in a space,” said Drury. “Education is the key and the burden of being a successful channel partner — it’s constant.”

Looking ahead, Drury hopes for greater interoperability across AI-driven tools. “Standalone AI information for one product isn’t beneficial if it can’t talk to other systems. Interoperability between vendors’ AI technologies will be key as the market matures,” he added.

Learn more about CVE Technologies Group at https://www.cvetech.com/.

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News’ Moshe Beauford sat down with Cyndi Privett, Principal & Owner of Viewpoint Research, to discuss Cisco’s sweeping updates to its partner program, the introduction of Cisco IQ, and how AI is reshaping partner profitability and customer experience.

Privett described the new 360 Partner Program 2.0 as a major milestone in Cisco’s evolving channel model. “There’s now much more clarity around how Cisco intends to measure its partners going forward, and what the real levers of profitability will be,” she said. The redesigned incentive structure rewards partners that expand their portfolios beyond networking into security, collaboration, and managed services, with a strong focus on premium services and recurring revenue.

A highlight of the event was the debut of Cisco IQ, a platform designed to give partners deeper insight into customer environments and enhance proactive support. “Cisco IQ is a big step forward—it’s about enabling partners to deliver an up-leveled support experience and deepen their customer relationships,” Privett noted.

Privett also reflected on Cisco’s vision for machine AI, as outlined by Chief Customer Experience Officer Liz Centoni, which could one day allow multi-vendor “war rooms” to be fully automated. “We could soon see virtual war rooms where bots from Cisco, IBM, and others collaborate autonomously to solve outages or security breaches. That’s the future Cisco is building toward,” she added.

While Privett praised Cisco’s forward-looking approach, she cautioned that not all partners will immediately benefit. “Those who can evolve, expand into new architectures, and lead with AI will thrive. Those who can’t may find incentive dollars shrinking. But that’s how every technology cycle works,” she said.

From its unified edge strategy to its “picks and shovels” approach to AI enablement, Cisco’s transformation signals a new era for partners ready to align around automation, intelligence, and measurable business outcomes.

Learn more about Viewpoint Research at https://www.viewpointresearch.com/.

“Nobody can be an expert in everything — so you surround yourself with the right partners,” says Chris Young, CEO of Smartel. “That’s how you deliver real value, reduce costs, and earn long-term trust.”

In this latest episode of the TELCLOUD POTS and Shots Podcast Series, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, is joined by Jake Jacoby, CEO of TELCLOUD, and special guest Chris Young, CEO of Smartel, for a compelling look at how collaboration, data-driven decision-making, and unified connectivity strategies are transforming the POTS replacement landscape.

Young introduces Smartel as a 23-year veteran in mobile solutions and wireless expense management, known for simplifying large, complex wireless ecosystems. Their approach centers on centralized management, data ingestion tools, standardized policies, and a responsive customer service model, all aimed at lowering costs and streamlining operations for enterprises nationwide.

Jacoby explains why Smartel is an ideal partner for TELCLOUD’s POTS replacement vision. As organizations confront escalating copper costs, service shutdowns, and outdated infrastructure, Smartel’s audits often reveal both unused POTS lines and mission-critical lines at risk. By pairing Smartel’s visibility with TELCLOUD’s life-safety-grade replacement platform, the two companies deliver cost savings, continuity, and a long-term service model built to last decades.

The discussion widens to the larger industry transformation. With the copper sunset accelerating and AI reshaping telecom workflows, both executives describe POTS replacement as a gateway opportunity — the immediate need that opens the door to broader conversations about edge connectivity, SD-WAN, IoT, backup strategy, and comprehensive modernization. As Young notes, “POTS is our biggest door-opener right now — everyone needs it, and it leads to deeper relationships almost every time.”

Jacoby adds that while POTS is hot today, the service is required for the next 20 years, creating dependable recurring revenue for partners who can guide customers through the transition. Both stress that customers ultimately want simplicity, reliability, and cost control — and partnerships like TELCLOUD + Smartel are built to deliver exactly that.

And true to the Shots tradition, the episode closes with a tasting of Don Julio Ceniza, an exceptionally rare Extra Añejo aged in charred oak barrels. Smooth, smoky, and difficult to find, Jacoby describes it as one of his personal favorites — and surprises both Doug and Chris by sending each of them a bottle to enjoy off-camera. The perfect pairing for a discussion about premium craftsmanship and long-term value.

The POTS and Shots series continues to blend industry insight with cultural storytelling, helping MSPs and partners navigate the telecom transition while taking a tour of the world’s greatest tequilas.

For more information, visit telcloud.com or call 844-900-2270.

In Part 1 of the Telco Days 2025 podcast series—produced in partnership with Telco Days 2025—Doug Green of Technology Reseller News sits down with Dawid Mielnik, General Manager Telco at Software Mind, a global software and technology services provider. With more than 25 years of telecom experience and a 1,600-person engineering organization across Europe and the U.S., Software Mind helps operators modernize everything from voice and signaling to OSS/BSS and cloud-native telco stacks. As Mielnik explains, “We’re big enough to scale, but small enough to care—our clients always know exactly who is on the team and who owns the outcomes.”

Mielnik highlights Software Mind’s software-first mindset and deep telecom expertise as core differentiators. Unlike traditional integrators, Software Mind not only deploys technology but also builds, customizes, and fills functional gaps with tailored software. “Our clients appreciate that we know telecom from the inside—IMS, signaling, roaming, legacy architectures, BSS/OSS. That domain knowledge makes all the difference,” he notes.

He also shared real-world examples illustrating how Software Mind accelerates modernization. For a major European telecom group, the company migrated a legacy voice system to a fully containerized Kubernetes environment, reducing deployment cycles from 12 hours to under two hours. Another engagement rebuilt a monolithic CVM platform into microservices on Google Cloud, enabling daily deployments instead of monthly releases. “It wasn’t just a technical upgrade—it changed how the entire delivery team worked,” Mielnik says.

Looking ahead, Mielnik points to cloud-native architectures and AI as the forces reshaping telecom for the second half of this decade. Operators continue to grapple with large legacy stacks, while AI is rapidly being embedded across operations, assurance, fraud prevention, and customer engagement. “AI is making its way into every layer of the telecom network, and cloud is the foundation for the next wave of transformation,” he explains.

The discussion also introduces Telco Days, Software Mind’s annual thought-leadership and knowledge-sharing initiative. What began in 2018 as a Kubernetes training program has grown into a global hybrid forum where operators and partners discuss modernization, AI, customer engagement, and data strategy. All sessions from Telco Days 2025 are now available on demand to the entire industry.

Learn more at: https://softwaremind.com/

In this episode of Technology Reseller News, Publisher Doug Green speaks with Robert Galop and Kevin Nethercott, Co-Founders of Creo Solutions, about how service providers can turn years of “dark” conversation data into immediate, recurring revenue. Creo Solutions, founded two and a half years ago, focuses on helping carriers, CSPs and MSPs 2x–3x their revenue by layering AI-driven services on top of the UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS platforms they already sell. Their flagship offering, Pulse Conversation Intelligence, combines vCon-based conversation capture with AI analytics to unlock business value from every call.

Galop explains that most organizations are still effectively “flying blind” with their customer conversations. Contact centers typically QA only about 2% of calls, leaving 98% unreviewed and unanalyzed. With Pulse, service providers can give their customers full visibility into compliance issues, churn signals, missed opportunities and coaching moments across all calls. As Galop puts it, “Within the first week, we’re usually finding immediate ROI — a compliance risk, a security problem or a saveable customer that would have slipped away.”

Nethercott emphasizes that the magic is in leveraging what service providers already have: their network, their platforms and their customer base. Using vCon as the standardized container, Pulse ingests existing call recordings and CDRs via API, processes them with Creo’s AI stack, and returns focused insights, alerts, summaries and dashboards. There’s no heavy integration project for the provider — “We can go to contract today, get integrated tomorrow, and by day three they can have it running in a customer,” notes Nethercott. Everything is delivered white-label, so the service provider owns the customer relationship and the new AI-powered revenue.

For end customers, the platform is designed to reduce noise, not create more of it. Instead of a “data dump,” managers get the exceptions and patterns that matter: which agents handle certain call types best, which phrases correlate with successful sales, what recurring complaints are driving churn, and where frontline staff need coaching. Different roles see different slices of value: marketing can mine real customer language and enthusiasm, sales can see what actually moves deals forward, operations can spot systemic issues, and executives finally get a single source of truth about what customers are really saying.

Creo sees strong early traction in healthcare, insurance, legal and home services—sectors where people spend their entire day on the phone but leadership can’t possibly listen to every call. By turning every conversation into structured, searchable, AI-analyzed data, Pulse Conversation Intelligence gives service providers a high-impact, easy-to-launch AI story for 2026: a new, sticky revenue stream built entirely on top of services they’re already delivering.

Learn more about Creo Solutions and Pulse Conversation Intelligence at https://www.creosolutions.tech/ and intelligence.cloud.

In this episode of Technology Reseller News, Publisher Doug Green interviews Bret Kinsella, SVP and GM of Fuel iX, TELUS Digital’s GenAI platform. Kinsella explains how TELUS Digital has become a global powerhouse—running large-scale contact centers, building mobile and web apps, powering one of the world’s largest AI data-labeling operations, and now delivering generative AI to more than 50,000 TELUS employees and customers.

Kinsella highlights a major shift: “AI is actually working—78% of companies have already woven conversational AI into their operations.” He notes that voice AI has rapidly matured, thanks to integrated generative platforms that combine speech-to-text, text-to-speech and reasoning in a single stack, producing far more natural and accurate interactions. TELUS uses these capabilities internally to help retail associates respond instantly to fast-changing device and rate-plan information.

Challenges remain—especially noisy environments, complex data that’s better shown than spoken, and a lack of interoperability between standards. Kinsella points to frameworks like vCon as the path toward portability and consistency.

He stresses that deploying voice AI safely requires security, safety and compliance guardrails, supported by TELUS Digital’s Fortify platform, which stress-tests AI systems at scale. And while AI automates mundane tasks, its real purpose is to elevate human performance: “These tools help employees do their jobs better. Once people start using them, they don’t want them taken away.”

As AI adoption accelerates, TELUS Digital’s Fuel iX is built to give organizations trusted, scalable GenAI that improves experiences for customers and employees. Learn more at telusdigital.com and fuelix.ai.

In this episode of Technology Reseller News, Publisher Doug Green speaks with Jason Goecke, CTO and Robert Galop, CPO of Creo Solutions, about why vCons (virtual conversations) represent a “golden grail” revenue opportunity for service providers, MSPs, and telcos. Drawing on decades of telecom and CPaaS experience, the Creo team explains how their company was founded to help providers “2x their revenue” by layering practical AI, automation, and data intelligence on top of existing communications services. Their focus today: turning the billions of conversations crossing telecom networks into actionable business value.

The discussion centers on vCons as a standard container for conversation data—not just recordings, but transcripts, metadata, compliance controls, and context. On their own, vCons “don’t do anything,” as Galop notes, but once you analyze them at scale with AI, they reveal issues and opportunities that would otherwise stay invisible. In one deployment, a service provider believed they had excellent first-call resolution; Creo’s analytics showed that agents were only truly resolving about 24% of calls, with 76% generating follow-ups and extra work. In another case, the very first processed call exposed a serious security gap: an agent forwarding a main number without validating the caller’s identity. “Conversations have been dark data,” Goecke explains. “Now you can light up every conversation and drive value from it.”

Creo’s Pulse Conversation Intelligence platform (part of its broader Intelligence Cloud) is designed to make this revenue opportunity turnkey for providers. Rather than asking carriers or MSPs to build AI infrastructure, Creo takes in CDRs and call recordings (or vCons directly), handles speech-to-text, diarization, vCon creation, and then runs domain-specific analytics. Service providers can immediately offer offerings such as: 100% QA coverage for contact centers (versus the typical 2%), AI note-taking and action items for every voice call (not just Zoom/Teams meetings), and deep baseline insight into what’s actually happening across sales, support, and operations. APIs and webhooks then allow these insights and summaries to flow into CRMs, bots, workflow engines, and custom applications, enabling personalized experiences and smarter automation without the customer needing to “speak AI.”

A key message for MSPs and channel partners is that they don’t need to be AI experts to sell and deploy this. Creo positions itself as a native AI company, using AI throughout its own development and delivery processes so that partners can simply deliver better outcomes: more meetings booked, better QA coverage, reduced manual note-taking, improved compliance, and richer customer journeys. “That really makes it easy for the service providers,” Goecke notes. “We’re scratching a lot of very important itches—QA, notes, follow-up—and, oh by the way, it’s all AI-forward.” For service providers looking to turn vCons from theory into concrete, recurring revenue in 2026, Creo Solutions invites listeners to learn more at https://www.creosolutions.tech/ and explore the Pulse platform at https://intelligence.cloud/.

Cisco’s channel partner ecosystem has undergone a profound transformation following a series of announcements at its 2025 Partner Summit in San Diego. The core focus of said announcements is enabling partners in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) via edge computing and Splunk.

This significant shift is driven by new AI and edge offerings (Cisco Unified Edge and Cisco IQ), which promise to provide partners with fast-tracked time to market for next-generation, Cisco-powered solutions. This move is a seismic change to how partners operate, shifting the focus from traditional hardware sales to integrated, outcome-focused solutions with AI at the center of it all.

The networking giant further backed the evolution with substantial commitments in marketing spend and major investments in partner education and enablement to build expertise in AI and security. All this is set to be formalized in the upcoming Cisco 360 Partner Program, launching in 2026.

We sat down with Technology Reseller News Senior Technology Reporter Moshe Beauford, who offered his expert perspective on the Cisco partner news.

In this episode of Technology Reseller News, Publisher Doug Green speaks with Rob Bye, President & Founder of Zenture Partners, about why the traditional telecom procurement and management model is breaking down—and how AI-driven lifecycle management can restore clarity and control for large enterprises. Zenture Partners is a strategic consultancy and AI-powered lifecycle management provider focused on giving enterprises full visibility into, and control over, their global telecom ecosystem, from contracts and circuits to invoices and risk.

Bye explains that most large enterprises now live in a state of telecom chaos: hundreds of vendors, hundreds of invoices, and little understanding of contract terms, renewal dates, dependencies, or actual business impact. The old world of a single global MPLS provider has given way to an “internet everywhere” model, with 16,000+ ISPs worldwide, SD-WAN, and cloud-first architectures. At the same time, IT priorities have shifted—cloud infrastructure, security, AI-infused SaaS and CX platforms now consume leadership attention and budget, while telecom is largely ignored “as long as nothing is on fire.” When things break, teams react, extinguish the fire, and then move straight back to higher-visibility projects.

Traditional telecom brokers and “no value” agents, Bye argues, have often added complexity rather than removed it. Unlike familiar IT resellers and VARs, telecom agents rarely bring a unified, data-driven platform to the enterprise. Zenture’s model is different: it acts as an extension of both IT sourcing and network teams, combining consulting plus a global AI-enabled platform. Enterprises still contract directly with service providers, while the carriers fund Zenture through residual commissions. For customers, the Zenture platform is delivered at no cost, with no contract, ingesting data from TEM systems, carrier portals, invoices, and spreadsheets into a single pane of glass and highlighting where attention is truly needed.

AI is at the center of this transformation. Zenture uses AI to continuously evaluate inventory, identify high-risk sites (such as shared last-mile paths or POP exposure), benchmark pricing, and generate recommendations on whether to renew, replace, or upgrade services as contracts approach term. Agentic AI is also used to integrate with carrier marketplaces and portals, automating quoting, ordering, status checks, inventory updates, and billing validation across hundreds of providers. Instead of humans manually combing through dense, ever-changing telecom invoices, AI flags changes, ties new charges to past orders, and confirms that disconnects and adds have been billed correctly, allowing IT and sourcing teams to focus on decisions, not data entry.

Looking ahead, Bye sees AI-driven procurement reshaping RFIs, RFPs, benchmarking, and contract review. Enterprise “house” agents will query external platforms like Zenture’s marketplace, shrink long vendor lists to a short set of best fits, and then assist stakeholders with risk analysis and legal review. But this doesn’t eliminate the human partner; it elevates them. As Bye puts it, “AI isn’t going to replace anyone—it’s like the moving walkway at an airport. It just helps you get where you’re going faster.” Zenture’s client success managers increasingly act as digital workforce managers, overseeing and training AI agents while still providing strategic guidance on vendor consolidation and cost optimization.

Ultimately, Zenture Partners aims to help enterprises move from a reactive, invoice-driven view of telecom to a strategic, outcome-focused model—consolidating vendors, simplifying billing, optimizing costs, and freeing IT teams to concentrate on cloud, security, and customer-facing innovation. To learn more about Zenture Partners and its AI-powered lifecycle management platform, listeners are invited to visit https://www.zenturepartners.com/.

Software Mind Telco Days 2025: On-demand online conference