Google may be taking over the world of the 20 year olds and very small business offices, but the grown up business world runs on Microsoft business applications - and will for quite some time. Voice, data or technology equipment solution sales consultants can evangelize all day long about the glory of Google Apps - but they wants to feed their families this year (and next) they need to sell wide area networks that accommodate the Microsoft applications like Exchange, SharePoint and OCS that run multilocation businesses.
So how does a telecom agent or channel partner make their premise-based equipment selling lead partners happy when all everyone hears about is "Cloud, cloud, cloud?" Show the equipment guys that you can put all their customer's beloved Microsoft business applications in the cloud for them using Alteva, a Philadelphia headquartered unified communications company that provides cloud-based, "fully unified" communications to multi-location customers with anywhere from 10 to 25,000 employees.
To learn what telecom agents and channel partners need to know about Alteva and why "fully unified" will make a difference to our equipment lead partners, I spoke with Louis Hayner, Chief Sales Officer for Alteva.
Click here to download the MP3 of the interview. Click the following player to listen now.
00:11 Question 1 - What are the main services you want channel partners to distribute?
Well, we have quite a unique offering. Alteva provides the first truly hosted unified communications solution available all delivered from the cloud which includes hosted voice over IP services from Broadsoft, hosted unified communications services such as Microsoft OCS, voice enabled Exchange as well as hosted SharePoint. The significant piece of this is this is all integrated together and delivered from one cloud solution. So whether the channel partner would sell hosted Voice Over IP and add the Microsoft services on later or vice versa.
00:55 Question 2 - Which end-user target markets are most attractive to Alteva's services?
Our average size client today is 60 users but our largest customer when fully deployed will be 25,000 users in 70 different countries. So since it's a hosted solution, it appeals to many different end users. The key piece, since the solution is hosted is geographic diversity and a lot of offices. Generally, I can answer the question conversely. The services, host services don't necessarily appeal to the organization with a lot of users at one site. But everyone else is definitely somebody where interested in speaking to
So you're not trying to peg yourself as a hosted VOIP company so much as a company that specializes in Microsoft OCS integration, right?
Absolutely. The first of its kind in the world and the people that I would hear say, "Oh, you do hosted VOIP?" Yes, we do hosted VOIP. Done hosted VOIP since 2003 and we actually went from a start-up to one of the largest enterprise hosted Voice Over IP company in North America. However, it's not enough to do hosted VOIP anymore. People are looking for a unified communication solution and that's really where our expertise lies.
02:23 Question 3 - What type of channel partners are having the most success selling your services?
The people who seemed to have the most success in selling our services are the VARs ("value added resellers"), the integrated access providers, the people who are very comfortable selling a value added service. The master agents and agents, fortunately, are looking for ways to transform their business. They've been very profitable and very fruitful over the last decade. However, they see the writing on the wall and I see organizations transforming their products set going towards the cloud into solutions that we provide.
03:03 Question 5 - Who are your primary competitors for both end users and channel partners, and how are your services better than your main competitors for end users or channel partners?
The challenge in answering that question is we have great competitors, great organizations who specialized in hosted Voice Over IP like Telesphere, Smoothstone and Broadcore among others and we highly valued their competition because it makes us better. Obviously, we have organizations who compete with us on the hosted Microsoft offerings, the hosted Exchange, the hosted OCS like Apptix and and Intermedia. The challenge in answering that question is nobody is deploying any fully unified communications solution as of yet. So in some senses there are no competitors.
Now when you say "fully unified", how do you qualify that for our audience who mostly work through equipment VARs? I mean, the equipment VAR that a telecom agent gets network service leads from is going to say, "Well, are they this or are they that?" Can you give a brief description of what exactly does "fully unified" communications ("UC") mean?
Sure, so I'll give you a practical example. The ability to take what was once "linear" communication and make it "circular". So for instance, picking up the phone and having a conversation with yourself. I can, with a click of a button, without leaving the call, add desktop sharing services using OCS. Or add video with a click of a button. Enabling the individual end-user to layer complexity to their call but starting out the call as just a regular call.
And vice-versa. If I'm in an IM chat or instant message, I can, with a click of a button, without leaving that IM session add a conference call, add a video component or add a desktop sharing. So truly uniting the OCS piece with the hosted Voice Over IP piece.
There are people and vendors who provide unified communications using on premise equipment. In my opinion, the same battle is going to take place as it has been taking place for the last seven years. Do I go hosted? Do I go on premise? The stake is a lot higher. The stake is 70% of the users. Business end-users use Microsoft Exchange. So if you're going to build a unified communication solution, why not build it around the most prevalent communications tool which is Hostage Exchange or Microsoft Exchange?
That's really what we're providing. We're providing a "fully hosted" unified communication solution, not just unified communications. Which, in this economy, the reason why hosted Voice Over IP and other hosted services has seen an incredible growth spike is because people don't necessarily have the money every time to spend on the hardware. And this allows them to get the full functionality of unified communication at one tenth the cost.
So when it comes to looking for what sort of prospects are best suited for Alteva, you said previously 60 to 25,000 user seats, really, you're looking for a heavy Microsoft intense end-user application environment, right?
Absolutely. People come to Alteva in a variety of different ways. Traditionally, we always hold hosted Voice Over IP. So, hosted Voice Over IP was always sold when there's a trigger event. Somebody moving, somebody having services. Somebody replacing their phone system. The benefit to this unified communication solution is it doesn't stop there. I'll give you a for instance. An organization came to us. 1200 seat deal. Was interested in our ability to originate and terminate, provide phone numbers in 70 different countries. They went through this process and unfortunately, or fortunately. I guess depending on how you see it.
We had a great meeting. But they were releasing an RFP in 2011. Which means you wouldn't realize revenue until 2012. Which means the channel partner wouldn't subsequently get paid revenue streams until the middle part of 2012. Which sort of stinks. With this solution, we were able to pick up 300 seats of hosted Exchange. It was a stake inside the business that we can add it or we later add the hosted Voice Over IP and the hosted OCS services on top of. So it takes normally a trigger event for us to always sell hosted Voice Over IP services because you're selling a phone system
In this situation, it opens up a multitude of different buying points. So now we can sell hosted OCS as a stand alone product . Host, which is video conferencing, IM, presence other enhanced communication services. We can also sell hosted Voice Over IP as a separate instance. Or we can sell hosted exchange separate. But the beautiful thing about this hosted unified communication solution is they are already all integrated in the cloud. So it allows the channel partner to sell something as ubiquitous as a POTs line, except have the stickiness of hosted Voice Over IP. And that's key. Because I think channel partners want to do two things. They want to maintain their customer base through sticky products because at the end of the day, most of which sales people like to do, myself included, is sell.
With hosted applications, the ability for you to continuously prospect and not worry about the commoditization of the business. PRI ("primary rate interface") is a PRI. Fortunately or unfortunately in the customer's view. So if I sell a PRI today, I'm only getting commitment to what the contract says. The PRI itself is not sticky. With hosted applications delivered from the cloud, the more applications you have to stickier the solution.
And the other benefit too is we all generally get paid on what we sell. So if you sell more services or if there's an option to sell more services, the overall ARPU ("average revenue per unit") is greater. Therefore, the overall commission is greater. And the beautiful thing about it, the end-user saves more money. So everybody wins. The service provider, the channel partner and the end-user.
Right, so this is clearly important for our network service consultants who get the majority their leads through equipment resellers ("VARs") or computer integrators. Now they can go to those lead partners and say, "I'm not just about network services. You know, voice and data and internet. I'm now about hosted applications". And so if the equipment provider is asking, "How do I get in to the whole hosted Microsoft applications?" Now, through Alteva, the network service partner can deliver that.
Agree 100%. And what Steve Ballmer says, "Lead with the cloud", in his address to Washington State University. The challenge is Microsoft doesn't have a clear way to get to the cloud. Well, this is a clear way to get to the cloud. And Microsoft is at our telecom, the world has changed.
10:27 Question 6 - What is your geography for your marketplace? It sounds the entire planet.
Pretty much. The beautiful thing about hosted cloud based service is they are available anywhere and one of the steps forward that we made in our hosted Voice Over IP offering is because of some of the larger size clients. 'Cause on our strict hosted Voice Over IP offering, we've always focused in on the enterprise. Which is 300 user seat or better. It's driven us in a different trajectory than traditional hosted Voice Over IP service providers.
So we've added the ability to take phone numbers to 70 different countries. So that's standardization. So if you're in Tibet and you want to have a phone number, that is the same and phone system that is the same as Maine you can do that with our offering. Apparently, we have clients in all 50 states and then 14 countries. But our product capability is the ability to deliver in 70 different countries. So it is truly a global offering.
11:38 Question 7- Does your channel partner program have different commitment levels? Are you looking to take on agents directly or are you trying to drive business through a master agency model?
So, we do have different commitments. Our focus has been, because of our explosive growth, to sign up master agents and have master agents sign up individual sub-agents. But we still are providing the ability to come direct to Alteva other than just through a master agent. So yes, it does have different levels of commitments and obviously, the more commitments and the more sub-agents you have, the higher your commission rate would be.
12:18 Question 8 - Do you have retail or wholesale distribution channels that partners may find themselves competing against?
We do and quite honestly, the competition is not a problem as this point. Our wholesalers are people that you're probably already selling with. So a lot of the organizations, a lot of the Broadsoft hosted VoIP service providers are finding themselves in a position of ultra commoditization. Meaning that if they just sell hosted Voice Over IP, it's not enough.
So we're enabling these fellow service providers to sell unified communications. So it wouldn't necessarily be competing our wholesale with individual channel partners, it would be enabling the individual wholesalers that you're already buying services with to provide a feature rich hosted unified communication solution.
So the good news is you win either way as a channel partner - richer commissions, more stickiness. And our hope is the end-user will say I want voice enable Exchange. I want the ability to dial in to my e-mail, my voicemail, my calendar and via voice prompt move different events. Delete my e-mails. Just like Star Trek, when people used to call in to Mr.Computer and have that computer do different events. That's what our voice enable Exchange is capable of. And it's coming to a channel partner near you!
And of course, if you have a partner coming up with specific application, you can tell them, "All right, well this is great. Alteva direct". Or you might want to go to one of our existing wholesalers because they've got another value added opportunity that will make it even better.
Absolutely, we've always felt that a high tide raises all ships. We feel that hosted unified communications will change the world and we're just lucky enough to be a part of that evolution in communications.
14:14 Question 9 - Do you run retail pricing or agent commission promotions? It sounds like you just get all the deals with your great headline, "Mixing hosted VOIP and Microsoft products."
Actually we're running a promotion today. The top 5 deals that come in as far as OCS seats go, are awarded an extra level of commission and the 5 top channel partners who sell the most hosted Voice Over IP seats are also getting an added spiff. So, we love deals and we love commissions and quite honestly, we're a very sales channel friendly organization.
14:50 Question 10 - Any significant program or product changes coming up from the future that we need to know about?
Not as of yet. The next thing that you'll be seeing from us in 2011 time frame is adding a level of fixed mobile convergence. An advance level of fixed mobile convergence to our solution. So currently, you're able to take a calls and transfer calls via cellphone. But there's another level of complexity that we're working on. As well as some cellphone apps like the iPhone app and what not. So, yes and no.
15:27 Question 11 - Our members like to know a little bit about the history of the company. What do we need to know about Alteva? How long have you been around and who's running the show?
Sure. So, we started out in 2003. Started out as a hosted Voice Over IP company as I've said previously. We grew into the largest enterprise hosted Voice Over IP organization. By 2009, we realize that hosted Voice Over IP wasn't enough. So we entered in to a unique relationship with Microsoft. And now we are delivering the first global hosted unified communication solution. There are four executive team members. Myself included as chief sales officer. As well as David Cuthbert, our CEO. Bill Bumbernick, our Founder, Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer. And Mark Marquez, our Chief Technology Officer.
16:20 Crystal Ball Question - If you are to become an independent agent or master agent yourself, moving forward, trying to make a million dollars in the next 10 years, how would you approach the market? What crystal ball advice can you give to our audience about how they should be attacking this market over the next couple of years?
I would say embrace the convergence. We've already seen the telecommunications industry years ago was telecom guys and data guys. Now it's just pretty much data guys. So the data guys are making decisions over consolidated T1's and they're consolidation their services.
The last demarcation point, in my opinion, is the phone and the computer. What you're going to see is eventually one unified communication solution. Your phone is gonna be completely aware of what your computer does and vice-versa.
The good news is as Microsoft proliferates this telecommunications industry, there's a lot of opportunity. Delivering hosted Exchange in my opinion is a lot easier than delivering hosted Voice over IP. So the people who embrace hosted Voice Over IP and the telecom agent overall has a lot more ability to shape this industry. And everyone knows that it's all headed to the cloud and the people who are successful in selling these applications from the cloud are going to be the people who are going to thrive in this next generation of telecommunications.
The people who are staying pat and just selling cost per minute and cost per line and you know, "We have a better low cost option" - people don't care about that anymore. And I've seen this time and time again. Starting with Channel Partners in 2008. I started to see this evolution and you're gonna see it, in my opinion, you're going to see it very heavily in 2010 in Channel Partners DC.
So as far as Google coming on to the scene you know, distributing Google Apps and Google Talk and Google Chat by no means is Google wanna win? I would assume that you've think that Microsoft is going to maintain a dominance out there?
I think, they're both going to win. And I think companies like ourselves and successful channel partners Listen, you know. You want to be Switzerland, the one who got all the gold, the one who remain neutral. Let Google and let Microsoft and let these giants battle it out and be the recipient of that. But you have to transform the way you sell and the way you message to your client. And a lot of the channel partners and master agents are already understanding that they need to do this. The biggest challenge is how do I do it?
I think our products that is a real step in the right direction. Because if you're just selling hosted Voice Over IP or if you're just selling Microsoft communications products like Hosted Exchange or OCS and you're not delivering unified communication solution, and you're not talking about the true benefits of the cloud, which in essence, hosted Voice Over IP and Hosted Exchange and hosted OCS. This applications that live in the cloud. They're being delivered from the cloud. You're not going to see success in 2011, 2012, 2013. You may see success today. But it's very important to transform your organization in to understanding the full benefits of the cloud. And let Google and let Microsoft battle it out and message and drive people to the concept of cloud communications. But you profit. Be Switzerland, get all the gold!
20:09 One last question. There are a lot of the equipment guys out there saying we represent NEC or Avaya or IBM with these larger multi location customers and they're taking those PBXs and they're putting them up in co-location facility and saying, "Look, now you're 'in the cloud' because you've got your Avaya PBX in a co-location facility." How does your solution, Alteva, compare to those other ones? Because they're also saying, "We're integrating with Microsoft and hosted Exchange and all that"?
Well the primary difference is the way the phone numbers in the call control are in different places. So if you're taking an on-premise PBX and you're putting it in a data center, you still need a Class 5 switch. You still need the carrier to administer those phone numbers. So, whether it would be disaster recovery, benefits that you see in a hosted Voice Over IP, your hosted unified communications or it could be the total cost of ownership. Because the up front fees are a lot less just buying phones.
Unfortunately, it's a very confusing time in telecom. So there's a lot of people claiming unified communications, number one. There are also messaging on the same thing so the end user and the channel partner. It's hard to differentiate. But the key differentiator is where is the control happening and with the on premise based solution that you had mention in the IBM and just because they're in a data center does not necessarily mean they are cloud based solutions.
21:46 So the bottom line for our audience is... if you're working with equipment resellers and computer and telecom integrators, you're saying that there are pitching Avaya, NEC or IBM solution to a large multi location customer and they're going to put it all in co-location. Those are the deals that Alteva needs to be involved in?
Absolutely, absolutely.
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Visit www.AltevaTel.com to learn more about Alteva. To become an agent please contact:
Peter Caperonis, Channel Manager, 215-789-4031, [email protected]
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