“I think one of the big ones, certainly with AI, whereas last year we talked about ChatGPT, this year we're talking about large language models, the emergence of this idea that you can start capturing more and more conversations inside the organization to basically train AI models to basically replicate what we do as humans,” says Jon Arnold, a noted industry analyst and chairman of the Future of Work Expo. “And this is kind of the building block of making AI more effective. The language models take time to develop, but it's becoming a strategic asset in businesses. So that's fairly new.”

“The other good one is immersive tech,” adds Arnold. This year it's more about the metaverse because Microsoft has made some big moves with mesh and meta and Apple are all pushing hard into these immersive workspaces.”

In this podcast, Jon gives us a wide view of how things have changed in the past year, and how the work itself continues to evolve, not only in terms of venue, but in terms of process, workflow, and more. As technology can, most often, deliver the same tools and experiences anywhere, the importance of place has faded. But personal human interaction has special qualities. Security, productivity, cost and creativity are all in motion.

Visit www.jarnoldassociates.com and follow Jon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarnoldassociates/

“There’s a lot of movement in the mid -market and enterprise with migrating their voice platforms, their collaboration platforms, clearly Microsoft Teams, but also Webex. And there is a significant buying event that is happening,” says Mike Nowak of BCM One. “When that happens, folks need to do careful planning and select a vendor that is of high service that has the technical wherewithal to address not only their domestic but their international needs with regulatory and security compliances.”

Last year, BCM One, a leading provider of NextGen Communications and Managed Services for IT leaders and resellers, acquired U.K.-based voice provider, Pure IP. With the acquisition, BCM One picked up Pure IP’s fully compliant PSTN replacement services in 47 countries and number availability in 137 countries. Pure IP was one of the original launch partners for Microsoft Operator Connect.

In this podcast, recorded at ITEXPO, we learn how BCM One is delivering the set of solutions that customers are needing now, both in terms of Microsoft, and other popular platforms such as Cisco Webex.

ABOUT BCM ONE

Founded in 1992, BCM One is the leading NextGen Communications and Managed Services provider. Serving over 20,000 customers worldwide and 5,000+ channel partners, BCM One offers telecom solutions supporting the critical network infrastructure of global businesses including: Enterprise Teams, Global Managed Connectivity, UCaaS, SIP Trunking, Managed SD-WAN, Security-as-a Service and Technology Expense Optimization. BCM One prides itself on its long-standing client relationships backed by their mission statement, “To Provide a World-Class Experience with Every Human Interaction.” To learn more about BCM One, visit www.bcmone.com.

“We have been providing non-dilutive funding to B2B SaaS companies since 2010. And what that means is we provide funding we don't take any equity,” says Melissa Widner, Chief Executive Officer at Lighter Capital. “It's funding that's in the form of a loan. And the companies will pay us back a percentage of their revenue until the loan is paid off.”

Recently, Telin, a leading player in the telecommunications industry, announced a strategic partnership with Lighter Capital, a seasoned financial ally dedicated to fostering the growth of businesses like yours. In this podcast Melissa Widner is joined by Spencer Lee of Telin, who tells us that not only is Telin offering this resource right on the partner portal, Telin is also a Lighter Capital client. “So, it was this past year, I was sitting down with Melissa, and I said, this makes a lot of sense for our partners too,” says Lee. “Like our partners are in the same situation where they're growing fast, they're heavily on a subscription service business model. They don't have heavy assets that are weighing them down, and they need growth capital.

Through Lighter Capital, MSPs can experience a simple application process that’s designed to take fifteen minutes less, and a financial partner that understands recurring revenue and is familiar with the UCaaS, and related, markets, space. MSPs can join the Telin MSP community and through the portal at console.telin.one.

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About Telin

Telin is a unique telecom company that embraces a distinct distribution model. That is, we are your one source for all things unified communications. As a preferred provider of 3CX SIP trunks, 3CX hosting, and SNOM/VTECH solutions—backed by a team of experts with an extensive background in security, redundancy, and compliance—we help partners consolidate all the telecom infrastructure components they need to service and support their clients. With an unrivaled partner success program, Telin has spent the better part of three decades amassing a reputation for delivering the same white-glove service our VARs, MSPs, and 3CX partners offer their enterprise and small business customers—but at the wholesale level. More at https://telin.com/.

“We are an authoritative source of numbering intelligence, which helps enterprises and others protect their brands, as well as governments protect residents and businesses,” says Michael O 'Brien, who is the Executive Vice President, Parker Business Development at iconectiv. “We have experience in creating, operating, and securing communications infrastructure by managing network and operations interconnect, numbering solutions, fraud prevention solutions, and again, more recent digital identity platforms.”

Recorded last week at MSP EXPO, Michael probes into the challenges and opportunities of keeping things secure as your personal phone number becomes ground zero as the target of fraudsters. “Fraudsters will exploit anything that they can. They'll go after wherever the money.

iconectiv’s TruOps Common Language platform ensures the flow of consistent and accurate information throughout an organization’s infrastructure by providing a common name for locations, equipment, connections, services, and virtual functions, while also providing a pinpoint view of network sites across business operations, and a way to optimize processes through automating operations. This is especially important as CSPs look to maximize their current investments in network infrastructure as well as to support new technology, such as 5G, and to ensure they are efficiently supporting the enhanced coverage, security and additional capabilities needed to drive new revenue-generating services.

About iconectiv

iconectiv provides services to secure digital identity, numerous data exchanges, registries, and other information as a service. These address numbering intelligence, Know Your Business (KYB), and fraud prevention, as well as network and operations management for the global communications industry. It provides numbering services in more than a dozen countries, including serving as the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) for the United States. As a trusted partner of the communications ecosystem, iconectiv is dedicated to keeping people connected, businesses running and commerce flowing. This includes making sure incoming and outgoing phone calls and messages are verified and identified, and that communications service providers can trust the information in their systems and networks.

Visit https://iconectiv.com/

“Put a SIM card in a piece of hardware, light it up, everybody gets paid, everyone on the channel is happy,” says Evan Tomlin, CTO at Hyperion Partners. “But those are not empty calories, but we're going to say sugar -free, right? What we want is heavy multi -year engagements that have to do with network management, security management, things where IT operations are moving from a customer into the partner, and you've got connectivity embedded inside of that structure. That's the stickiest. That's where you get recurring revenue and growth and expansion, long -term and an account.”

Evan was at MSP Expo last week to tell the MSPs that they can win with 5G. “The ideal MSP partner is a company that is selling, I'm going to call it adjacent things to 5G to their customers. So, are you selling hardware that we can connect?  We want to do business with you. Are you managing network infrastructure? We want to do business with you.”

About Hyperion   

Hyperion is a full-service business development master agent specializing in telecommunications. We focus on adding value for partners and have exclusive access to several disruptive technologies that make our bundled solutions more attractive. Acting as consultants to our partners and clients, we ensure customers receive the most practical, affordable, and complete solution possible. Hyperion has a wide footprint in businesses of all sizes, offering dedicated care and technical support through the ordering, activation, and implementation processes. To learn more, visit hyperionpartners.net.

Visit https://hyperionpartners.net/

#SnomAtTheShow #MSP Expo #TRPodcast @TR Publications

@SnomAmericas

Can you imagine going into an auto dealership and being told to come back in 18 months when your lease or loan completes? At a car dealership, every day is the right day to do a “technology refresh”. But in the time-honored corridors of the communications dealer community, this is exactly what many people experience. This occurs even in the presence of rapid change where services selected maybe only a few years ago, might be the wrong choices today for the client.

“As it gets close to the end of life, we start having a discussion saying, okay, since this is no longer going to be supported, we should think about upgrading to the latest and greatest door, go through a formal tech refresh process. That's the traditional way,” says Jeff Durso of SmarTrak.

In this podcast we learn about a strategic approach in place of the traditional reactive approach.

“We call it we call it pull forward refresh.”

SmarTrak is moving beyond making sense of the renewal process, which on its own s a major gain for the Cisco partners. Forward refresh, with the use of AI, gives dealers a 360-degree view of how to approach their customers. The dealer can identify not only aging or legacy systems or solutions, but with a well-defined path including best practice choices, visibility into impacts such as energy, sustainability, true cost of ownership, regulatory changes, and savings strategies from things like energy credits.

“If you have smart ways of helping the customer, see that they could actually have a real strong business case for moving their refresh up, you could get access to a much bigger chunk of the network than if you just stay in your lane and wait for everything to refresh on schedule.” The Cisco partner goes from having accounts poached to becoming that trusted, and necessary advisor.

Visit https://smartrak.io/

ClearlyIP Participating in RTIME Event Feb 11-14, Initiatives to support Local Exchange Carriers through partnership opportunities with ClearlyIP’s Clearly Cloud UCaaS Platform and Strategic Partnerships

“They're bringing fiber to places that fiber has never been,” says Bob Webb, Chief Business Development Officer for ClearylP. “We applaud them. They’re closing the digital divide for rural America. The truth is, is as they do that, as they bring the better broadband, they're really opening themselves up for competition on the business voice side of the house. The challenge is that, “Once that big, fast broadband is in place, it's very easy for larger voice -only competitors to come in and really take that phone revenue that they were hoping for when they built out this broadband infrastructure.”

In this podcast, Bob discusses how ClearlyIP can help. “We believe that we can come in, we can partner with the local exchange carriers, help them keep their phone numbers, help them keep their customers.” Bob discusses how ClearlyIP can partner with the local carriers to provide customers with all their needs, sate of the art solutions, but solutions which will allow the local carriers to stay within their more limited resources. Geographically vast, in many cases, many of these carriers serve small populations. The economies of scale, the geography and the distances, demand robust solutions but at cost effective pricing. “What we are helping them do is keep that phone revenue, keep that voice revenue along with keeping that broadband revenue to make that investment pay off.” CEO, Tony Lewis will join Bob in booth 613-615. Bob and ClearlyIP are active in the rural telecom community.

Visit www.clearlyip.com

‘Behind the scenes’ industry leader is behind rising CX and rising CX expectations

“We're really excited about the rise of AI, and I think everybody in technology is very excited about the rise of AI,” says Ethan Gustav the Group President of North America for Infobip. In this podcast recorded in the run up to MWC 2024, Gustav updates us on Infobip and how exciting technology changes are unfolding.

“We're really excited about that because basically what it does is it takes the core of our portfolio, which is this incredible high quality, global reaching connectivity in all these different communication modalities. And it basically makes them intelligent, and it supercharges them. Chatbots have been around for a while and there's been some very cool use cases and I think some really positive ROI to the customer experience with chatbots. But basically, this just puts them all on steroids and is a step factor to taking these capabilities to the next level. So, we're excited about interactive AI, the ability for a bot to call on different and sometimes disparate software and services and APIs and really pull together an experience that solves a consumer's problem.”

Gustav describes Infobip as a “behind the scenes company”, one of those firms whose products and services you have likely experienced, without knowing it was Infobip. We generally work with major enterprises and major brands globally. We also work very closely with wireless operators as partners and customers. But basically, what we do is we provide a number of different communication modalities, channels, if you will, across messaging, voice, video, email.” Part of that story is delivering great, seamless CX, right to people’s smartphones, while keeping those same devices and processes as free from fraud, spam, and other abuses, as possible.

Meanwhile, the way people communicate, do commerce and work, is changing. “I really do think that we're going to be at a point where some of the rich channels, so like RCS, WhatsApp, Line, Viber, Kakao Talk, all across the globe, I think we're really going to see the emergence of these channels really take off.”

Visit www.infobip.com

“Clean up the town square”: Tommy Sheahan looks at The Campaign Registry (TCR), public policy and national security, Red Oxygen Podcast, "We have to clean up the town square"

Part 3 of a 3 Part Series on Texting and Regulation and What You Need To Know Now

“Do we want a foreign entity Controlling the data flow of our most ubiquitous communications channel,” asks Tommy Sheahan, CEO and founder of Red Oxygen. “Unfortunately, this is not FCC. FCC this is The Campaign Registry which is owned by Tata.”

In this final segment of a three-part podcast series on SMS, texting, regulation, and the vetting process the carriers have established, Sheahan shares with us his concerns over having large flow of real time communications falling under the oversight of a non-domestic corporation. “Unfortunately, this is not FCC. FCC this is the Campaign Registry which is owned by Tata… We really need the lobby to get the FCC to step up,” adds Sheahan. “We need to stop spam. We need to be held accountable for the person sending the message and the platform delivering the message. So I'm all for that. But we need some consistency. And we need to make sure that the person doing this regulation is in our best interest.”

Red Oxygen is world's first application to person messaging. They provide billing, compliance, and delivery of text messages from our off -the -shelf components for Outlook, Gmail, Excel, or integrating to your ISV platform and provide the same billing, compliance, and delivery.

While Sheahan offers his company’s services as a path for organizations to find a path to compliance, he argues that a boarder solution rests with some leadership from the FCC to fix issues such as inconsistent policies and pricing models, to wider societal issues regarding content. “We have to clean up the town square,” says Sheahan.

Visit www.redoxygen.com

Crexendo Breaks Records with Outstanding 36% User Surge in 2023, Podcast, Second Part

“Our secret sauce is everybody works hard,” says Jeff Korn CEO at Crexendo. “Everybody at the company will do what's necessary and frankly our customer services I said before a second to none and if you have a problem you can pick up the phone, you can call Doug Gaylor, you can call me, you can call our vice presidents and we will answer and we will work to resolve it. Give that a shot at Microsoft that is never going to happen and that is one of the reasons we are now being able to pull customers who are leaving the number one and number two platform providers in the country.”

In this podcast Korn is joined by President and COO of Crexendo, Doug Gaylor. Gaylor points out that the company’s high rate of growth is occurring on two levels. 220 licensees selling the platform experienced significant growth and 21 new platform providers are selling the platform. “And those platform providers are… coming from Microsoft and coming from Cisco and coming from Asterix and other platforms out there,” says Gaylor. “And then we're also seeing a lot of individual growth coming from our direct customers as well. We saw 11% organic growth just in that sector just in Q3.” Gaylor note that Crexendo has grown larger than 8x8.

“If somebody needs all soft phones, great if somebody wants to go with all mobility, that's no problem,” adds Gaylor. We learn how Crexendo is helping customers makes wins with CPaaS and AI. “If somebody mentions a word We can have that trigger an action to bring a sales manager or bringing a supervisor onto that call immediately So that they can handle the situation maybe better than the customer service agent that's handling that call So we're seeing a lot of applications for AI and the best part about a dug is that these applications They used to be fortune 500, Fortune 1000 type applications because they were so expensive.”

Crexendo’s flexible model allows for customization and scale. The model can be suited for a small organization or a large enterprise. We hear that this model, combined with a hands-on approach, and a personal level of involvement by the leadership team, is driving growth.

Visit www.crexendo.com