Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Survey finds 1 in 10 organizations haven’t begun migration process, while POTS lines remain present in companies where migration is underway

Migration option can be an upgrade

“We found that 90% of enterprise customers are already moving towards some sort of POTS replacement,” says Clinton Fitch of Ooma. “They either have a plan in place or they're doing pilots or something along those lines. What that means, though, is that 10% of those being surveyed had no plan. And it really is now a rush to get it done.” Clinton shares with us the finding of a recent survey they conducted with Foundry. Foundry is the parent company of CIO Magazine.

Ooma has been on the frontlines of the migration process for two decades. Today, Ooma offers AirDial, a device that meets the needs of customers with POTS lines in places such as elevators. The traditional connectivity of POTS remains a requirement in these locations, but the intentional sunset of POTS lines means that many organizations are faced with uncharted territory. They must meet regulatory requirements to offer POTS functionality, in a a post-POTS environment.  “We're seeing customers that are seeing anywhere from three to 800% bill increases month over month,” adds Clinton. The obligations that governed POTS, are gone or are going.

In some cases, organizations have only discovered their immediate need to get on top of migration because their critical POTS lines have simply been shut down. This can now occur without warning or notification. In many localities, a disruption would place the building or facility as being non-compliant. A company retrofitting a building might discover that even occupancy might be held up there’s nothing to replace the previous points that had POTS services.

Life-safety systems are covered by regulations – such as NFPA 72 for fire alarms and ASME A17.1 for elevator phones – that have specific requirements for POTS replacement, such as making sure the device uses a private network rather than sending data over the public internet. Not all POTS replacement devices are compliant.

We learn that the survey found that people are hoping to not only remain in compliance, and avoid price surges, they also hope to find solutions that integrate with the rest of their technology stack.

In this podcast we learn that Ooma AirDial, meets compliance requirements, offers full integration, with an upgrade.  “With AirDial, we've built in a lot of technology into this, and we've built in a lot of notifications as well. Customers will know if something's going on with that device, or they know if a device has gone offline, or if it's gone on battery power, if you've lost power, for example, wherever the device sits. But you can also get notifications on if a call happens.”

Ooma offers help, advice and resources finding out the status of these needs across the organization. Ooma suggests and can help with an audit of the phone lines, as a first step in mapping out the migration process.

Visit www.ooma.com/airdial

Addressing Multi-UC Challenges in Voice Environments for UC Partners

Number management across multiple UC platforms is a headache – complex, inefficient and manual configuration. It’s time for a fully unified solution. That is one of the key points that Mark Bunnell, COO of Nuwave makes in this CCA (Cloud Communications Alliance) and TR Publications, podcast. Mark discusses the current challenges UC partner organizations face in Multi-UC Voice environments and how to reduce complexity and power-up time to go live. “Efficiency saves money,” says Mark. “We’re a service delivery platform.”

Nuwave is offering a path to simplify labor intensive process, freeing up skilled staff time. Mark outlines how Nuwave shrinks time and bandwidth needed to perform complex tasks such as migrating an organization from legacy and on prem networks. “We understand the carrier space,” Mark adds, noting that, “…you don’t need an engineering degree” to use Nuwave. That means that Nuwave’s clients are able to free up their most skilled technical labor time, for higher functions. Nuwave's iPILOT integrates different management portals and sync analytics.

We gain insight into Nuwave's innovative strategies to streamline number management, migration tools, and unified management platforms. Mark walks us through how Nuwave is enabling UC partners to consolidate infrastructure, thus reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and enhancing revenue generation. The podcast looks at the the opportunities for partners to improve service management efficiency and scale up in the market. The podcast looks at the significance of these developments in 2024 for UC partners working with Microsoft Teams/Zoom/Webex amongst other UC platforms,revealing the 'hockey stick' moments for UC consolidation and revenue growth.

Visit www.nuwave.com

“There is a large and huge opportunity for MSPs and MSSPs to provide those services to help the SMB market to be better prepared for compliance, for vendor assessment, to protect themselves against cyber-attacks,” says CEO and Co-Founder of Cynomi, David Primor. In this podcast, David Primor discusses how vCISO platforms are transforming the MSSP and MSP sectors, who and what Cynomi is, David’s ideas behind establishing the company, and the recent news of Cynomi’s expansion to Europe. In the spring, Cynomi brought its strategic cybersecutiy offerings to Europe.

David Primor

“We see a demand from enterprise companies that require the vendors to be protected and to show that they are protected. We see lots of insurance companies that require the companies to show and to demonstrate that they are protected.” Demand is not limited to the entperise, and the threat is now ubiquitous. Medium and small organizations are vulnerable. David outlines how Cynomi offers the tools MSPs and MSSPs need, to meet the challenge, in a scalable, affordable manner.

The Cynomi vCISO platform allows MSPs and MSSPs to ensure their clients comply with regulations and cybersecurity frameworks. Cynomi provides guidance on a client’s stance in complying with standards and regulation, and what they need to do to attain full compliance. Cynomi’s support of GDPR, DORA, NIS2 and other regulations and frameworks is dynamic, always up to date and expanding, as needed.

Cynomi is the only vCISO platform provider that sells exclusively through the channel. Cynomi partners typically see improved client retention, increased recurring revenue, and upsell opportunities, and the ability to standardize processes and automate procedures across clients for operational efficiency.

About Cynomi

Cynomi’s vCISO platform empowers MSSPs, MSPs, and consultancies to offer structured cybersecurity services to SMEs at scale and provide them with proactive cyber resilience. Combining proprietary AI algorithms with CISO-level knowledge, Cynomi helps partners overcome the cybersecurity skills gap and scale their security and compliance businesses, allowing them to offer new services. See more at cynomi.com.

Shuru East Europe ITAD is part of the ASCDI’s growing presence in the EU and UK markets

“We are here to help you out and to find solutions for you in in Europe,” says Shilo Levi, CEO of Shuru East Europe ITAD. Shuru has joined the ASCDI and is an ITAD company. In this podcast, Shilo outlines why ITAD is important, needed, and has added regulatory challenges in the EU market. Shuru can help companies with the EU ITAD needs and understands the complexity of doing business in the EU.

“If you have a cargo in Holland, you cannot transport it to be treated in Austria. They demand, the European compliance demanded it to be done locally to minimize all the transportation of the waste. And if you transport the waste, for example, from one facility to another or to a smelter, you need to have like a notification, you know, to have like a license from the Ministry of Environment of the countries that even if you're going to cross. For example, if you have in Italy, you must cross to Denmark. All the countries that you're crossing, they have to be aware that transport of cargo X is passing. It's a process that is complicated, but we are helping clients to have this or to have solutions.”

Staying on the right side of the logistical rule book is one part. Making sure your data is secure, is another.

“The most important thing of a company is to make sure that the data is destroyed, that the data is perfectly eliminated, and you have all the documentation for that. And this is what we are offering to the organizations. we're helping them to manage properly the stuff to have document first to know what they have and first and after that to have a paperwork for everything for everything that it was properly destroyed and how it was destroyed.”

We learn about Shuru’s services in managing data security, logistics and value recovery.

Visit www.itad-solutions.eu/en/

User Group Meeting 2024, A NetSapiens Platform Event, Nashville, Tennessee, OCT 21 – 24, 2024

Crexendo, powered by NetSapiens, has passed the five million user mark. The milestone was achieved in advance of the NetSapiens Platform User Group Meeting, to be held in Nashville, October 21 to 24. In this podcast, Jon Brinton discusses their growing community of over 230 service provider partners, and other elements of growth. Brinton tell us about the Frost and Sullivan 2024 Best Practices Award, now among the twenty-four industry awards, earned by the Crexendo.

As CPaaS, UCaaS, and CCaaS continue to converge, Crexendo has worked to deliver what customers want, with scalable solutions and smooth migration paths. “We're seeing a lot of former Microsoft, Metaswitch partners or Cisco BroadSoft partners, that are coming to us because we fashion ourselves as the champion of the independent service provider community.”

The upcoming User Group Meeting, already established as a key fall industry happening, will have added gravity this year, as the partners gather, representing between them an added million end users. Roundtables have been added to the agenda. This allows for a more bespoke, deeper learning experience. Gaining deeper understanding of the technologies being offered, finding ways to sharpen the sales process, and peer to peer opportunities to learn inside the NetSapiens community, are among the benefits for attendees.

https://ugm.netsapiens.com/

Contact Center and GenAI

Many of 8x8’s customers, and organizations in general, are trying to understand how to effectively implement AI, while still ensuring everything is safe and ethical. For many who have experimented with publicly available generative AI platforms, such as OpenAI, the results can be mixed or questionable. This is why it’s so important for organizations building generative AI engines to ensure the instructions, or prompts, for the creation of content or a graphic are clear and carefully managed to avoid embarrassing or incorrect automated AI responses.

In the contact center, the combination of generative AI and conversational AI often leads to better results as conversational AI is far more advanced in its readiness for contact center applications in terms of bounded responses and identifying the intent of the caller or user. However, we always recommend that organizations carefully examine the construction of the prompts used with generative AI in conjunction with conversational AI, allowing the organization to leverage AI while using a limited set of carefully worded instructions and user-provided data and documents that create boundaries around what the generative AI will introduce into the customer conversation. This will lead to better support, information, and an overall better experience for both customers and contact center agents.

8x8’s Products

8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant Is a powerful, user-friendly conversational AI solution that enables businesses to create instant, effortless, and engaging self-service digital and voice experiences. 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant now supports human-like voice as well as digital interactions across multiple channels, regions, and languages to deliver automation and personalized experiences at scale.

The 8x8 Technology Partner Ecosystem is a program that allows customer-first organizations to enhance customer experience by deeply embedding cutting-edge technologies, including leading artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, into the 8x8 platform with persistent data to enhance business intelligence, insights, and analytics. The 8x8 Technology Partner Ecosystem transforms customer experience and engagement by democratizing seamless, next-generation, native integrations for organizations of all sizes without requiring complex, custom development or exorbitant overhead costs that have traditionally only been feasible for the largest enterprises.

8x8 Engage is an AI-powered, tailored solution that enables cross-organization customer engagement for enhanced customer experiences, fostering loyalty and driving business success. Intentionally engineered to address the distinct needs of customer-facing employees outside of the contact center, who may need to be mobile when handling customer interactions, 8x8 Engage bridges an organization’s CX journey gaps and empowers this underserved user base with the right-fit tools and capabilities for delivering consistent, successful outcomes.

About 8x8

8x8 is a leading provider of integrated contact center, voice communications, video, chat, and SMS solutions built on one global cloud platform. 8x8 uniquely eliminates the silos across the entire organization to power the communications and customer engagement requirements of all employees globally as they work together to deliver differentiated customer experiences.

In-home entertainment is coming full circle. The recent spate of mergers, bundles and strategic partnerships between streamers represents a return to form for in-home entertainment, balancing the anywhere-anytime access offered by streaming with the easy-to-navigate customer experience (CX) of traditional cable. Take it from someone who has been there every step of the way: Sean Casey, senior vice president of product management at CSG.

A veteran of the telecom-meets-entertainment industry, Casey started his career at Sprint TV, an early player in streaming video. His 20 years in the field inform a unique perspective on where in-home entertainment has been and where it is going. In this episode, Sean discusses the important role that collaboration between communication service providers (CSPs) and streamers will play at a time when CX is the primary differentiator in the competition to attract and retain customers.

Tune in to hear Casey’s thoughts on the transition back to integrated content options, the surprising edge that cable still has over streamers and why finding the right balance between old and new will be the key to meeting customers’ rising expectations.

For over 40 years, CSG’s technologies and people have helped some of the world’s most recognizable brands solve their toughest business challenges and evolve to meet the demands of today’s digital economy. To learn more, visit csgi.com.

By Tom Loozen (Senior Partner, Telecommunications), Adrian Baschnonga (EY Global TMT Lead Analyst), and Sören Grabowski (EY-Parthenon Global TMT Leader)

To thrive in the future, telcos must seek differentiators beyond network quality and adapt to changing ecosystems and market structures.

In brief

The growth outlook for telcos is solid but unspectacular, based on core connectivity and continuing cost management allied to reliance on network quality.

Industry leaders foresee pervasive changes to the sector in five years’ time, which today’s defensive strategies are not equipped to address.

Rethinking business models and differentiators, and building new employee propositions and ecosystem positions, are vital for success on the road to 2030.

Telcos have reached an inflection point in their evolution. They are ever more focused on core connectivity and continue to drive new waves of organizational efficiency with the help of emerging technologies. However, industry ecosystems, stakeholder expectations and workforce needs are developing in new directions at pace. In this light, defensive strategies based on network quality and cost optimization may fall short of the more substantial transformation telcos need to achieve.

EY interviewed more than 60 C-suite executives from over 50 telecoms operators to understand their views about organizational priorities alongside the current and future state of the sector. In this article, we explore insights emerging from our research, underlining the dichotomy that exists between defensive near-term strategies and more radical future sector dynamics, and recommending key actions that telcos can take to ensure they remain fit for the future.

About the research

Between September 2023 and February 2024, EY-Parthenon conducted face-to-face surveys of 63 senior business leaders in the telecommunications sector to understand their business imperatives. The questionnaire explored a number of themes, such as the industry operating environment, strategy North Stars, near-term business priorities and the telco world five years from now. Respondents represented 29 countries — including 75% from Europe, 8% from Americas, 9% from Asia-Pacific, and 8% from Middle East and Africa — and featured a range of leadership roles, led by CEOs (32%) and chief strategy or transformation officers (21%). To participate in the survey, respondents were required to be leaders of a telco business function or unit.

Traditional growth drivers underpin a solid performance outlook

Survey respondents have a largely positive view of sector growth: more than half foresee sector revenues and EBITDA growing by 3% or more over the next three years. They are also confident of their own performance relative to their peers, with three quarters expecting to outperform the market over the same period. Inflationary pricing escalators built into consumer subscriptions have been supportive in some markets, indicative of wider resilience where customer spending has held up well in spite of the cost-of-living crisis, as highlighted in the EY Decoding the digital home study.

Looking ahead, two key drivers of profitable growth as cited by the management are: growth in the core connectivity business (67%) and margin development through additional cost reductions and efficiencies (60%). These twin forces score well ahead of adjacent market services or more innovative business models, with only one in three respondents highlighting growth beyond the core business or growth in platform, ecosystem or as-a-service business. That said, there are regional nuances at play: Asia-Pacific telcos are much more receptive to growth via platforms or ecosystems, cited four out of six telco leaders in the region.

Telco market growth outlook

This chart shows survey respondents’ expectations of telecoms market development in their own footprint in the next three years.

What Industry Leading ISPs are Saying about Upping their Security Game, Podcast with Radware’s Travis Volk, Podcast, Automation is driving down the cost of these attacks

“Automation is driving down the cost of these attacks,” says Travis Volk,  senior vice president of global service providers of Radware. “That means that the bad actors can cover smaller to medium businesses. We're having to, as a community, try to alleviate the burden into a much larger addressable market.”

After traveling across four continents and visiting with over 75 unique ISPs, Travis Volk walked away with some interesting perspectives from industry leaders who are operating at the forefront of cybersecurity.

“Hackers are also leveraging AI for widespread vulnerability assessment. Imagine they can sweep huge address ranges very quickly and use AI to accelerate code revision like bot variants and script modifications. And eventually, you get into this LMM prompt-assisted campaigns where we have some research being done in the universities that show 85% improvement in penetration testing with, basic prompting and retries through LLM support.”

In this podcast, we discuss the top cyber threats they are facing

Their challenges dealing with AI-empowered hackers who are exposing vulnerabilities a magnitude faster and moving down market to zero in on small businesses

How they are coping with SOCs that are running exhausted

Why layer 7 visibility, attack detection, and remediation are becoming more important

Where they see blind spots in defense of distributed deployments

What scaling modern protections have to do with the one aspiration they all share

“I think we need to mentally evolve as well. Layered protections allow better contextual security and with a means for scaling. Modern consumer and enterprise applications require Layer 7 defense. Adding capabilities into existing platforms offers a sense of reliability and control. I would caution people to evaluate platforms capable of addressing numerous market segments and risk tolerances. I think one of the real challenges that the cyber community faces are providing quality security to more businesses.”

Visit www.radware.com

How Towers and Data Centers can Capitalize on 5G Expansion, iconectiv Podcast, “Many tower and data center operators don’t have a complete understanding of their asset portfolios,” says Juan Carlos Ortiz, Principal for Corporate Business Development

As the demand for seamless 5G wireless coverage grows, tower and data center operators are in prime position to capitalize on its expansion, but many of them aren’t fully realizing these opportunities. In this podcast, Juan Carlos Ortiz, Principal for Corporate Business Development at iconectiv, explains how tower and data center operators can take full advantage of the opportunities arising from 5G expansion.

“Many tower and data center operators don’t have a complete understanding of their asset portfolios,” Ortiz said. “There is a standard nomenclature that service providers and their business partners have been using for decades to describe critical network resources in a consistent, descriptive and meaningful way, and that mechanism is called Common Language.”

About iconectiv

iconectiv provides services to secure digital identity, numerous data exchanges, registries, and other information as a service offerings. These address numbering intelligence, Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB), 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.

www.iconectiv.com