September 16, 2008
BandTel SVP: SIP Trunking, and the Education of a Marketplace
By Greg Galitzine
Group Editorial Director
Joel Maloff (News - Alert) is Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at BandTel.
He’s pulling double duty this week at ITEXPO (News - Alert), speaking both in the Ingate SIP Trunking seminar as well as in the TMC University session entitled Best Practices in VoIP Security.
The fact that Maloff is speaking at a conference designed to educate attendees fits right in with the general theme of education that is playing a major role in his life these days.
Maloff, who is tasked with driving BandTel’s (News - Alert) strategic focus and message, is spearheading a more aggressive campaign built on proactive education to help customers understand how Band Tel can help them achieve their goals.
But it’s not just end users that need education. Maloff told TMCnet that the reseller community is in need of education too, to better understand how they can embrace a recurring revenue stream. Resellers and VARs are interested in selling product, he said. BandTel offers them an opportunity to establish a recurring revenue stream via their various programs.
Consultants who advise end users also need to be educated about the various options provided by SIP Trunking.
BandTel is a pure SIP Trunking provider in that they don’t offer hosted services, or conferencing services, etc. As Maloff said, they are solely focused on the provision of SIP Trunking
The company works with CPE partners such as VegaStream, ShoreTel, Avaya, Linksys (News - Alert), Touchwave, and others (see Web site for full list) to enable customers to reach out into the cloud without the need for an additional gateway.
The list of equipment providers they work with is growing and Maloff said they are always looking to interoperate with other vendors.
Among the bigger challenges facing the industry, Maloff believes that the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) being spread by certain providers will eventually fall away as more pure SIP Trunking deployments underscore the value propositions and customers begin to understand how they can leverage SIP Trunking. Again, this harkens back to education.
I expect we will see a lot more from BandTel over the next 6-9 months as they reemerge with various new solutions, packages and service bundles. Maloff pointed out that the analyst community is saying that this is the year for SIP Trunking and that he believes the positive forecasts.
In today’s economy, anything that reduces cost and delivers value is a hot item, he said. This will help drive success in the marketplace.
INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO — the biggest and most comprehensive IP communications event of the year — is going on this week (September 16-18, 2008) in Los Angeles, California! The show features three valuable days of exhibits, conferences, and networking opportunities you can’t afford to miss. Be sure to check out TMCnet.com and blogs from Rich Tehrani, Greg Galitzine, and Tom Keating for news highlights from the show. See you there!
Greg Galitzine is editorial director for TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications suite of products, including TMCnet.com. To read more of Greg’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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