I get why companies have to present at investor conferences – to shore up support, build confidence, tell a story and hope institutional investors buy your stocks, bonds, debt.
I have to wonder if the telecom analysts at these banks actually understand the industry. To hear a CFO tell it, the road is laden with gold for UCaaS and SD-WAN. At least 90% of the vendors exhibiting at the channel events are offering both of those products.
AT&T has deployed SD-WAN to 28,000 locations. So they win right? I mean, I have been seeing the PR out of WIND and other places about number of locations, but 28K is the biggest. I mean, come on, it is good to have the biggest.
Then you hear how they actually can’t deliver on SD-WAN firewall…
On the flip side, Ma Bell sucks at UC. They resell RingCentral because for some reason despite running a Broadsoft – and let’s not forget about the CallVantage they offered early in the race – they punt this to Ring.
In UCaaS, the race is largely (publicly) between 3 providers: Ring, 8×8 and Vonage. Yes there are a couple of thousand other companies offering some version of UC/Hosted PBX/Hosted VoIP/UCaaS/Collab, but 600K seats is now the floor to play in that space.
At CPEv, it was mainly noise about UC and SDWAN.
The problem with these two products? Price is shrinking. Lack of differentiation. Too many players. Word is Comcast is practically giving SD-WAN away to just put some numbers on the board. SDWAN pricing has been collapsing since it sprang on the market.
Data Center was a hot topic for me at CPEv.
Fast Facts about DATABANK
- Geography
- Our People – Seasoned Executive Leadership (CEO, CISO), customer focused, accountable, and easy to do business with. (I hope Channel Friendly!)
- Platform – Hybrid IT Platform offering flexibility as enterprise needs change. Providing contract revenue portability with Data Center, Private & Public Clouds.
- FedRAMP Certified Cloud – audit ready documentation for HIPPA, PCI, FedRAMP, SSAE-16/18
- Portal for Real Time Network/Security/Audit Visibility
Trends Databank is seeing:
- All Enterprise IT organizations have increasing concerns about security of their networks.
- Channel competition is getting more competitive than ever with new entrants every day.
- Market competition is challenging enterprise network designs, with increasing Cloud evaluations
Cyxtera was a major sponsor at the show. They were talking about Hyper Converged Infrastructure as well as dynamic data center. Ask Tine Gravel why they are the Netflix of IT.
I did see Jean-Marc Porson who is now VP of Channel at Element Critical. Congrats!
Another data center company was dumb enough to be discussing how they were going to cut a master agency out and sign one of the partners directly. Why do data center companies do this? There aren’t that many partners selling DCI. Do you think we don’t talk? Dumb asses. And that same DC company couldn’t even tell me where his Florida DC was.
D&H was at the show. In the VAD space, they are behind Ingram, Tech Data and CDW. They are about the size of ScanSource ($3B). D&H just signed a deal with SaaSMax.
If you were at this show, you weren’t crowded. There weren’t any lines. The weather in Philly was crazy warm. If you didn’t go to the Reading Terminal Market, you missed out! And you probably think that every partner is a IT guy. This show went too far a swing to MSP.
Best part of the show? Hanging out with friends.