Mattias Fridström continues the conversation with Rob Merhej, VP EMEA at AVANT, exploring how advisory‑led partners create long‑term value for customers – and why connectivity remains central to everything from AI to customer experience.

In this episode, they discuss:

• How AVANT supports partners beyond the initial deal through ongoing advisory, cross‑sell, and up‑sell engagement
• What separates top‑performing trusted advisors – and why selling multiple services per customer matters
• How AVANT stays ahead of vendor roadmaps with specialist engineers and tools like Pathfinder and Atlas
• Why AI deployments often fail without the right data center, bandwidth, and network design in place
• The shift of unified communications into broader CX and contact‑center transformations
• Growing awareness of AI security, governance, sustainability, and talent challenges
• A look ahead at the next five years – from multi‑gig connectivity to AI as an everyday work companion

A lively conversation on connectivity, AI, and the advisory models powering the next wave of the technology channel. Tune in and get ahead of what’s next.

What’s reshaping the future of the technology channel? Rob Merhej, VP EMEA at AVANT, joins Mattias Fridström to discuss:

• How AVANT evolved from a small startup to a global advisory‑led technology services distributor
• The shift from traditional reselling to a modern trusted‑advisor model across cloud, connectivity, co‑location, cybersecurity, and AI
• Why recurring‑revenue, as‑a‑service solutions are now central to partner go‑to‑market strategies
• How AVANT supports partners with engineering expertise and agnostic guidance to navigate complex, multi‑site customer requirements
• Key differences between the US and European channel ecosystems – and how European markets are rapidly catching up
• The impact of AI deployments, co‑location growth, and increasing connectivity demands on the channel’s momentum

Don’t miss this insightful look into how the partner landscape is evolving – and why the trusted‑advisor model is becoming indispensable in today’s technology world.

What does the future of telecom look like? Kent Lidström, CTO of Smartoptics returns to the podcast for a discussion with Mattias Fridström on:

• The increased importance of where components are manufactured
• How the convergence of IP and optical layers has impacted suppliers
• Hyperscalers building their own gear
• Hollow-core fiber
• Where quantum networking research stands today
• Sustainability challenges in networking
• Optical innovations to expect in the coming years

Don’t miss this deep dive into the trends shaping tomorrow’s networks.

How has optical networking evolved over the past 25 years – and what’s next? In this episode, Kent Lidström, CTO at Smartoptics, joins Mattias Fridström to explore:

• The biggest shifts in optical networking and what still needs to change
• Openness and disaggregation in the telecom industry
• Shannon’s limit
• How mergers and acquisitions are reshaping the industry
• Why enterprises are moving toward simpler services like “raw bandwidth”
• Encryption-based and physical security 
• Strategies for managing component shortages through dual sourcing

If you’re curious about the past, present, and future of optical networking, this conversation is packed with insights.

Markus Viitamäki, Senior Infrastructure Architect at Embark Studios is back on the podcast. In this episode, he and Mattias Fridström discuss Markus’ previous engagement in the world’s largest gaming festival DreamHack, when to establish local gaming sites to meet customer needs (and what the requirements are), DDoS attacks in the gaming industry, and whether gamers really understand how the Internet is working. 

In this episode, Markus Viitamäki, Senior Infrastructure Architect at Embark Studios joins the podcast to discuss trends in the gaming industry, main drivers to creating a new game, and how much latency and bandwidth are affecting the gaming experience. 

Misha Kuperman, Chief Reliability Officer at Zscaler is back on the podcast. In this episode he and Mattias Fridström discuss if the recent trade tariffs will impact services from Zscaler, whether people in general understand cloud connectivity, if security in the cloud is just a waste of bandwidth resources, what customers know about the public internet, if security standards in telecoms are important, and what security trends we will see in enterprise networking in five years’ time. 

In this episode, Misha Kuperman, Chief Reliability Officer at Zscaler joins the podcast to discuss the past and recent developments in enterprise networking, whether the current geopolitical situation has had any impact on the way enterprises think about security, what’s behind the ‘zero trust’ concept and how this works in real life.

Eric Löwgren, Head of Network at data center provider GleSYS, is back on the podcast. This time, he and Mattias Fridström discuss physical and cyber security in data centers, optimizing sustainability through measures such as heat recovery (and getting customers to pay a premium for sustainability), increasing the understanding of network architecture among customers, and what the future data center will look like. 

Eric Löwgren, Head of Network at data center provider GleSYS, joins the podcast for a discussion on what impacts the selection of where to put a data center, the trend of moving things out of the cloud, AI driving power density and connectivity demands, and attracting ‘lead guitar’ talent to the data center industry.