Following are some musings about my week in Chicago, while I ponder the possible impact to my travel plans by hurricane Irene.  Monday and Tuesday were spent in a “UC” training class presented by Alteva Communications of Philadelphia.  UC, or Unified Communications, is quickly becoming a focal point of the Cloud phenomenon due to its integration and blended presentation of voice, email, data files, tasks, etc.  I think Alteva has the most convincing story with respect to their UC model, their infrastructure behind it and the people selling and supporting it. 

My fellow trainees represented sales organizations from New York, Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania.  All are convinced that we are entering a formative time for the cloud services model.  One, Louis Hayner of Alteva, stated that the time is now for succeeding with the cloud value proposition – security, reliability and scalability.

The ChannelPartners Event gave me the opportunity to participate in a number of educational sessions, including understanding and applying TCO (total cost of ownership) analysis to the cloud model.  Specifically, educating the consumer on the “real costs” of doing business as usual (on prem) verses in The Cloud.  While I didn’t hear anything new, I did take away some very interesting insights into getting the message across to the prospective client.

I also participated in a session about agent compensation.  I took away some good information about contracts, renewals and commission levels.  As importantly, a great deal of agent psychology was shared with the group regarding how to consistently motivate them to sell my products.

Finally, the show gave me the opportunity to forge existing partner relationships with Mike and Tom McCrossin of BCN Solutions Express out of New City, New York and Matt Foster of CarolinaTel of Greenville, South Carolina.  New partner discussions were also prevalent, including Dan Baldwin of Orange County, CA, Mordie Weintraub of Boston, Tom Dalloo of Detroit and Bill Sowers of New York.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com