In a year when conferencing came of age, as the technology of choice businesses used to effectively replace formal and informal meetings at the office, Sean Wilson, VP of Client Solutions of SMP makes the case for Cisco Webex from SMP. In this podcast, Wilson discusses the advantages of Conferencing that is based on open standards and that is fully, purpose built as a part of a larger UCaaS story. Visit  https://www.smp-corp.com/why-smp-collaboration-solutions/ and https://www.smp-corp.com/ to learn more.

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Podcast: Conferencing – UCaaS Podcast Series with SMP Part 2 of 5

“With WebRTC you can manage all communications with just a web browser,” says Daniel Pizarro, CEO of Infobox SAC of Lima, Peru. Earlier this year, as the pandemic struck Peru, the health care system became, “… strained and close to collapse.” Lima’s Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander von Humboldt, a research hospital, needed a robust solution that would allow for the secure treatment of patients, with less severe symptoms, from their homes. Infobox turned to Wildix as a solution that could deliver on all the requirements that the hospital had, and implementation could be carried out quickly. In this podcast Pizarro is joined by Robert Cooper, Managing Director of Wildix Americas, we learn how Infobox leveraged Wildix’s WebRTC solution to enable telehealth, and other communication improvements, that directly allowed the hospital to safely move less critical patients to outpatient care, enabling the institute to step back from having to turn away patients or not house all that came. Cooper, on behalf of Wildix notes that their web browser-based solution works well for this challenge since there is no way to standardize the technology patients who, who are off site, will have. Visit www.wildix.com Read the case study: https://www.wildix.com/us/institute-of-tropical-medicine-alexander-von-humboldt/

Podcast: Wildix provides robust solution for Peruvian hospital facing crises

"It's the transition of organizations from being maintenance and service providers to being truly managed service providers," says Tony Jayne, CEO of Virsae. In this podcast, Jayne looks over the horizon to what that ongoing transition will look like when it's combined with the new realities of the post-pandemic economic and technological market. Jayne begins by relating the journey of MSPs to that of his own company, when they began developing solutions to drive down complexity and the high costs of big headcount processes. Jayne observes that the fast-forward nature of 2020 has three phases: deploy, optimize and manage. Since the initial deployments to enable remote workers, the next step was to optimize. Now comes management. Jayne argues that the visibility Virsae offers the channel into their customers permits insights that the MSPs excel at reacting to and advising their customers about. The way in which Virsae brings it all together, enables the MSPs to take advantage of cloud and big data resources, which means MSPs can deliver more valued services without seeing their own costs surge. Learn more at www.virsae.com

Podcast: The MSP in the post-pandemic world, an outlook from Virsae

“We did not want to miss the opportunity to meet,” says Elizabeth Page, National Sales Manager for Ribbon Communications Rural Services. In this podcast, Page outlines the recent Ribbon Rural Perspectives event. Page reports that over 175 people attended as discussions and presentations covered critical issues for rural customers including the widening use of Microsoft Teams, the ongoing challenge of containing robocalling and ending the bandwidth speedbump for some rural users. We hear details about how Ribbon approaches the adoption of Microsoft Teams, especially as remote working spreads. We hear about steps that are being made to narrow the level of robocalls, and how Ribbon is combining its large portfolio of products to solve the bandwidth challenge. “Everyone’s doing more with less,” says Page as she discusses how Ribbon’s approach is all about maximizing value from assets and highly efficient returns from new infrastructure investments. Visit www.rbbn.com and https://info.rbbn.com/rural-perspectives/  Visit the Ribbon Communications Blog for more news.

Podcast: Ribbon delivering on rural communication challenges

SMP, a leading Cisco Solution Provider, is actively leading the way to a cloud future. In this first part of a five-part series, Sean Wilson, VP of Client Solutions provides an overview of UCaaS and its advantages. SMP is an IT solution provider with a focus on cloud, data center, networking, security, and collaboration solutions. According to Wilson, while SMP proudly supports on prem, cloud offers a flexibility and a level of options that is hard to match, while offering the channel a rich set of solutions to offer that is easier to stand up and run. Wilson discusses SMP’s cloud approach which includes a journey map and Cisco’s Webex calling solution. Visit  https://www.smp-corp.com/why-smp-collaboration-solutions/ and https://www.smp-corp.com/ to learn more.

Podcast: The Case for UCaaS – Cloud Now Podcast Series with SMP Part 1 of 5

Self-service automation and secure, compliant capabilities have become mission-critical for modern call centers. The contact center was once a company’s backdoor entrance. Today it’s the front door. It’s the main way many people will have human contact with a firm or organization. And whether clearing up a shopping order or straightening out a government income security claim, the customer will rate a company or an organization by how the contact center preforms. In this podcast we learn how Zappix and Fonative have partnered to deliver better customer experiences and outcomes. Zappix is a leading Visual IVR and self-service customer service provider. Fonative, is a compliant communications company. As contact centers face the challenges of COVID-19, as well as increasing security requirements from legislation and regulations, Zappix and Fonative capabilities have quickly become a top priority for modern businesses. Steve Smith Yossi Abraham Yossi Abraham, President of Zappix and Steve Smith, CEO of Fonative, discuss how they are putting speed, mobility, automation, simplicity and motivation together so that agents are more enabled and customers are better served. Visit www.zappix.com for a demo and visit www.fonative.com about channel opportunities

Podcast: Contact Centers Reaching Out Where and How the Customer Demands

When crisis occurs, if a business is not prepared, they are in a total reactionary mode. Issues that need to be addressed are security, move to the cloud, remote workers, internet connections, bandwidth, sanitation, health issues and more.  A business is not going to be knowledgeable in all these areas.   If they are lucky, they have been working with a trusted advisor.  If they have not, they need to find one. David Beagle Dave Beagle, Head of Channels at Ooma, outlines to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, what to look for and in a Trusted Advisor and how they should represent vendors to you. A trusted advisor can help you select your provider, broadband options, home network segmentation, voice requirements, network requirements and more. With all of that said, the business needs to think of their employees and what they are going through as well. They are suffering just like the business is suffering. For businesses, Ooma Office phone service enables small businesses to sound and act like a big business, with powerful features including desktop and mobile apps so users can work from anywhere. Ooma Enterprise phone service provides larger businesses with a complete unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution that can be customized to meet the individual needs of complex organizations. Ooma Connect delivers innovative fixed wireless internet to businesses, for both back-up and primary use. For more information, go to: https://partner.ooma.com

Podcast: Ooma answers tough questions about how COVID-19 has affected business in the US and around the world – Part 2

Contact centers create enormous amounts of real-time data that could be leveraged to drive maximum levels of productivity. Yet, most call centers are not able to capitalize on this wealth of information at their disposal. If left unsolved, this disconnect can cause persisting issues within call centers. And given the shift to remote work models, the data gap has only grown. Matt McConnell, CEO of Intradiem, a provider of an Intelligent Assistant that companies deploy to help customer service teams maximize productivity & engagement, is an expert on contact center trends. In this podcast episode, he will walk through the data disconnect many call centers are facing and what solution exist to remedy this ongoing problem. Visit https://intradiem.com/ for more information.

Podcast: Exploring the Data Disconnect Facing Contact Centers

Almost every aspect of Telecommunications is changing. You know all the acronyms.  It is a huge list. Ayan Adam, Founder and CMO at CX Atelier speaks to Don Witt of The Channel Daily News about changes in companies, their marketing and the channel. Change in telecommunications has also been driving changes in the channel and in the marketing required to support the changes. Software as a Service is one of the more obvious. Basically, the brick and mortar components of the box/DVD/documentation have been removed from what was normal distribution.   A completely new channel has been established for SaaS and its Recurring Monthly Revenue. Ayan Adam Vendors, VARs, MSPs, ITSPs, and others do not have the bandwidth to deal with the changes, let alone bring on a staff for the marketing. Enter the channel zealot, Ayan. CX Atelier understands the channel and they are experts in marketing for B2B technology companies. They know the industry, your competitors and your business model. Consider them an extension of your own internal team, essentially a marketing department in a box. If you need guidance on where to start your digital marketing journey or simply want to talk to someone about your digital marketing goals, schedule a virtual coffee chat with them. Helping B2B Technology companies succeed in their digital marketing journey is their passion. They want to hear everything about your business. For more information, go to: https://www.cxatelier.com/

Podcast: Marketing Channel Zealot to Zealot – discussion on the current state of Telecommunications Marketing and the ever-important Channel

We are 8 months into the COVID-19 pandemic and many businesses are suffering badly.  If they have not gone out of business, they are scrambling to find better ways to service their customers – remotely or on site. Dave Beagle, Head of Channels at Ooma, presents his views on the affects COVID-19 has had on the country and world now and moving forward. David Beagle In the first, of a two-part Visual Podcast, Dave reviews what businesses have experienced and some not realized issues. The pandemic is broken down into three phases and discussed: Pre-Pandemic Midst of Pandemic Post-Pandemic Some statistics are covered that will help everyone understand the dilemma and the future solution better. Office Mask Requirements Work from Home             For businesses, Ooma Office phone service enables small businesses to sound and act like a big business, with powerful features including desktop and mobile apps so users can work from anywhere. Ooma Enterprise phone service provides larger businesses with a complete unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution that can be customized to meet the individual needs of complex organizations. Ooma Connect delivers innovative fixed wireless internet to businesses, for both back-up and primary use. For more information, go to: https://www.ooma.com/

Podcast: Ooma answers tough questions about how COVID-19 has affected business in the US and around the world – Part 1

Phone.com keeps it simple on-top while adding muscle below “People are going to work smarter, they are going to use technology in a way that is effective for themselves, and their organizations, says Joel Maloff, Senior Vice President/Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) at Phone.com. In this podcast Maloff offers a look at how one of the cloud’s pioneering firms is exploring new ground both in platforms in use and verticals being served. Phone.com started with the smallest businesses looking for communication and soon began selling to larger firms as well through channel partners. Today Phone.com is migrating much of their services to AWS cloud, a step the company feels is in keeping with its model of providing firms of many sizes the most up to date set of services. Through all the changes that have occurred to the market, Phone.com continues to keep a simple message and model face forward to the users, while adding muscle, more powerful capabilities below. In this way Phone.com has mirrored the thinking that has brought us more sophisticated devices that don’t require a user manual. Now, Maloff reports, Phone.com is moving beyond conferencing that’s simply thrown up based on what’s available to providing HIPPA compliant telehealth. As we look at 2021, Maloff offers a message of opportunity and progress as Phone.com continues to partner with its channel team to invent and customize solutions for customers, with a company big enough to take on complex projects but small enough to offer individualized service and offerings. Visit www.phone.com

Podcast: Phone.com takes on the challenge of telemedicine and other fast changing verticals in a time of mass disruption

“Cloud has become more important than ever,” says John DeLozier, Senior Vice President & Global Channel Chief at 8x8. Reflecting on a year when companies scrambled to enable contact centers and office staff to work remotely, 8x8, according to DeLozier was able to hand their partners a competitive edge in a market that offers choice. “We are one integrated platform… it’s all here,” says DeLozier, reflecting on 8x8’s ability to tie together the various ways people communicate with each other and the outside world, across many verticals and company sizes. In this podcast, DeLozier discusses how the 8x8 platform provides analytical visibility into customer usage and needs. DeLozier says that, “… we bring our partners opportunities” through analytics and programs designed to simplify the process of identifying and supporting customer opportunities. We learn about 8x8’s Open Communications Platform, 8x8’s products and services, and we hear about how the firm has recently gained industry recognition at several events including the ScanSource Intelisys channel event -- held virtually this month. DeLozier sees the trends of 2020 to be sustainable as we move from an international pandemic into recovery. Visit www.8x8.com

Podcast: 8×8’s purpose-built platform fuels growth and industry recognition

This month the Cloud Age Solutions Podcast Series with some hope: sports is back, and its making people feel a little bit more normal. Bob Norberg, CMO Cloud Age Solutions reflects on how that sense of “normalcy” is starting to appear in the business world as well. Norberg sees a trend: companies are adapting not just to survive the pandemic, but changing for the better long term. Norberg sees the cloud and the cloud communications community as a dynamic agency of change and valuable resource for companies making these changes. Sports, according to Norberg, is telling us that you have to adapt, that there’s more than one approach to delivering products and services, and that good data is more important than ever. Norberg comments on Cloud Age Solutions’ approach which includes a cloud native, SaaS platform called gpxcloud, which he says offers the visibility, data, automation and other features that will help companies to reinvent themselves. Visit www.cloudagesolutions.com or send an email to info@cloudagesolutions.com to learn more about gpxcloud.

Podcast: Cloud Age Solutions: Sports is Back, and Business is Too

“We sell to 30,000 VARs in North America,” says Tony Sorrentino, President of North American Sales for ScanSource. In this podcast we learn how one of the world’s largest distributors in the communications industry helped their partners this year succeed under extraordinary circumstances. “We are all about helping our partners be successful as they deliver technology solutions to the end customer,” says Sorrentino. In this podcast, Sorrentino is joined by Ansley Hoke, SVP of Global Marketing and Ray Nelson, SVP of Technical Sales and Services as we learn about how ScanSource brought, what Hoke describes as, “…an A-game to the virtual stage”.  Hoke says that the conference represented ScanSource’s commitment to helping partners make connections with the right people, resources and partnerships to help them succeed, “…no matter what’s going on”.  Hoke describes how ScanSource curated content that was carefully chosen based on partner input. Verticals were examined, including challenges faced in education and in related fields. Nelson discusses how partners were offered new ideas and how ScanSource’s timely acquisition of Intelisys is helping the VARs see, understand and execute on opportunities in the subscription model. This podcast offers a glimpse of a prominent distributor that is helping their partner community to migrate not only to selling new products but in helping their customers rethinking their customer’s industries. We learn about upcoming events being offered. Virtual Partner Conference, visit https://vpcmainevent.scansource.com/ Additional information on PowerHours and the upcoming PowerWeek (which is the follow up to Virtual Partner Conference) https://www5.scansource.com/scansource-powerhours

Podcast: ScanSource Virtual Partner Conference helps partners take next steps in era of rapid change

Voxbone specializes in offering customers local presence in 64 markets around the world. In all cases the service is compliant enterprise-ready voice and SMS on flexible SIP trunks with access to local phone numbers. Now Voxbone customers will have visibility with Voxbone Insights. Voxbone Insights offers a dashboard where users can view the quality of service on calls, error reporting, and Voxbone has added a monitoring stack and an alerting layer. “We want users to have full visibility,” says Matt Brown, VP Product. “We’re seeing more and more companies want to move away from a toll-free number and really provide their customers with a local experience…” says Brown. In this podcast Brown describes how Voxbone and tools such as Voxbone Insights can help companies step up their game in multiple national markets around the globe. Insights offers a transparency that Brown argues, has no parallel in the industry. Visit www.voxbone.com

Podcast: Voxbone Insights Offers Visibility and Easy-To-Use Monitoring for Voxbone Users

CPaaS, UC, UCaaS, Cloud Communications, Collaboration, and Mobility: We report on how the world communicates.

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