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By Doug Green “Under pressure, communications become a lot more predictable.” What can the language used by World Cup coaches teach businesses about artificial intelligence, customer engagement and human behavior? In this Technology Reseller News and Cloud Communications Alliance podcast, Sophie Cheng, Chief Marketing Officer at Sinch, discusses the company's xC — Expected Cliché — Tracker and what it revealed about how leaders communicate when the stakes rise. Sinch analyzed coaches' press conferences across six languages, comparing their comments against a dictionary of 205 familiar soccer expressions. AI identified recurring patterns, while Sinch's editorial teams reviewed the results to account for cultural context, nuance and meaning. The findings showed a clear shift as tournament pressure increased. Sinch found 50% more clichés after the group stage, with coaches moving away from tactical explanations and toward familiar expressions involving “heart,” “belief” and “togetherness.” References to mentality, spirit and courage rose from 8% of clichés during the group stage to 24% during the Round of 16. “When you're in a very high-stakes environment, people are watching your every word,” Cheng says. “It becomes easier and more familiar to refer back to clichés or standard terminology that we're all used to.” Those phrases may sound repetitive, but they can also give leaders a safe and recognizable way to communicate during emotional or uncertain moments. The broader lesson extends well beyond sports. Organizations generate enormous volumes of conversational data through contact centers, email, messaging and voice interactions. AI-powered language analysis can help identify changing sentiment, recurring concerns and communication patterns that might otherwise be missed. For service providers, partners and enterprises, the opportunity is to combine the speed of AI with human context and judgment. Listen to the podcast to learn how Sinch used AI, multilingual analysis and human oversight to examine World Cup communication—and what the project reveals about communicating under pressure.

By Doug Green “Modernization does not have to mean abandoning the reliability, security and control organizations already depend on.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Darrell Butler, Senior Director of Product Management at Avaya, discusses how Avaya Nexus™ is designed to modernize critical enterprise communications while preserving the resilience required by government, healthcare, financial services, defense and other highly regulated industries. For years, enterprise communications strategies were often framed around a “cloud-first” approach. Butler explains why many organizations are now taking a more measured view—combining the automation, scalability and innovation available through the cloud with the operational continuity and local survivability traditionally associated with on-premises infrastructure. Built on key components of the Avaya Aura® platform, Avaya Nexus provides a modernization path for existing Avaya customers without forcing them into a cloud-only deployment. Core capabilities can be delivered through the cloud while on-site gateways and endpoints help maintain communications if connectivity to the cloud is interrupted. Darrell Butler “If you get cut from the cloud and you still need your hospital—or whatever the operation may be—to keep its phone calls up, we can do that with Nexus,” Butler says. The conversation also examines Avaya's continued commitment to Aura. Butler emphasizes that Aura is not going away and will continue to be supported and developed, while Nexus offers customers an additional path for modernizing their communications environments. AI is another important part of the strategy. Nexus supports capabilities including speech transcription and translation and is designed to connect with AI services available through Avaya Infinity™ and third-party platforms. At the same time, organizations retain control over how and where their communications data is used—an essential consideration for regulated and security-sensitive environments. Butler also discusses Avaya Government Cloud's achievement of Impact Level 4 High authorization. The milestone strengthens Avaya's position in the public sector and demonstrates its ability to support sensitive government communications and workloads. “We wanted to make sure that it wasn't a big, heavy lift from a customer perspective. We'll do the heavy lift,” Butler says. Additional Avaya Resources Avaya Announces Avaya Nexus™ Mission-Critical Voice Platform for Critical Communications in Highly Regulated Industries Avaya Government Cloud Achieves Prestigious IL4 H Certification, Reinforcing Commitment to National Security Journeys DC Panel: When Public Sector Communications Can't Fail About Avaya Avaya is an enterprise software leader that helps organizations deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences. Its solutions enable enterprises and governments to orchestrate AI, intelligent workflows and human expertise across communications and customer interactions. Avaya supports cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment models to meet each organization's operational, security and business requirements. About Avaya Nexus Avaya Nexus is a critical communications infrastructure solution designed for organizations where communications cannot fail. It provides a secure and resilient voice foundation that supports cloud and on-premises capabilities while integrating with operational systems such as notifications, workflows and radio communications.

By Doug Green “The AI can only do so much.” Organizations are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, CRM automation, call recording, transcription and customer-experience analytics. But according to Mike Wehrs, Chief Operating Officer at TieTechnology, many are overlooking the first and most important link in that technology chain: the device capturing the conversation. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Wehrs explains that AI cannot overcome poor information at the source. “If you don't get those underlying data sets cleaned up, the AI can only do so much,” Wehrs says. “It can't make up information. If it does, we call that hallucination—and generally, that's not a good thing.” TieTechnology provides business-grade VoIP and communications services, but its role extends beyond simply connecting or recording calls. The company can process conversations, transcribe them, analyze sentiment, summarize the interaction and place the resulting information into a customer's CRM platform. That makes the quality of the original audio increasingly important. A conversation is no longer something that is simply heard by two people. It can become searchable business data used for customer records, sales intelligence, compliance, employee coaching and AI-driven decision-making. Yet the headset or microphone capturing that conversation may receive very little consideration. “The people who do that are the same people who are ordering your coffee,” Wehrs says, describing how headsets are frequently selected without input from IT teams, speech-recognition specialists or the people responsible for AI and analytics. A low-quality headset may still allow two people to understand one another. That does not mean the recording is suitable for transcription, sentiment analysis or business-intelligence applications. “If you're looking to make it searchable in a database and be able to run BI reports on it, that is nowhere close to the bar,” Wehrs says. The challenge becomes even greater in modern offices where organizations are using multiple wireless devices, Bluetooth headsets and Wi-Fi networks. What appears to be a phone-system, application or network problem may actually be interference or an unsuitable endpoint. TieTechnology helps businesses evaluate the complete communications environment, including employee roles, mobility requirements, workplace conditions and the applications that will rely on the captured voice data. The objective is not necessarily to purchase the most expensive device. It is to select technology that is fit for its intended purpose. “If the garbage that I get on the inbound, no matter how much I process it, I can't make it less than garbage on the way out,” Wehrs says. For businesses hoping to gain more value from AI, the lesson is straightforward: better results begin with better inputs. “Improve the headsets that you've got that you're letting your reps talk on,” Wehrs says. Listen to the podcast to learn why microphones and headsets should be viewed not simply as communications endpoints, but as data-acquisition tools at the foundation of the AI technology stack.

By Doug Green “Legacy out-of-band gets you in. Modern out-of-band should help you recover.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Todd Rychecky, President of Gearlinx, about how out-of-band management is evolving from a narrowly focused remote-access tool into a broader platform for network recovery, operational resilience and business continuity. Modern infrastructure is increasingly distributed across data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, campus environments, edge locations and remote sites. When the primary network becomes unavailable, simply opening a console port may no longer be enough. Organizations need to know what equipment has been deployed, where it is located, whether it is reachable and what actions can be taken remotely to restore service. “The issue is not simply whether an engineer can reach a console,” Rychecky says. “It's more about whether they can reach the console and still manage their business.” Gearlinx combines secure out-of-band management, cellular connectivity, automation, centralized cloud visibility and lifecycle management into a unified network resilience platform. The goal is to help customers diagnose problems faster, reduce downtime and avoid costly truck rolls. The company's portfolio includes the NR4400 Network Resilience Platform for data center and high-density environments, along with Duckfone, a compact cellular connectivity device designed for edge and distributed locations. Both are brought together through ZERO, the Gearlinx centralized cloud-management platform. ZERO provides visibility into devices, locations, serial numbers, warranties, subscriptions and licensing information. That centralized approach addresses a common problem for enterprises and service providers: critical infrastructure information is often spread across spreadsheets, disconnected applications and separate vendor portals. Gearlinx is also approaching lifecycle management differently. Customers can select one-, three-, five- or seven-year licensing terms, allowing them to align technology investments with their own asset-depreciation and replacement schedules. Warranty coverage and subscriptions begin when equipment is activated through the cloud rather than when it is initially purchased. That can be particularly valuable for organizations that purchase equipment in volume and then deploy it gradually over several months. The platform also supports simplified co-terming, allowing customers and partners to bring licenses, warranties, support and software updates under a common renewal date. Rychecky says these capabilities represent the difference between basic network resilience and broader operational resilience. Operational resilience means giving IT teams the information and management tools they need before, during and after an outage—not simply providing an emergency connection to a console port. The solution is designed for organizations across manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, education, retail, AI infrastructure and other environments where downtime or dispatching a technician can be expensive. For resellers, VARs and MSPs, Gearlinx also creates an opportunity to move beyond a one-time hardware transaction. “Gearlinx enables partners to sell more than a console server,” Rychecky says. “It's an annualized recurring revenue business model for the reseller and decreases capital spending for the customer.” Partners can attach cloud-management licenses, cellular connectivity, managed services, lifecycle planning, support and legacy hardware-refresh programs. That creates ongoing customer engagement and recurring revenue instead of ending the relationship after the initial equipment sale. “It helps resellers lead the business continuity and operational resilience conversation—not just a networking hardware conversation,” Rychecky says. “Partners are not limited to selling a box. They can build an ongoing resilience practice around the customer.” One discovery question can help partners begin that conversation: When your production network is unavailable, how does your team access, diagnose and recover that location? Learn more at Gearlinx.com.

As UCaaS platforms become increasingly commoditized, Akixi says service providers can rebuild differentiation, customer value and revenue by connecting analytics, CRM, recording and AI into one experience. By Doug Green “Fragmentation doesn't just cost service providers on renewal—it knocks their ability to win business too.” UCaaS was once one of the communications industry's clearest growth stories. Today, however, many service providers are facing slower growth, tighter margins and declining revenue per seat as the major platforms become increasingly similar in their core capabilities. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Andrew Cantle, Chief Revenue Officer at Akixi, explains why the next competitive opportunity is no longer the underlying communications platform alone. It is the connected experience that service providers and MSPs can build around it. Akixi began as a provider of real-time communications analytics. The company has since expanded its portfolio to include CRM integrations, call recording, AI-powered call scoring and sentiment analysis. These capabilities are brought together in the Akixi CX Suite, a value-added services layer designed to sit above platforms including BroadWorks, Webex and Microsoft Teams. Cantle says service providers are experiencing two pressures at the same time. Customer expectations are moving beyond basic reliability, while revenue per user continues to erode. The major UCaaS platforms now perform the fundamentals well, making it harder for providers to charge a premium based on the platform itself. That leaves providers looking for differentiation in the services surrounding the platform. Yet many are still managing separate vendors, dashboards and logins for analytics, recording, CRM integration and other capabilities. The result can be a fragmented customer experience and an equally fragmented sales story. At renewal, that fragmentation can push the conversation back toward price. A customer may value the individual services, but without a connected view of the business impact, the provider has little protection against a cheaper competitor. The same problem can hurt new sales when solution engineers must switch among multiple systems to demonstrate what is supposed to be one solution. AI is accelerating the shift. Capabilities that recently appeared advanced are quickly becoming expected. Akixi uses AI to analyze and score calls, evaluate sentiment and review far more customer interactions than a manager could assess manually. Instead of sampling a small number of calls, organizations can examine nearly every interaction and identify patterns in near real time. Cantle also points to compliance as an increasingly important use case, including for smaller businesses. AI can help organizations locate key statements, identify when specific terms were used and create a clearer evidence trail across call recordings, analytics and CRM records. Capabilities that were once affordable only to large enterprises are now becoming accessible to SMB customers through their service providers. Success, Cantle says, means giving customers direct visibility into measurable business outcomes—not simply adding another reporting layer. A connected experience can reveal productivity gains, staffing needs, coaching opportunities, agent performance, cost optimization and compliance evidence in one place. For service providers, the benefits extend beyond customer experience. Consolidating several value-added services under one vendor can simplify procurement, product management, training and support. It can also make it easier to develop a coherent proposition that sales teams can demonstrate and customers can understand. The larger message is that service providers remain well positioned because they already own trusted customer relationships. Those that connect their value-added services, demonstrate measurable outcomes and move beyond disconnected point solutions may be better able to protect renewals, win new business and rebuild average revenue per user. Listen to the podcast to learn why Akixi believes connected experience is becoming the new differentiator for UCaaS providers, MSPs and their customers. Learn more: https://www.akixi.com/

By Doug Green “We see some customers with 70% autonomous resolution—and I'm talking about real resolution, not just giving an answer, but actually doing it for you and resolving the ticket completely.” AI vendors have filled the market with promises of productivity, automation and lower operating costs. Atera is taking a different approach: putting a measurable performance commitment behind its autonomous IT agent. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Tal Dagan, Chief Product Officer at Atera, about Robin, the company's autonomous IT agent, and what it means to move from AI experimentation to demonstrable operational outcomes. Atera began as an all-in-one professional services automation and remote monitoring and management platform. That foundation gives Robin access to both sides of an IT incident: the ticketing conversation with the employee and the device-level tools needed to diagnose and correct the problem. Dagan explains that Robin does more than suggest a troubleshooting step. When an employee reports that a computer is running slowly, Robin can run diagnostics, identify a memory-hungry browser tab or cache problem, take corrective action, confirm that performance has returned to normal and close the issue end-to-end. That distinction matters. Many AI tools provide answers or instructions, but the work still falls to the employee or technician. Robin is designed to carry out operations on managed devices and connected third-party applications, allowing the system to resolve qualifying incidents rather than simply recommend a response. Atera is backing the product with a performance guarantee for qualified customers: Robin will autonomously resolve 50% of Tier 1 and complex Tier 2 incidents within 90 days, or the applicable fees are waived. Before deployment, customers can also test selected use cases in a proof of concept using real workflows and ticket data. According to Dagan, the company is already seeing autonomous resolution rates above 50% among many customers, with some reaching approximately 70%. He emphasizes that these figures refer to complete resolution—not an AI-generated answer telling a user what to do next. The podcast also explores where people remain essential. Customers determine which actions Robin is authorized to take and where an approval or technician should enter the process. For example, Robin can verify whether an employee belongs in an email distribution group, request a manager's approval and then make the change. A more cautious organization can route the same request to a technician. Even when Robin does not close a ticket autonomously, it can gather information from the employee, the device and connected systems before handing the case to a technician. That reduces diagnostic work, shortens resolution time and gives the technician a better starting point. For MSPs, the larger opportunity is scale. Routine incidents, repetitive information gathering and approval-driven workflows consume significant technician time. Moving more of that work to an autonomous agent can enable an MSP to support additional customers without increasing headcount at the same rate, while allowing skilled staff to focus on complex problems and higher-value services. The conversation points toward a new phase of enterprise AI adoption—one in which providers are measured not by demonstrations or broad claims, but by the percentage of real work completed, the speed of response and the operational burden removed from IT teams. Listen to the podcast to learn how Atera is applying autonomous IT in the field, how customers set the boundaries for automation, and what guaranteed AI outcomes could mean for MSP growth. About Atera Atera provides an AI-powered IT management platform for enterprises and MSPs. Its autonomous IT agent, Robin, is designed to diagnose and resolve technical incidents end-to-end, reduce ticket volume and help IT teams scale operations. Guest: Tal Dagan, Chief Product Officer, Atera Tal Dagan on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/taldagan Atera on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/atera-networks

By Doug Green “Voice is a security channel now, and it deserves the same controls businesses already apply to email and their networks.” In this Technology Reseller News and Cloud Communications Alliance podcast, Doug Green speaks with Chuck French of Mutare about the growing threat of voice-based attacks—and the opportunity for service providers to help customers close a major security gap. French says the voice channel has quietly become one of the last unprotected entry points into many organizations. Traditional tools can label suspicious calls, but they do not give individual businesses control over which calls are allowed, blocked, challenged or routed. The risk is growing rapidly as AI makes voice cloning, impersonation and convincing social-engineering scripts easier and less expensive to produce. Attackers can now imitate a bank, help desk or company executive in real time and at scale. Mutare's Voice Traffic Filter addresses this problem by providing what French describes as a voice firewall. The platform combines customer-defined policies, reputation data, STIR/SHAKEN information, threat-pattern analysis and a voice CAPTCHA that helps distinguish human callers from bots. Unlike carrier-level spam blocking, Mutare allows each organization to establish its own rules. A hospital, financial institution or small business can therefore apply policies suited to its particular risks and customer needs. Mutare has also developed a multitenant version of the platform for MSPs, CSPs and other channel partners. The cloud-hosted service requires no customer-premises equipment or major professional-services deployment. Providers can offer it as a recurring, consumption-based security service while retaining the customer relationship and setting their own pricing. French says Mutare's return to the Cloud Communications Alliance reflects this new service-provider model and its potential value to CCA members. For service providers, the message is clear: voice security represents both an urgent customer need and a new recurring-revenue opportunity. Listen to the podcast to learn how Mutare is helping businesses treat voice as a protected enterprise channel rather than an unguarded utility. Learn more at mutare.com.  

By Doug Green “The people trying to scam consumers never rest.” In this special Technology Reseller News and Cloud Communications Alliance podcast, Doug Green speaks with Paul Florack, Vice President of Product Management at TNS, about the newly released TNS Robocall Investigation Report. The report examines how AI, social engineering and multimodal attacks are changing voice fraud. Scammers can now combine text messages with follow-up calls, imitate familiar voices and use information gathered from voicemail or communication patterns to make attacks appear legitimate. Florack also explains the limitations of STIR/SHAKEN and A-level attestation. A-attestation confirms that the originating provider believes a caller has the right to use a phone number. It does not confirm that the caller's intentions are legitimate. TNS found that some spam, scam and spoofed calls continue to receive A-level attestation. The report also found that between 10% and 12% of calls receiving first-level authentication were still classified as spam or unwanted. “STIR/SHAKEN is a valuable tool, but it is not—and never will be—a standalone silver bullet,” Florack says. TNS recommends a multilayered approach that combines call authentication with analytics, spoof detection, risk indicators and verified branded calling. These tools can help providers block suspicious traffic while giving consumers more confidence that legitimate calls are safe to answer. For carriers, enterprises, MSPs and channel partners, Florack's message is clear: do not assume that authentication alone solves the robocall problem. Listen to the podcast and read the new TNS report to learn how AI-enabled fraud is evolving and what communications providers can do to protect customers. Learn more at tnsi.com.

By Doug Green “AI goes blind at exactly the moment when you need it most.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Vishal Gupta, Director of Product Management at ZPE Systems, explains why AI-driven infrastructure management needs an independent path to the devices it is expected to monitor, troubleshoot and recover. AIOps platforms have become increasingly effective at detecting problems, correlating events and automating routine infrastructure operations. The problem, Gupta says, is that these systems often run on the same production infrastructure they manage. When a network outage or hardware failure occurs, the AI platform can lose both its connection to the affected equipment and access to the telemetry it needs to diagnose the problem. “That is the gap out-of-band fills,” says Gupta. Out-of-band management provides an independent management plane that remains separate from the production network. Even when the primary infrastructure is unavailable, IT teams—and increasingly AI agents—can still reach devices through console access, examine system logs and kernel messages, and take corrective action. Gupta compares the architecture to an airport. Aircraft use the runway for normal operations, while emergency and service vehicles have separate roads and infrastructure. If the runway becomes unavailable, the service infrastructure can still reach the aircraft. The same principle applies to resilient IT operations. An isolated management environment should have its own connectivity, security, routing, switching, storage and compute capabilities. It may also include failover connectivity through 4G, 5G or satellite services such as Starlink. Building Out-of-Band for a Larger Edge ZPE Systems developed its Nodegrid Net Services Router 2U, or NSR 2U, in response to customers operating increasingly large and complex edge environments. These environments can include branch offices, remote facilities, ships, oil rigs, cell sites and other locations outside traditional data centers. They frequently contain more devices, require greater bandwidth and have fewer trained personnel available on-site. The NSR 2U was designed around three priorities: greater capacity, increased resiliency and support for AI workloads. The modular platform offers 10 expansion-card slots, allowing customers to configure the system around their particular deployment. It also includes redundant, field-serviceable power supplies and fans, two NVMe storage slots with RAID support, four native 10-gigabit SFP+ ports and an increased Power over Ethernet budget. ZPE has even addressed the possibility that the out-of-band device itself could fail. Two NSR 2U systems can be interconnected so that one system can provide remote console, power and reset control for the other—effectively providing out-of-band management for the out-of-band infrastructure. Taking NVIDIA Jetson AI to Remote Locations ZPE Systems has also developed an NVIDIA Jetson AI Expansion Card for the Nodegrid NSR family. The card supports NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and Orin NX modules, providing local AI processing within the isolated management environment. This allows organizations to deploy AI agents close to the infrastructure and data they manage, without relying entirely on a remote cloud connection. A key capability is remote lifecycle management. IT teams can remotely flash the Jetson operating system, deploy or update AI agents and models, access the console, and power the device on, off or into recovery mode. Ordinarily, updating or recovering an edge AI device may require someone to travel to the location and connect directly to the hardware. ZPE's approach is intended to reduce those truck rolls while allowing organizations to manage distributed AI infrastructure centrally. Potential applications extend beyond AIOps. The platform can support real-time video analytics, object detection, smart recording, manufacturing quality control, sensor-data aggregation and local automation. GPIO and I2C interfaces also allow sensors measuring conditions such as temperature, vibration or voltage to feed information directly into locally running AI models. Asking the Hard Infrastructure Questions Gupta says much of the AI conversation remains focused on models, software and the token economy. Those areas are important, but they can obscure fundamental infrastructure questions. Where will an AIOps platform run? Can it survive the outage it is expected to resolve? Will it still have a path to the affected equipment? Can it access sufficiently accurate data to diagnose the problem and select the right recovery action? “If you can't answer these questions, then there's a gap in your AIOps strategy,” Gupta says. “No software and no model will fix it for you.” As AI becomes more autonomous, infrastructure resilience will determine whether AI agents can move beyond identifying failures to actually recovering from them. ZPE Systems is positioning isolated out-of-band infrastructure, the NSR 2U and edge-based Jetson AI processing as the foundation for making that transition possible. More at Enterprise Network Management Solution | ZPE Systems

“The physical and the virtual can come together to deliver a consistent experience across everything the enterprise does.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Tony Lama, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Avaya Software, about how Avaya is extending customer experience beyond the traditional contact center. The discussion focuses on Avaya's work with avatarin, whose AI-powered robots can be deployed in airports, retail locations and other physical environments. Using Avaya Infinity, organizations can connect those interactions with virtual assistants, contact center agents and back-office teams. The goal is to preserve context as customers move between physical, digital and human interactions. A robot may handle a routine request, for example, before seamlessly transferring a more complex or sensitive issue to a live person. “We are not in the world of building robots,” Lama says. “We are building platforms that can be used for enterprise-wide orchestration.” Lama also explains Avaya's open approach to AI. Rather than locking customers into a single AI provider, Infinity allows enterprises and partners to connect their preferred models, applications and data platforms. The platform can be deployed in the cloud, on premises or in a hybrid environment, giving organizations a path to modernization without sacrificing security, data sovereignty or existing Avaya investments. For enterprises, MSPs and channel partners, Avaya's message is clear: start with the customer experience, then connect the technologies needed to deliver it. Listen to the podcast to learn more about Avaya Infinity, physical AI, agentic AI and enterprise customer-experience orchestration. Learn more at Avaya.com.  

“Sports has caught up,” says Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano. “I think there's a big opportunity.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with longtime communications strategist and entrepreneur Andy Abramson about Comunicano's return to the sports industry and the growing intersection of sports, technology, media, telecom and business. Abramson began working in professional sports as a teenager, promoting the Philadelphia Wings and later helping build Hockey Central, an early fan-development organization associated with the Philadelphia Flyers. He went on to create programs that introduced thousands of young people to hockey and helped establish initiatives that continue decades later. Comunicano eventually shifted its focus almost entirely to technology. Since then, Abramson says the agency's work has contributed to 64 exits representing approximately $9.5 billion in value for founders, investors and executives. Now, after nearly three decades focused primarily on technology and telecom, Abramson believes sports and technology are finally ready to come together in a more meaningful way. “I think I took a 27-year retirement,” says Abramson. “I kind of feel like Gordie Howe coming out of retirement.” The move has led to the launch of Comunicano Sports and DevLocker, a database containing hundreds of application programming interfaces (APIs), Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and other development resources. Abramson says these tools can help connect sports organizations, venues, technology companies and emerging AI applications. The podcast also introduces Abramson's role as the sports technology contributor to the new Technology Reseller Sunday Report. His coverage does not focus on scores, standings or betting odds. Instead, it examines the broader business of sports, including infrastructure, ticketing, media, retail, fan engagement, transportation, data and venue technology. “Sports is more than the athletic event,” says Green. “There are a hundred industries wrapped into sports.” One example is Abramson's analysis of the changing economics of stadium and arena parking. Parking has historically generated millions of dollars for teams and venue operators, but ride-sharing services, autonomous vehicles and new transportation habits could substantially reduce that revenue. “The parking lot is getting fired,” says Abramson. For fans, ride-sharing can eliminate long walks, traffic congestion and concerns about driving after drinking. For sports organizations, however, fewer parked cars may mean the loss of a significant and dependable revenue stream. Abramson argues that teams must begin developing new ways to monetize arrivals, departures and the surrounding venue experience. His broader message is that sports organizations cannot focus only on individual games, championships or short-term moments. They must build technology, revenue systems and operational infrastructure that deliver sustainable results. “Systems matter and moments expire,” says Abramson. “It's about how you build infrastructure to win consistently on the floor, on the ice and on the court—but most importantly, at the bank.” Comunicano Sports will focus on the business, marketing and technology of sports, while TR Publications and Abramson plan to continue the conversation through a new series of sports technology podcasts. Learn more and subscribe to Abramson's coverage at Comunicano.substack.com.  

“Over 100 million people a week are using AI for something related to mental health,” says Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace, about a growing but often hidden workplace issue: employees may already be turning to general-purpose AI tools for mental health support. Rodio says the trend may be particularly relevant in IT and technology roles, where employees can face long hours, workplace isolation, limited mobility and high levels of stress. Traditional therapy appointments may not always fit easily into those working conditions. Talkspace developed Tee, an AI mental health guide, to help bridge that gap. Tee is not therapy or a replacement for a licensed mental health professional. Instead, it gives users a private place to reflect on stress, process their feelings and begin engaging with their mental health. “We envision that Tee will help people get to a place where they may be more open to thinking through what they're feeling,” says Rodio. The podcast also explores how employers and users should evaluate AI mental health tools. Rodio recommends reviewing privacy policies, understanding how the technology was developed, asking who owns the information entered into the system and determining whether licensed mental health professionals were involved in its design. Talkspace developed T with input from psychologists, psychiatrists and other licensed mental health professionals. Rodio says privacy and transparency are especially important when users are discussing sensitive personal matters with AI. “Trust is built on privacy standards,” says Rodio. Learn more about Talkspace at talkspace.com and Tee at talkspace.com/tee.  

“People are already using conversational AI to work on their mental health,” says Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Michael Rodio, General Manager of AI at Talkspace, about Tee by Talkspace, a proprietary AI mental health guide designed to offer a safer alternative to general-purpose AI tools. Talkspace is a virtual behavioral health provider that connects people with licensed therapists and psychiatric providers. The company serves more than 200 million covered lives in the United States and offers care through insurance or direct payment. Rodio says Talkspace developed Tee after recognizing that millions of people were already turning to conversational AI for mental health support, even though general-purpose large language models were not designed for that role. “We saw not only an opportunity, but also an obligation,” says Rodio. Tee is positioned as a mental health guide rather than AI therapy. Talkspace defines therapy as a relationship between a human client and a licensed human therapist. However, Tee can help users reflect on what they are experiencing, practice therapeutic skills and consider healthier ways of approaching difficult situations. Unlike AI assistants designed to provide fast answers or agree with the user, Tee was developed with input from therapists. Rodio says the platform is designed to avoid reinforcing unhealthy thinking or offering overly simplistic advice. “Therapists are trained to support you as a person without necessarily supporting behaviors or mental frameworks that can be counterproductive,” says Rodio. Tee may suggest practical techniques such as box breathing for anxiety, ask users to explore why they feel a certain way, or challenge false choices such as immediately ending an important relationship after an argument. The platform uses a proprietary model developed by Talkspace rather than simply placing a healthcare interface around a general-purpose AI service. Rodio says conversations are encrypted and the system was built using the security, privacy and compliance experience Talkspace has developed as a virtual healthcare provider. For employers, MSPs, carriers and channel partners, Rodio says the central message is that employees and customers may already be using AI for mental health conversations. Organizations should consider whether those people have access to a purpose-built and responsibly developed alternative. Tee may also provide an entry point for people who are not yet ready to begin therapy, helping bridge the gap between self-guided support and professional mental healthcare. Learn more at talkspace.com or talkspace.com/tee.  

“Every high performer has blind spots,” says Julie Thiel of TTS Company. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Julie Thiel of TTS Company about why coaching should not be reserved only for employees who are struggling. Thiel says managers often spend most of their time helping underperformers while assuming top employees already know they are doing well. That can be a mistake. High performers may be taking on the most difficult work, preparing for leadership roles or developing habits that will not serve them at the next level. “There's even more bang for the buck in a conversation with an achieving employee about what they can do to take it to the next level,” says Thiel. Thiel shares a lesson from her own career. Her manager told her that consistently working at 110 percent had helped her succeed as an individual contributor, but could lead to burnout if she carried the same approach into management. “You have to know when to pick good enough,” Thiel recalls. “Where do you do 60 percent, where do you do 80 percent, and where do you do 110 percent?” The podcast explores how managers can coach high performers without making the conversation feel like criticism. Thiel says leaders should make it clear that the employee's current work is strong, then explain that the discussion is about future potential, new responsibilities and the skills needed for the next stage of the employee's career. Trust is essential. These conversations work best when they are part of an ongoing relationship rather than a sudden meeting after months of limited communication. “Good leadership is one good conversation after another,” says Thiel. Thiel encourages managers to invest in people before they ask for help, identify strengths they may not see in themselves and open the door to new possibilities. TTS Company helps growing businesses remove people-related bottlenecks and supports larger HR departments with projects and added capacity. Thiel is also preparing to launch The Vault, a leadership development community offering ongoing training, practical challenges and peer support. Learn more at thettscompany.com.  

Jabra Evolve3 Headsets Bring Clearer Voice Input to AI-Powered Collaboration, Podcast, Jabra recently expanded the Evolve3 range with the Evolve3 65 Flex, Evolve3 65 and Evolve3 45, providing purpose-built options for hybrid professionals, open-office employees and desk-based callers By Doug Green “Voice is becoming increasingly important in that collaboration with AI.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Michelle Ritz, Headset Marketing Manager at Jabra, about the expanded Jabra Evolve3 professional headset lineup, the evolution of workplace audio and why high-quality voice capture is becoming essential for AI-powered collaboration. Jabra recently expanded the Evolve3 range with the Evolve3 65 Flex, Evolve3 65 and Evolve3 45, providing purpose-built options for hybrid professionals, open-office employees and desk-based callers. The three models join the premium Evolve3 75 and Evolve3 85 to create a broader workplace audio portfolio designed around how employees actually work. Technology Reseller News previously reported on the expanded portfolio in Jabra Expands Evolve3 Headset Range for AI-Driven Collaboration and published the complete product announcement in Jabra Expands Evolve3 Range. Ritz explains why the traditional “one headset fits everyone” approach no longer works. An employee spending the day at a desk has different requirements from someone working in a noisy open office or moving between home, corporate offices, airports, trains and shared workspaces. The Evolve3 45 is a lightweight on-ear headset designed for frequent desk-based calling. The Evolve3 65 adds stronger noise control for professionals working in busy offices, while the portable and foldable Evolve3 65 Flex is designed for hybrid and mobile workers who need professional call quality across multiple locations. Although each headset is designed for a different workstyle, Jabra has brought important core capabilities across the range rather than reserving them exclusively for premium models. These include Jabra ClearVoice technology, professional voice pickup, in-call active noise cancellation and centralized device management. A central theme of the podcast is the changing relationship between workplace audio and artificial intelligence. As organizations adopt AI meeting assistants, voice is becoming an important data input. Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and other collaboration platforms can now use spoken conversations to produce transcripts, meeting summaries, action items and follow-up content. However, the quality of those AI-generated results depends on the quality of the audio being captured. Poor voice pickup can lead to incorrect transcripts, incomplete summaries and unreliable AI output. In sectors such as healthcare, financial services and law, even a small transcription error can change the meaning of an important conversation. Jabra ClearVoice uses AI-powered deep-learning technology to isolate the speaker's voice from surrounding conversations, office noise and wind. Ritz discusses how clearer voice capture helps the person on the other end of a call while also giving AI collaboration tools more accurate information to process. The conversation also examines how employee expectations have changed. People increasingly expect workplace headsets to provide the comfort, audio quality, portability and ease of use they experience with personal technology. IT departments, meanwhile, need secure devices that can be deployed and managed consistently across an enterprise. The expanded Jabra Evolve3 lineup is designed to address both needs: more headset choice for employees and a manageable professional audio platform for IT. As voice becomes an increasingly important input for AI-powered meetings and workflows, a professional headset is no longer simply a peripheral for making calls. It is becoming part of the infrastructure that determines how accurately people—and the AI systems assisting them—can communicate. Learn more at Jabra.com/evolve3.  

NRS Helps Independent Retailers Embrace Unified Commerce—While Giving Back to the Communities It Serves, Podcast, “I feel the pain when I see a merchant that goes out of business,” Katz says. “We developed our point-of-sale register specifically to give tools to these merchants so that they could compete.” By Doug Green “We don't just sell or do business as usual. We understand the humanity part of doing business as well.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I spoke with Elie Katz, CEO of National Retail Solutions (NRS), about two closely connected ideas: helping independent retailers compete in a rapidly changing commerce environment and maintaining a company culture built around giving back. NRS Cares Katz discusses NRS Cares, an employee-led initiative supporting communities through blood drives, food donations, school visits and disaster-recovery efforts. A recent blood drive at the company's Newark headquarters was especially personal for Katz, who underwent double-bypass surgery approximately two years ago and understands firsthand the lifesaving importance of donated blood. Giving back, he says, is not separate from the company's business mission. NRS works closely with bodegas, convenience stores, liquor stores, tobacco shops, restaurants and other independent businesses—many of which face rising costs, tight margins, crime risks and increasing competition from larger retailers. “I feel the pain when I see a merchant that goes out of business,” Katz says. “We developed our point-of-sale register specifically to give tools to these merchants so that they could compete.” That hands-on approach also shapes NRS product development. Katz says he personally tries to visit 12 stores each month to speak with merchants, observe how they operate and understand their changing needs. The goal is to ensure that NRS technology is designed for the people who actually use it—not merely for engineers or product developers. Juniper Research projects $41 trillion market The conversation comes as Juniper Research projects the value of global point-of-sale transactions will increase from $30 trillion in 2026 to $41 trillion by 2031, driven in part by the convergence of in-store, online and mobile purchasing. For independent merchants, that shift is already underway. Katz says credit-card usage has risen significantly across the approximately 35,000 convenience stores using NRS point-of-sale systems. Younger shoppers increasingly carry no cash—and often no physical credit cards—relying instead on smartphones and digital wallets. Independent stores that remain cash-only risk missing an entire generation of customers. They may also expose themselves to additional security risks by keeping large amounts of cash onsite. Modern point-of-sale technology offers much more than payment acceptance. It can help merchants monitor inventory, understand sales patterns, manage employees, access payroll and financing services, and participate in delivery platforms. Katz says he continues to be surprised by the volume of orders flowing through NRS systems from DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber. Rather than being displaced by delivery services, neighborhood stores are increasingly using those platforms to extend their reach and serve customers beyond the physical storefront. For MSPs, technology resellers and other companies serving small businesses, NRS also offers a channel opportunity. Partners can bring point-of-sale systems, payment processing, payroll, cash advances and related services to independent merchants that need help modernizing. The broader message is that digital transformation does not have to leave neighborhood businesses behind. With accessible technology, practical training and local support, independent retailers can compete in unified commerce while continuing to play an essential role in their communities. Learn more or explore the NRS reseller program at NRSplus.com.

RabbitRun and Crexendo Expand Recurring Revenue Opportunities for Channel Partners, Podcast , RabbitRun offers an integrated platform that brings together Always-On Internet, enterprise-class SD-WAN, cybersecurity, voice survivability, POTS replacement and business continuity. The goal is to help businesses remain connected and operational when internet connections, networks or other critical infrastructure fail @ Doug Green “There's a tremendous opportunity for partners to deliver more value, improve customer retention and create new recurring revenue streams.” RabbitRun has joined the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program, giving Crexendo, NetSapiens and channel partners new ways to deliver resilient connectivity, business continuity and managed network services to their customers. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, RabbitRun Founder and CTO Pat Saavedra discusses the partnership and the opportunity it creates for MSPs, service providers and telecom resellers. RabbitRun offers an integrated platform that brings together Always-On Internet, enterprise-class SD-WAN, cybersecurity, voice survivability, POTS replacement and business continuity. The goal is to help businesses remain connected and operational when internet connections, networks or other critical infrastructure fail. For channel partners, Saavedra says the opportunity extends well beyond simply selling another connectivity product. Partners can use RabbitRun to address real customer concerns surrounding uptime, security and operational resilience while creating new sources of recurring managed-services revenue. As more business applications move to the cloud, internet connectivity has become essential infrastructure. A failed connection can interrupt voice services, payment processing, customer support, remote access and other core operations. RabbitRun is designed to identify network problems and move traffic to an available connection, helping businesses continue operating with minimal disruption. The platform also gives partners greater visibility into customer networks, allowing them to identify performance issues, manage connectivity and provide ongoing support. That creates a more proactive relationship in which the partner is helping protect the customer's business rather than simply responding after something goes wrong. The conversation also explores the growing importance of voice survivability. Businesses may have backup internet connections but still discover that their voice systems fail during an outage. RabbitRun helps partners address that gap by protecting both data and voice communications as part of a broader continuity strategy. POTS replacement represents another opportunity. As traditional analog lines become more expensive and difficult to maintain, businesses need alternatives for services such as alarms, elevators, fax machines and emergency communications. RabbitRun enables partners to incorporate those requirements into a modern managed connectivity offering. By joining the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program, RabbitRun becomes more accessible to a large community of service providers already delivering communications through Crexendo and the NetSapiens platform. Saavedra says this gives partners an opportunity to expand the value of their existing customer relationships. Rather than competing only on voice seats or connectivity pricing, they can provide a broader solution built around reliability, security and business continuity. For MSPs and communications providers, the message is straightforward: protecting the customer's ability to remain connected can become both an essential service and a meaningful recurring revenue opportunity. Learn more about RabbitRun and its participation in the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program.

HP Builds AI-Powered Collaboration Ecosystem for the Hybrid Workplace, Podcast “AI is changing collaboration by helping IT teams see, manage, and improve the entire workplace experience.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Brian Phillips, Director of Product Marketing at HP Inc., about HP's InfoComm 2026 announcements and the company's expanding vision for AI-powered enterprise collaboration. The conversation focuses on how HP is bringing together meeting room technology, personal productivity tools, AI-enabled management, and workplace analytics into a more unified collaboration ecosystem. At the center of that strategy is the HP Workforce Experience Platform, or WXP, which is designed to give IT teams a broader view across devices, rooms, applications, and user experiences. Phillips discusses how WXP, together with Poly Lens and new AI-powered capabilities such as Room Visualizer AI, helps organizations move beyond basic device management. Instead of simply monitoring endpoints, IT teams can gain more actionable insight into how rooms are configured, how devices are performing, and how collaboration spaces can be improved. The podcast also covers HP Poly Studio Room Compute, VideoOS 5.1, and Poly DirectorAI, technologies designed to make hybrid meetings more engaging and equitable. These tools help meeting participants be seen and heard more clearly, whether they are in the room, working from home, or joining from another location. Beyond the meeting room, HP is also expanding its personal workspace portfolio with products such as the Poly Focus 6 Series Bluetooth headsets and the HP Collaboration Keyboard. Phillips explains how these devices fit into the larger HP collaboration strategy by supporting productivity wherever employees work. For MSPs, channel partners, and enterprise IT leaders, the message is clear: workplace collaboration is moving toward integrated ecosystems, AI-powered insights, and better experiences for both users and IT teams.  

NCTC and ACA Connects on The Independent Show, AI, Mobility and the Future of Independent Providers, Podcast As The Independent Show approaches, NCTC and ACA Connects say broadband, cable and communications providers are facing a fast-changing market where agility, collaboration and confidence matter more than ever. “The conversations never end. You just have to be agile.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Grant Spellmeyer, President and CEO of ACA Connects, and Lou Borrelli, CEO of NCTC, about The Independent Show and the evolving landscape for independent broadband, cable and communications providers. The discussion looks at the issues now shaping the independent provider community, including AI, mobility, network evolution, bundling, policy, competition and changing customer expectations. Borrelli notes that independent providers continue to have an important advantage: they know their communities. Their local presence, customer relationships and ability to respond quickly remain powerful differentiators. At the same time, those providers are operating in a more competitive environment, with fixed wireless, satellite, larger providers and new service models entering markets that were once less contested. Spellmeyer discusses the policy work ACA Connects is doing in Washington, including advocacy on behalf of smaller and independent operators as federal and regulatory decisions continue to affect broadband investment, competition and deployment. Borrelli also explains how NCTC helps members access the content, technology, solutions and shared expertise they need to compete more effectively. The conversation highlights the importance of collaboration across the independent provider ecosystem, especially as members consider new opportunities in mobility, AI-enabled services and bundled offerings. The Independent Show will bring these conversations together in one place, giving providers an opportunity to compare notes, learn from peers, meet technology and content partners, and return home with practical ideas for growth. For independent providers, the message is clear: the market is changing quickly, but they do not have to navigate that change alone. With the right partnerships, tools and strategy, local providers can continue to compete, serve their communities and build for the future.

“The intelligent worker is the person who can balance knowledge with the use of AI tools,” says Iain Sinnott of the Cloud Communications Alliance. In this Technology Reseller News podcast for TR Publications and the Cloud Communications Alliance, Doug Green speaks with Iain Sinnott, European Development Chief of the CCA, about AI, human capability, dyslexia, governance and the changing nature of work. The conversation begins with Sinnott's blue glasses, which he says became a useful icebreaker during COVID-era video meetings. But the discussion quickly turns to something deeper: how AI can help people with dyslexia and other challenges bring more of their talent into the workplace. Sinnott explains that dyslexia has shaped how he works, learns and sells. While reading and writing have often been difficult, his oral memory and problem-solving skills have been strengths. AI tools, he says, are now helping reduce the impact of some of those weaknesses. “I think in 41 years of business, I am now more efficient and less challenged than I've ever been,” says Sinnott. But Sinnott also warns that AI must remain a tool guided by human responsibility. He says users must challenge AI, verify its work and avoid becoming overly dependent on it. “We are responsible for making sure that this remains a positive tool, not a negative tool,” says Sinnott. The podcast also explores AI governance, data sovereignty and security, especially in the European market. Sinnott says organizations need guardrails that protect data and manage risk, while still allowing employees the freedom to experiment, explore and improve workflows. That balance, Sinnott argues, may lead to the rise of the “intelligent worker”: someone who can find information, challenge it, apply it and combine human judgment with AI-enabled tools. The conversation also addresses the risk that companies may use AI only as a cost-cutting tool. Sinnott cautions that replacing junior roles too quickly could damage the long-term development of future senior talent. “The human brain isn't replaceable,” says Sinnott. “But some of the tasks we ask it to do are.” Sinnott also discusses the work of the Cloud Communications Alliance in Europe, where sovereignty, communications policy, national security and critical infrastructure have become increasingly important issues. He says the CCA has a role to play in convening conversations and helping members develop thoughtful strategies that embrace innovation while protecting essential communications systems. Learn more about the Cloud Communications Alliance at www.cloudcommunications.com.  

boomi: AI Ambition Is Everywhere. AI Readiness Is Not, Podcast

John Dalrymple, Founder and CEO of Mobex, joined Technology Reseller News Publisher Doug Green to discuss how organizations can bring business voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and Microsoft Teams together into a single, compliant communications platform. Mobex, a member of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA), helps businesses simplify communications while improving management, security, and productivity. Dalrymple explained that while business communications have expanded far beyond traditional voice calls, many organizations still struggle with disconnected tools and unmanaged mobile communications. Mobex addresses this challenge by integrating business calling, SMS, and WhatsApp directly into Microsoft Teams and VoIP environments, creating what he described as a “single pane of glass” for enterprise communications. “We try to help our clients integrate those communication channels into what makes sense for them in their workflow and work process,” Dalrymple said. A key benefit is improved compliance and governance. Rather than employees conducting business conversations on personal devices outside company oversight, Mobex enables organizations to route business communications through managed platforms that support recording, AI transcription, compliance requirements, and centralized management. The platform also provides business eSIM capabilities, allowing employees to separate personal and business communications while retaining native mobile phone functionality. Dalrymple also highlighted opportunities for MSPs and channel partners. Because many already deploy Microsoft Teams, Mobex can be added as an integrated solution for business calling, texting, WhatsApp, compliance, and call recording, creating new recurring revenue opportunities with minimal deployment complexity. The company has also expanded into the UK, where WhatsApp plays a larger role in business communications than traditional SMS. Learn more: https://www.mobex.biz/

TERRA Members Now Part of ITAD Association, Podcast, “For our membership that we have really been blessed with over the last seven years since we started this endeavor, we found them a good home,” Napoli said TERRA founder Stephen Napoli says the move gives members “a good home” while bringing two important communities together in the electronics reuse, recycling and ITAD ecosystem. In a special ASCDI podcast, Doug Green spoke with Stephen Napoli, president and founder of TERRA, about a milestone moment for the ITAD community: TERRA's members are now becoming part of ASCDI — The ITAD Association. The move brings approximately 80 TERRA companies into ASCDI, joining two communities that have long worked in the same orbit: ITAD, electronics reuse, e-scrap, certified recycling and the circular economy. Napoli said TERRA will cease operations, but its members will move into ASCDI with continuity, visibility and a larger industry platform. “For our membership that we have really been blessed with over the last seven years since we started this endeavor, we found them a good home,” Napoli said. Napoli founded TERRA to give certified electronics recycling and ITAD companies a stronger voice. The organization helped promote the value of certification, especially around standards such as R2 and e-Stewards, and worked to help customers understand why responsible reuse and recycling matter. As Napoli explained, certified ITAD and recycling companies do more than process used equipment. They protect data, support reuse, keep electronics out of landfills, advance the circular economy and help make sure equipment is handled in ways that protect both people and the environment. Asked why ASCDI — The ITAD Association was the right next home for TERRA members, Napoli pointed to ASCDI's long-standing reputation, advocacy and history in the technology reuse market. “They've been in this space for a long time and they have a very good reputation,” Napoli said. “They do a very good job of advocating for people that are in this space, which is what we've been doing. So it really was a natural fit.” Napoli described the transition as bittersweet. TERRA began as an idea seven years ago and grew into a community of certified and allied companies across the electronics recycling and ITAD landscape. Now, he said, that work can continue through a larger association. “I'm forever grateful,” Napoli said. “And really happy that it's just not coming to an end, that I'm able to pass it along to the benefit of them and to another organization in the space to make this industry stronger.” The conversation also reflected the personal side of the ITAD community. Napoli said that while companies in the space may compete, there is also a family quality to the industry, with many people sharing a common commitment to reuse, responsible recycling and doing the right thing with technology at the end of its first life. “I found a gem,” Napoli said, reflecting on his entry into the industry. “It has been the joy of my career to be part of it.” Visit ASCDI — The ITAD Association to learn more.

SmarTrak.ai Turns Cisco Data Into Partner Growth, Podcast Cisco 360, AI, refresh cycles, and multivendor migration are creating new openings — and SmarTrak.ai says partners have a timely opportunity to grow more strategically. “We help them manage their practice, grow their practice, and increase their profitability around it,” says Ted Lee of SmarTrak.ai. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, recorded following Cisco Live, Doug Green speaks with Ted Lee of SmarTrak.ai about the company's expanding role in helping Cisco partners turn Cisco data into actionable business intelligence. Lee describes SmarTrak.ai as a platform built to help Cisco partners manage their Cisco practice by ingesting data from Cisco APIs and other sources. The goal, he says, is to give partners better visibility into customer environments, including hardware assets, software, services, service contracts, subscriptions and enterprise agreements. For end customers, SmarTrak.ai provides visibility into Cisco infrastructure and spending, helping organizations optimize their environments while giving partners a more strategic way to support long-term customer retention. The discussion focuses heavily on Cisco 360, one of the major themes at Cisco Live. Lee says SmarTrak.ai announced a Cisco 360 module designed to help partners understand how they can perform under the program, identify opportunities to improve their scores, and increase profitability with Cisco. “We announced at Cisco Live that we had a 360 module that we are releasing that gives predictability into how they can perform, how to optimize it,” Lee says. “Since we have their entire estate with every one of their customers globally, we can then give them opportunities with which they can raise their scores in order to increase their profitability with Cisco.” Lee also points to a larger market moment for Cisco partners. With major refresh cycles, end-of-life events, new AI-enabled products and changing customer infrastructure requirements, partners have an opportunity to move from reactive selling to more strategic planning. SmarTrak.ai is also putting that intelligence directly into the hands of sales teams. The company announced a mobile application designed for sellers and solutions engineers who are meeting customers in the field, giving them access to forward-looking intelligence around sustainability swaps, end-of-life replacements, AI replacement SKUs and other Cisco-driven opportunities. “Sales reps are not sitting at their desks,” Lee says. “These partners are out with their customers, and we are putting this wealth of intelligence in the hands of their sales reps and their solutions engineers.” The podcast also covers SmarTrak.ai's multivendor migration capabilities. Lee notes that customer environments are rarely Cisco-only. Partners often encounter Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Aruba, Ruckus, HPE and other installed platforms. SmarTrak.ai's migration platform allows partners to ingest those install bases and build forward-looking roadmaps for when it may make sense to replace other platforms with modern Cisco solutions. Lee says the platform can help customers budget, help partners quote more effectively, and help move opportunities toward higher-level Cisco buying programs such as enterprise agreements. The conversation also touches on audit readiness. Lee says SmarTrak.ai has helped partners pass CX Expert and advanced audits by providing the visibility and health scoring needed to support certifications, partner status, rebates and incentives. “We are a full Cisco practice engine to help them take advantage of the wealth of data and opportunity in front of them and turn it into revenue and profitability with the end customers,” Lee says. AI is also part of the SmarTrak.ai story. Lee says the company was founded in early 2023, as large language models were becoming more widely accessible, and recognized an opportunity to use AI against Cisco's large data universe. SmarTrak.ai is SOC 2 Type II and is pursuing ISO 27001 certification, Lee says, emphasizing that the company is “security first” while using AI to help partners analyze data faster and identify new sales opportunities. Lee describes the result as “agentic lifecycle intelligence,” enabling partners to generate forward-looking Cisco practice plans, budgets, replacement strategies, enterprise agreement eligibility, and takeover opportunities across large customer bases. “One of our customers has nearly 10,000 Cisco customers,” Lee says. “They can view any customer in the world with a few clicks of their mouse, and they can create a five-year forward-looking internal or external Cisco practice plan.” The podcast offers a look at how SmarTrak.ai is positioning itself as a Cisco partner growth platform: helping partners make Cisco data more usable, make customer conversations more strategic, prepare for Cisco 360, manage refresh cycles, and turn infrastructure intelligence into recurring revenue opportunities. Learn more at smartrak.ai.

Steve Brock, Senior Vice President of Sales at Airsys Cooling Technologies, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, about a growing infrastructure challenge that is often overlooked: cooling. As AI workloads, 5G deployments, and increasingly dense telecom equipment drive power consumption higher, Brock explained why efficient thermal management is becoming as important as the computing infrastructure itself. Airsys has specialized in mission-critical cooling for more than 30 years, serving telecom operators, modular data centers, and edge infrastructure around the world. Brock noted that the industry has moved beyond simply installing air conditioners in telecom shelters. Today’s operators are demanding intelligent systems that combine variable-speed technology, economizers, advanced controls, and predictive maintenance to reduce energy consumption while maintaining reliability. “Remove the thought process from 10 or 15 years ago that cooling was an afterthought,” Brock said. “Let’s spend time on the most efficient solutions.” The discussion explored how AI and next-generation wireless networks are changing infrastructure requirements. As 5G evolves and AI workloads move closer to the edge, telecom shelters and remote network sites are becoming significantly more power-dense. That creates new cooling challenges in locations where maintenance is difficult and uptime is essential. Brock explained that operators are increasingly looking for longer-lasting equipment, better energy efficiency, and systems capable of identifying maintenance needs before failures occur. Brock also described Airsys’ continued investment in manufacturing and customer support, including its new 300,000-square-foot production facility in Woodruff, South Carolina, where products are designed, manufactured, and customized for customer requirements. Combined with global manufacturing operations, parts availability, and hands-on training programs for contractors and channel partners, Airsys is focused on supporting mission-critical environments where reliability is paramount. Learn more about Airsys: https://airsysnorthamerica.com/

Spirent: 6G Is Coming Sooner Than Expected, Podcast, Pre-commercial 6G trials could begin in 2028, with commercial deployments arriving as early as 2029 “Six G leaders are now going to be judged on how resilient the network is, how adaptive, how quickly it can recover from an issue,” says Stephen Douglas of Spirent, a Keysight company. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Douglas about the accelerating 6G timeline and why service providers may need to begin planning for 6G business models sooner than many expected. For years, 2030 was widely viewed as the point when the industry would begin looking seriously at 6G. Douglas says that assumption is changing. Pre-commercial 6G demonstration systems are now being discussed for 2028, with the first commercial 6G equipment and operator deployments potentially emerging in the mid-to-late 2029 timeframe.   The shift is being driven by rapid movement in standards, including 3GPP work on 6G radio, core network architecture, security, APIs, application enablement, management, orchestration and AI-based operational support. Douglas says this creates a compressed window for operators, vendors and ecosystem partners to test, validate and prepare for a new network generation that may arrive sooner than expected. The podcast also looks at how 6G may differ from previous mobile generations. Rather than treating AI as an add-on, Douglas describes 6G as an AI-native network architecture, where AI is built into operations, orchestration, security, APIs and even the radio layer itself. “What you're seeing is a big shift, and AI is at the heart of that,” Douglas says. “That big shift is moving from an AI-assisted network to an AI-native network.” That could allow networks to predict congestion, reconfigure network slices, detect threats, expose capabilities to third parties in real time and support new AI-driven services at the edge. A major theme of the discussion is monetization. The 5G era delivered important technology advances, but many operators struggled to translate those advances into new revenue. Douglas argues that 6G gives service providers an opportunity to avoid repeating that pattern by developing new services, ecosystems and pricing models during the deployment phase, rather than waiting until after the network is built. The conversation highlights several emerging 6G opportunity areas, including AI and communication, integrated sensing and communication, ubiquitous connectivity, immersive communication, massive communication and hyper-reliable low-latency communications. Douglas points in particular to integrated sensing, where the network could support services that use radio infrastructure to understand objects, environments and movement while also carrying traditional communications traffic. Douglas also discusses the growing role of edge AI. As more AI inference moves from centralized data centers toward edge locations, devices and regional infrastructure, operators may have an opportunity to participate more directly in the AI economy. Instead of acting only as transport providers for AI traffic, service providers could support sovereign AI, low-latency inference, industrial computer vision and other AI-as-a-service models. The key message for operators is that they do not need to wait for 6G to begin preparing. Douglas says 5G Advanced can serve as a bridge, allowing operators to test business models around sensing, edge compute, AI services and network-based awareness today, while building a roadmap toward 6G. The winners in the 6G era, Douglas says, may not simply be the providers with the fastest networks. Success may be defined by intelligence, sensing and resilience — and by the ability to turn 6G capabilities into services that customers are willing to pay for from day one. Learn more at keysight.com.

“If you don't give feedback, you're not helping them improve,” says Julie Thiel of TTS Company. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Julie Thiel of TTS Company in the latest installment of an ongoing series on leadership, hiring and better management practices. This episode focuses on one of the most common leadership challenges: the feedback conversations managers often delay. Thiel says many managers avoid these conversations because they hope the issue will resolve itself, they do not want to create awkwardness, or they simply do not know how to begin. But waiting has a cost. Small performance issues can become repeated habits, and repeated habits can become larger organizational problems. Thiel says managers may also become increasingly frustrated, while employees are left unclear about what needs to change. “One small action becomes ten small actions, which becomes a big problem,” says Thiel. Thiel recommends a practical rule of thumb: if something happens once, give the employee some room. If it happens twice, there may be a knowledge or skill gap. By the third time, the manager needs to address it. The conversation also offers a simple preparation framework for managers before giving feedback: What specifically needs to improve? Why does it matter? What support can I provide? What does success look like? Thiel says feedback should not be viewed as criticism. Done well, it is a way to help the employee succeed, strengthen trust and build a better team. “It really does build trust because people know where they stand,” says Thiel. The podcast also discusses how managers can protect the relationship while giving feedback. Thiel encourages leaders to stick with observable facts, assume positive intent, listen as much as they talk, and ask questions such as, “What am I missing?” TTS Company helps growing companies get HR and people issues off the plate of CEOs and founders, while also supporting larger HR teams with projects and added capacity. Thiel also previews The Vault, a leadership development community designed to provide practical, ongoing support for technology leaders. Learn more at thettscompany.com  

“The regulatory environment is actually forcing everybody to take some action,” says Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail. In this Technology Reseller News podcast for the Cloud Communications Alliance, Doug Green speaks with Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, about a new reseller opportunity around YouMail Protective Services. Quilici says YouMail's mission is to protect phone numbers. While YouMail is widely known for its consumer app that blocks robocalls, scam texts, spam calls and unwanted voicemail, the company is now bringing that intelligence to telecom providers, enterprises and resellers. YouMail Protective Services uses data from consumer reports, app activity and the National Spam Reporting Center to help carriers and enterprises see what is happening with phone numbers from the outside. Quilici says this gives providers a broader view than traditional honeypot-based monitoring. “Bad guys will target real consumer mobile phones,” says Quilici. “They'll never show up anywhere else.” The podcast outlines four core services: Score, a phone number reputation service; Watch, which monitors carrier networks from the outside; an enterprise version of Watch for call centers and business numbers; and Quash, which helps disrupt bad actors impersonating brands. For resellers, Quilici says the opportunity is to add YouMail Protective Services to existing carrier offerings, including phone numbers, SIP trunking, compliance tools and robocall mitigation services. The services can be white labeled and integrated through an API into existing dashboards. “This is a natural extension of more monitoring, more compliance,” says Quilici. Implementation can be simple. Quilici says Watch can begin with something as basic as an SPC code, allowing YouMail to provide feedback on calls associated with that carrier identity. More advanced integrations can include phone number lists, CDRs and API connections. Quilici says demand is being driven by regulation, compliance exposure and the growing need for carriers to demonstrate that they are taking robocall mitigation seriously. “You can't just point and say it's somebody else's problem,” says Quilici. For resellers and MSPs, YouMail Protective Services offers a new way to help carriers and enterprises protect phone numbers, improve compliance and identify bad behavior earlier. Learn more or request a demo at youmailps.com.

Virtuozzo Makes the Case for AI-Ready Cloud Infrastructure, TR Podcast

By Doug Green “The telecom industry is really in a state of need to migrate and evolve into a new state,” says Joe Dechant, Vice President of Product Transformation at TNS. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Dechant about why communications service providers are rethinking voice infrastructure as legacy switching environments age, maintenance costs rise and specialized telecom expertise becomes harder to find. “Voice is still mission critical,” Dechant notes, and that means modernization has to happen without disruption. CSPs are under pressure to support modern services such as UCaaS and CCaaS, but they also need to protect the reliability customers expect from core voice services. Dechant discusses how TNS Voice Transit and Hosted Cloud Connect give providers a managed path away from aging infrastructure, helping them simplify operations, reduce complexity and move toward more flexible, cloud-based architectures. The conversation is not just about replacing old switches. It is about giving CSPs a foundation for trusted, secure and scalable communications. #Telecom #TechnologyResellerNews #CSP #VoiceInfrastructure #CloudCommunications #UCaaS #CCaaS #ManagedServices #NetworkModernization

Fornix: Are Vendors Getting What They Should from Marketing Development Funds?, Podcast “We are too close to the problem. Help us audit what we're doing because we probably aren't getting what we think we're supposed to be getting.” That is how Fornix CEO Charlene Ignacio describes the question many vendors are asking as they move into Q3 and Q4 planning. Marketing Development Funds are supposed to help vendors and partners drive growth, build market awareness and reach the right channel audience. But Ignacio says many companies may not have a clear enough view of how those dollars are actually being used, measured or translated into partner impact. In this podcast, Doug Green, publisher of Technology Reseller News, speaks with Ignacio about Marketing Development Funds, channel execution and the need for a more disciplined look at what is working and what is not. As Channel Partners recedes into the rearview mirror and ChannelCon and other MSP events approach, the conversation focuses on how vendors can use this midyear moment to reassess their MDF strategy before the second half of 2026 gets away from them. Ignacio says Fornix is helping vendors step back, audit their channel activity and better understand whether their programs are delivering the results they expect. That includes looking beyond activity alone and asking whether campaigns, partner outreach and MSP engagement are actually moving the needle. The discussion also looks at the MSP audience Fornix serves: business owners who are trying to get out of the day-to-day seat of handling sales, marketing, PR and business development on their own, so they can focus more directly on partners, technology and preparing their businesses for AI. Learn more at Fornix: https://fornixmarketing.com/

By Doug Green “Voice is its own modality.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Anoop Dawar, Chief Strategy Officer at Deepgram, about the infrastructure behind the voice AI economy and why production-grade voice agents require more than a strong demo. Dawar says Deepgram is a real-time AI infrastructure company focused on helping machines understand human speech. The company's roots are in machine learning and end-to-end deep learning, applied to one of the hardest problems in AI: understanding hundreds of languages, thousands of dialects, accents, intonation, vocabulary changes and real-world speech patterns. For decades, Dawar says, humans have learned to speak machine through keyboards, programming languages, interfaces and apps. Deepgram's mission is to reverse that pattern by helping machines learn to understand people. The conversation explores why voice AI is different from text-based AI. Voice agents must understand not only words, but tone, emotion, background noise, accents, timing and conversational context. A word such as “hello” may carry different meaning depending on how it is spoken. Dawar says it is relatively easy to build a voice AI demo in a controlled environment. The real challenge is making voice agents work in production. A restaurant drive-through, for example, may include freeway noise, trucks, music, children talking in the background and legacy audio equipment. In that environment, real-time voice AI has to understand the speaker immediately and respond correctly, with no opportunity to edit or revise the interaction after the fact. “Real-time voice is unforgiving,” Dawar says. “There is no do-over.” The podcast also looks at AI drift and the difference between deterministic software and probabilistic AI systems. Traditional systems produce predictable results. Voice AI systems, by contrast, operate in a world where language, customer behavior, environments and models can change. That means production systems must be monitored, tested and improved continuously. For MSPs, channel partners, contact center providers, CPaaS providers and customer experience platforms, Dawar says voice AI should be understood as infrastructure, not simply as an application. Real-time voice agents depend on network performance, audio quality, data center infrastructure, latency, packet loss, jitter, speech recognition, language models and text-to-speech working together. Looking ahead, Dawar sees a world of 24/7 AI agents working across voice, text, image and video. Voice will be a major part of that future, but it requires dedicated attention and infrastructure because it carries nuance that text alone cannot capture. For Deepgram, the goal is to help developers, enterprises and partners build production-grade voice agents that work reliably in the real world, not just in the lab. Learn more at deepgram.com  

By Doug Green “When prevention has failed, what are you going to do?” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Josh Howell, Healthcare CTO at Rubrik, about Rubrik's recognition as an American Hospital Association Preferred Cybersecurity Provider and the growing need for cyber resilience in healthcare. Howell says traditional backup systems were built for IT recovery, not modern ransomware attacks. Rubrik is designed for immutable data protection, helping healthcare organizations recover even if attackers gain high-level access inside the network. The podcast explores why cybersecurity is now a patient care issue. When hospital systems go offline, care continues, but delays in lab results, diagnostics, appointments and treatment can create real clinical risk. AI is also changing the threat landscape. Howell says defenders are using AI to classify and respond to threats, while attackers are using AI to move faster and exploit vulnerabilities more effectively. The discussion also covers Rubrik Agent Cloud, which helps organizations place guardrails around AI agents and recover quickly if agentic AI causes damage or exposes sensitive data. Howell says Rubrik focuses on “day two” resilience: what happens after prevention fails. For healthcare leaders, the message is clear: strong security matters, but hospitals also need a recovery strategy that can protect operations and patient care when attacks get through. Learn more at rubrik.com  

By Doug Green “Communication in the absence of details creates anxiety.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Harold Hardaway of Voix House about what leaders often miss when rolling out AI. Hardaway says many organizations treat AI as a tooling decision, when it is really a change management challenge. Giving employees access to AI does not automatically create adoption, competence or business value. Leaders need to explain what is changing, how teams should use the technology and what success looks like. The conversation also explores why AI adoption should be local and team-specific. Instead of trying to transform everything at once, organizations should identify specific workflows, test AI in practical ways, and build from what works. Hardaway says AI can help draft content, messages and plans, but drafting is rarely the real bottleneck. The harder work is leadership alignment. “Draft was never the bottleneck. Alignment was,” Hardaway says. The podcast also looks at customer experience. AI can support routine updates and proactive communication, but in moments of consequence, customers often need a human in the loop. For MSPs, service providers and enterprise leaders, the message is clear: successful AI rollout requires communication, governance, leadership alignment and room for teams to learn. Learn more at voixhouse.com  

By Doug Green “We want to do for assets what CRM did for customer records.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Tim Harris, CEO of SoloTruth, about the company's new asset relationship management platform for enterprises and the opportunity it creates for asset-intensive organizations, MSPs and channel partners. Harris says SoloTruth bridges the gap between the physical assets a company owns and the financial system of record, typically the ERP system. The goal is to make sure that what a company actually owns is accurately reflected in its books. SoloTruth calls this asset relationship management, or ARM. Just as CRM evolved from a system for tracking contacts into a broader platform for managing customer relationships and the sales cycle, SoloTruth aims to provide a 360-degree view of enterprise assets. The podcast explores a common problem in asset-heavy businesses: asset drift. A company may purchase a forklift, server, laptop, piece of telecom equipment or other capital asset, but over time that asset may be moved, misplaced, retired or replaced without the financial system being updated. Harris says this creates “ghost assets,” which no longer exist but remain on the books, and “zombie assets,” which exist in the field but are not reflected in the ERP. For companies with large fixed-asset bases, the financial implications can be significant. Harris notes that for many manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, telecom and banking organizations, fixed assets can represent one of the largest categories on the balance sheet. Yet many companies only get an accurate view of those assets during periodic audits. SoloTruth combines IoT-derived location data, including RFID and GPS technology, with human inspection data captured through a mobile app. That combination gives companies better visibility into both where an asset is located and what condition it is in. Harris says those two factors are critical to useful life, depreciation schedules, valuation, maintenance planning and proof of existence. The company recently won an award for its approach, which combines IoT-based location tracking with human condition capture. Harris says that combination can help organizations keep their books in order continuously, rather than waiting for an annual audit or emergency review tied to financing, collateral, or M&A activity. Harris says SoloTruth typically looks at payback period as the key customer metric. For companies with $100 million in fixed assets, he says the platform can generate roughly $1.5 million to $4 million per year in cost savings, with a payback period often below six months. The podcast also looks at the channel opportunity. Harris says MSPs and channel partners already have relationships with customers and are often involved in placing assets into enterprise environments. SoloTruth can give partners a way to extend that relationship by helping customers track, inspect and manage assets after deployment. For enterprises, the message is clear: better asset intelligence can reduce unnecessary capital spending, improve maintenance planning, support financing and M&A activity, and help ensure that the financial system reflects the real operating environment. Learn more at solotruth.com  

“Conversations Are Becoming the Operating System of the Enterprise,” 8×8 Podcast, “The real shift is that conversations are no longer just moments in time,” says says Dhwani Soni, Global Vice President of Product Management at 8×8. “They are where work is coordinated, decisions are made, risks are surfaced and customer relationships are understood.” @Doug Green 8×8 is moving beyond communications as simple connectivity and into a broader role for communications as a source of action, intelligence and accountability. In this podcast, we look at two recent 8×8 announcements posted on Technology Reseller News: 8×8 Resolve, a mobile-first critical communications and incident management solution for deskless and distributed workers, and 8×8 Pulse, a conversational intelligence solution that turns business conversations into insight. “The real shift is that conversations are no longer just moments in time,” says Dhwani Soni, Global Vice President of Product Management at 8×8. “They are where work is coordinated, decisions are made, risks are surfaced and customer relationships are understood.” 8×8 Resolve addresses a practical enterprise problem: when something goes wrong, the people most affected may be the hardest to reach. Frontline employees in healthcare, retail, logistics, utilities, manufacturing and field services often do not sit at a desk, may not have corporate email, and may not be connected to the same tools used by office-based teams. As outlined in the TR-posted announcement on 8×8 Resolve, the solution reaches workers through channels they actually use, including SMS, voice, WhatsApp and the 8×8 Work mobile app. Resolve can escalate until acknowledgment is confirmed and produce an exportable audit trail showing who was notified, when they responded and how the incident was handled. The conversation also explores 8×8 Pulse. Businesses already generate valuable intelligence in calls, meetings, chats, emails, support tickets and customer conversations. Too often, that information remains scattered across recordings, transcripts, inboxes and systems of record. “With Pulse, the conversation itself becomes a source of business memory,” says Soni. “That changes how leaders, account teams, customer success teams and frontline managers understand what is actually happening across the organization.” As described in the TR-posted announcement on 8×8 Pulse, the product is built around the idea that business decisions increasingly happen inside conversations — and that those conversations can become a source of insight, context and action. Taken together, Resolve and Pulse point to a larger platform strategy. Communications are becoming the place where organizations detect problems, coordinate responses, capture commitments, understand customers, manage risk and create a record of what happened. For service providers, MSPs, channel partners and enterprise IT leaders, the message is clear: the next wave of cloud communications value will come from helping customers act on communications data, not simply move it from one endpoint to another. 8×8 Resolve: https://telecomreseller.com/2026/06/03/8×8-announces-8×8-resolve-a-critical-communications-solution-built-for-the-deskless-workforce/ 8×8 Pulse: https://telecomreseller.com/2026/06/03/8×8-introduces-8×8-pulse-conversational-intelligence-built-for-where-decisions-are-made/ Learn more at www.8×8.com.

By Doug Green “Governance is absolutely necessary. It's no longer optional.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Rajesh Kari, Senior Director of Products and Solutions at Versa Networks, about the emerging security challenges created as agentic AI moves into live network and security operations. Kari says Versa Networks is a leader in SASE, offering a unified platform that brings together networking, security and operations across enterprise infrastructure. As AI becomes more embedded in operations, Versa is focused on a new zero trust challenge: controlling not only users and devices, but also the hidden AI-driven sub-actions that can touch production systems. Kari explains that agentic AI is different from traditional AI because it can take action on behalf of users. Rather than simply answering a prompt or returning information, an agent may break a task into sub-queries, call APIs, use credentials, access systems and make changes inside the infrastructure. Those hidden sub-queries can create risk if organizations cannot see, validate and govern what the agent is doing. “People build agents. They know what the objective of the agents are,” Kari says. “But under the hood, what the agent actually deploys, which APIs it accesses, and what kinds of authorization and authentication it leverages can be unknown.” The podcast explores how this creates new exposure for enterprises, MSPs and channel partners. If an AI agent gains access to credentials or production systems, organizations need constant verification, validation and governance around each action. Kari says agentic AI can also hallucinate or generate unnecessary sub-queries, creating additional security and operational risk. Versa is addressing this through Versa Verbo and its Zero Trust MCP architecture. Verbo is designed to help network practitioners gain visibility, management and analytics through natural language interactions. Instead of searching through hundreds of alerts or dashboards, operators can ask questions about outages, performance issues, configuration changes, security incidents and branch health. The Zero Trust MCP architecture extends that capability by applying governance and access control to AI-driven actions. Kari says this enables AI models and agents to query Versa infrastructure securely, while maintaining controls around authentication, authorization, APIs and operational workflows. For MSPs and channel partners, Kari sees an important opportunity. Many organizations want to deploy AI quickly but do not have the internal capability to build governance infrastructure around it. Partners that develop practices around policy architecture, deployment, ongoing governance and human-in-the-loop approval can help customers adopt agentic AI more safely. Kari says AI operations copilots are becoming standard in SASE and network platforms. Network teams, infrastructure managers and executives increasingly want to use natural language to understand the health of their infrastructure instead of relying only on dashboards. But as those tools become more powerful, governance becomes the deciding factor in adoption. “If the agent has gained access into certain files or visuals which has violated any particular compliance standards, it becomes the responsibility of the organization to prove it,” Kari says. For Versa, the message is clear: agentic AI can simplify operations and accelerate decision-making, but it must be governed from the beginning. Zero trust principles need to be built into every AI agent connection. Learn more at www.versa-networks.com  

By Doug Green “Running a business, running a network, is really about making good decisions. And to make good decisions, you have to base that on good data.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Jezzibell Gillmore, General Manager and Vice President, Service Provider at Kentik, about how AI workloads, rising data volumes and infrastructure complexity are creating new operational challenges for service providers. Gillmore describes Kentik as a network intelligence company that uses NetFlow, SNMP, synthetic testing, streaming telemetry and data enrichment to provide actionable insights for organizations that rely on networks to run their businesses. As networks generate more data than humans can easily interpret, Kentik helps service providers understand what traffic means, where it is coming from, where it is going, and how it affects customers, performance and profitability. The conversation focuses on the growing infrastructure demands associated with AI. Gillmore says the industry is preparing for a significant rise in AI-driven traffic, particularly east-west traffic between servers and data centers. While the full impact has not yet arrived, service providers are already seeing signs of what may be ahead as GPU deployments, data center power demands and high-capacity interconnect requirements continue to grow. Gillmore notes that service providers will face pressure not only from higher traffic volumes, but also from the physical realities of network expansion. Adding capacity is not always as simple as turning up another wavelength. Providers may need to plan new fiber routes, obtain permits, expand conduit capacity and manage the long timelines associated with physical infrastructure. The podcast also explores where service providers are likely to encounter operational blind spots. Gillmore says resiliency is moving from a “good to have” to a mission-critical requirement. At the same time, traditional observability tools were built for an earlier era and may not provide enough visibility into encrypted traffic, hybrid cloud, east-west AI traffic, GPU-to-GPU telemetry and increasingly complex routing environments. For Gillmore, the shift is from passive observability to actionable network intelligence. Traditional tools may show what happened over the last 30 days, but AI-era networks require near real-time insight that can help operators make better decisions immediately. She also points to a growing skills challenge. Many of the engineers who helped build the internet are retiring, while newer engineers may be strong in automation and code but have less deep operational experience. Machine-assisted insight can help bridge that gap by giving teams clearer guidance and better context. For service providers, the message is clear: AI-driven demand will require better visibility, stronger resiliency and more intelligent operations. Gillmore says providers should begin by identifying gaps in their networks and evaluating how network intelligence can improve efficiency, customer experience and business value. Learn more at kentik.com  

By Doug Green “Infrastructure is increasingly becoming a control point for AI enablement and productivity.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Shashi Kiran, Chief Marketing Officer at Nile, about why infrastructure is moving back to the center of enterprise strategy, budgeting and AI readiness. Kiran says Nile is modernizing enterprise networks with what it describes as the world's most secure network delivered as a service. The company provides wired and wireless local area networking for mid-size and large enterprises, with security built in and operations managed across the lifecycle. The conversation focuses on a growing reality for enterprises: AI may appear to live in applications, cloud platforms and user devices, but its success depends on the infrastructure underneath. As organizations rethink AI adoption, infrastructure decisions are becoming long-term strategic decisions again. Unlike software, Kiran notes, infrastructure cannot simply be changed overnight. Network decisions often shape cost, security, agility and business performance for years. A poor infrastructure choice can become a drag on the rest of the organization's technology investment. Kiran says this is driving renewed interest in network as a service. In the modern model, he says, network as a service is not simply a managed provider operating someone else's technology. Instead, Nile builds, owns and operates the technology, giving customers a single accountable partner across the full value chain. For Nile, the focus is the enterprise edge: campuses, branches, users, devices, IoT and, increasingly, AI agents. Kiran says that part of the network has often been overlooked while much of the industry focused on data centers and cloud. Yet it is also where complexity, operational cost and security exposure are often highest. Nile's approach is built around simplifying that environment. Kiran describes a clean-slate architecture with wired and wireless connectivity, zero trust principles, identity-based authentication, security built in, and autonomous operations. Nile also backs its service with performance SLAs and financial penalties. Kiran says the results can include lower complexity, faster change management, reduced breach exposure and significant savings. He says customers typically see cost reductions of 30% to 50% at a minimum, along with faster deployment and change cycles. As enterprises plan for the next several years, Kiran says infrastructure will become even more important as organizations work to become more AI-native. The companies that move away from legacy models and adopt more agile infrastructure approaches will be better positioned to support AI, improve productivity, reduce cost and strengthen security. Learn more at nilesecure.com  

Philipp Heltewig, Chief AI Officer at NICE and co-founder of Cognigy, joined Moshe Beauford on the Technology Reseller News Podcast at NICE World to discuss how Cognigy is being integrated into the broader NICE platform and what that means for the next generation of customer experience technology. Heltewig describes Cognigy as becoming an enterprise AI layer across the NICE technology stack, bringing conversational and agentic AI capabilities deeper into the company's products. The discussion looks at the progress of the integration, the strategic thinking behind the move, and how Heltewig's team is helping shape NICE's broader AI roadmap. The conversation also points to a larger shift in customer experience. AI is moving beyond isolated tools and standalone chatbots toward embedded capabilities that can support automation, orchestration and intelligent engagement across enterprise operations. For NICE, the integration of Cognigy is part of that broader move toward AI operating across the stack. Heltewig also discusses current AI initiatives, product innovation and the future of enterprise AI inside the NICE ecosystem. As customer experience platforms become more AI-driven, the focus is shifting from experimentation to real-world deployment, enterprise readiness and measurable business outcomes. For partners and technology providers, the podcast highlights an important channel opportunity. As AI becomes more central to contact center, service, workforce and analytics strategies, customers will need help understanding where AI fits, how it connects to existing systems and how it can improve both customer experience and operational performance. Learn more: https://www.nice.com/

By Doug Green “It's the first time we've had a really global effort around bringing our partnerships together.” Dorothy Copeland, Chief Channel Partner Officer at NiCE, joined the Technology Reseller News Podcast at NiCE World to discuss her vision for the company's partner strategy following her appointment earlier this year. Copeland joined NiCE in January as the company's first partner officer, a role created to bring together the company's global partner efforts and strengthen its channel organization. NiCE is leaning more deeply into its partner ecosystem as both a source of growth and a source of scale. Copeland's work includes building a global partner organization, growing partner revenue, strengthening enablement, and ensuring partners have the capabilities needed to support customer implementations. The conversation also explored the changing role of agents, trusted advisors, and MSPs as customer needs evolve. Copeland noted that AI is creating greater demand for managed services and end-to-end customer support. “One of the changes with AI is that customers need more of a managed services approach,” Copeland said. For channel partners, that shift creates an opportunity to move beyond initial customer relationships and participate more fully across the customer's CX journey, from strategy and deployment to ongoing support and optimization. Copeland also discussed the development of NiCE's first formal channel program, the importance of partner enablement, and the company's broader commitment to building an ecosystem that supports long-term partner success. Learn more at NiCE.

By Doug Green “The best learning is actually to learn by doing.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Carlos Pereira, Cisco Fellow and Chief Architect, Customer Experience, about Cisco IQ and how Cisco is using AI, lifecycle intelligence and customer experience to help enterprises better understand, secure and future-proof their environments. Pereira says Cisco IQ reflects a broader shift in how customer experience is being delivered. At Cisco, CX is not treated as something that begins after a product is deployed. It spans the full lifecycle: land, adopt, expand and renew, with support embedded throughout. That lifecycle view is especially important because more than 95% of Cisco's business is indirect through partners, and more than half of Cisco's revenue is recurring. Cisco IQ, which became generally available in April, is designed to give customers visibility across the Cisco assets they own, including devices that may be approaching or past end of sale or end of support. Pereira notes that many Cisco products remain in production for years because they are reliable, but long-running environments can create risk if older software, unsupported assets or unpatched vulnerabilities remain in place. With Cisco IQ, customers can see more of their environment, understand lifecycle status, assess security exposure and receive AI-driven insights tied to their own deployments. Pereira says that visibility becomes more important as AI accelerates the speed of both operations and threats. “The speed has changed because the adversary is now faster than what you think your ability to move,” Pereira says. The podcast also looks at how Cisco IQ fits with Cisco Cloud Control, announced at Cisco Live. Pereira explains that Cisco Cloud Control brings product operations together through an agentic interface, while Cisco IQ focuses on lifecycle visibility, entitlement, assets, security assessments, performance and operational insight. Together, the two offerings reflect Cisco's effort to combine AI-driven operations with full lifecycle intelligence. A major theme of the conversation is future-proofing the enterprise. Pereira says Cisco IQ can help customers identify assets that may pose security or operational risks, including devices past last day of support or software exposed to newly discovered vulnerabilities. Cisco IQ can also support assessments around emerging concerns such as quantum readiness, including hardware, software and cryptographic materials. Pereira also discusses why Cisco designed Cisco IQ to support multiple deployment models from the beginning. Cisco IQ can run as SaaS, on-premises tethered, or on-premises air-gapped. That matters for customers with government, sovereignty, security or isolation requirements who still need AI-driven insight without compromising deployment constraints. For partners, Cisco IQ creates a new way to engage customers around lifecycle management, security posture, renewals and modernization. Instead of waiting for problems to emerge, partners can use Cisco IQ to help customers understand what they have, where risks exist and how to prioritize action. Looking ahead, Pereira says the second half of 2026 will be less about AI hype and more about applying AI to business workflows with measurable ROI. In areas such as security and identity operations, the need for speed, visibility and lifecycle intelligence will only increase. Pereira encourages Cisco customers with support entitlements to begin using Cisco IQ directly at iq.cisco.com. Because Cisco IQ includes personalized, AI-driven documentation and insights, he says the best way to understand the platform is to self-onboard and begin using it. Learn more at cisco.com Cisco IQ: iq.cisco.com  

By Doug Green “Everything is fighting for your attention.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Gerry Christensen, trusted industry strategist at ICA AI, about the future of business-to-consumer communications, AI-powered voice solutions, and how enterprises, carriers, MSPs and channel partners can prepare for a post-agentic AI communications environment. Christensen says ICA AI is focused on making it easier for consumers and businesses to engage with the calls and messages they actually want, while filtering out the unwanted traffic. The company uses AI, including deterministic AI, to help determine whether a call should be allowed through, blocked, or handled through an AI-powered interaction layer. The conversation looks ahead to a future where AI is increasingly used for outbound calls, contact center interactions, appointment setting, collections, notifications and even person-to-person communications. Christensen says AI-to-AI interactions are likely to become more common, where one person's AI assistant may interact with another person's AI assistant before a human conversation ever takes place. That future, he says, will require governance, transparency and trust. Consumers may accept AI-driven communication, but they will want to know when AI is being used and whether the entity behind the call can be trusted. “What matters is, do you trust who's calling you?” Christensen says. The podcast also explores the risks of AI being used by bad actors. Agentic AI can automate useful workflows, but the same capabilities can also be used to create more convincing fraud, impersonation and scam attempts. Christensen says that is why solutions such as ICA AI will become increasingly important as AI-powered communications become more common. For enterprises, the implications are significant. Contact centers, collections teams, healthcare organizations, appointment-setting operations and customer service groups may all use AI to reach consumers more efficiently. At the same time, they will need systems that help ensure legitimate calls get through while unwanted or harmful traffic is blocked. Christensen describes ICA AI's current approach in three parts: allow calls that should go through, block known bad calls, and use AI to handle the middle ground where additional screening or interaction is needed. That middle ground may become especially important as consumers increasingly rely on their own AI tools to manage communications. For MSPs, channel partners and carriers, Christensen says there is also an opportunity. ICA AI is developing channel partnerships and licensing its technology to carriers, creating a path for providers to bring AI-powered call protection and engagement tools to their customers. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in communications, Christensen says the industry needs to prepare now. The future may include dynamic AI-to-AI exchanges, more intelligent call handling, and new ways for consumers to control their attention. But that future will also demand trust, accountability and stronger protections against abuse. Learn more at icatrusted.ai  

By Doug Green “AI can be perfect, but it can't care.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Dan Rochon, author of Teach to Sell: Why Top Salespeople Never Sell and What They Do Instead, about trust, influence, and why the best sales conversations begin with teaching rather than pitching. Rochon says Teach to Sell is about ethical influence. For MSPs, service providers, technology resellers, and channel partners, that means moving beyond product-first selling and becoming a guide who helps customers understand their own needs, problems, and desired outcomes. The conversation comes at a time when AI is changing how buyers are approached, how salespeople prepare, and how marketing messages are created. Rochon says AI can help with research and preparation, but it cannot replace the human connection that creates trust. “Technology can give us more information than ever before,” Rochon says. “But only human beings can give us trust.” Rochon outlines a sales approach built around rapport, deeper questions, and active listening. Instead of telling a customer what their problem is, the salesperson should guide the customer to discover it. He argues that the product or service should be presented as the bridge between the customer's pain and the result they want to achieve. For channel partners and MSPs, Rochon's message aligns closely with the long-running idea of becoming a trusted advisor. Customers do not simply need another vendor selling tools, subscriptions, or services. They need someone who understands their business, asks the right questions, and helps them make better decisions. The podcast also explores renewals and recurring revenue. Rochon says salespeople should not be afraid to revisit customers when they believe their product or service is genuinely helping. Maintaining an existing customer is often easier than winning a new one, but it still requires confidence, communication, and a commitment to guiding the customer. Rochon says Teach to Sell is designed for people who are tired of pitching and want better conversations, shorter sales cycles, stronger trust, and more consistent revenue. Learn more at www.teachtosellbook.com  

By Doug Green “We want everybody to be a spam reporter.” In this special Cloud Communications Alliance and Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, about the launch of the National Spam Reporting Center, a new consumer-facing resource designed to make it easier to report spam, scam calls, robotexts, and other suspicious communications. The new site, spamreporters.com, is intended to give consumers one simple place to report unwanted or fraudulent communications. Quilici says the problem today is confusion. If a consumer receives a text, robocall, or email impersonating a bank, retailer, insurance provider, or government agency, it is not always clear where that person should go or who should be notified. YouMail created the National Spam Reporting Center to simplify that process. Consumers can go to spamreporters.com, upload a screenshot or report, and YouMail can then use that information to help identify patterns, alert carriers, and support faster action against abusive campaigns. “The key thing is we act on them,” Quilici says. The podcast explores how these reports can benefit multiple groups. Consumers get a simple reporting path. Carriers can receive evidence about numbers or campaigns that may need to be shut down. Banks, e-commerce companies, insurers, and other frequently impersonated brands can gain better visibility into abuse targeting their customers. Quilici points to current scam activity around health insurance, Medicare, preapproved loans, and impersonation campaigns as examples of where consumer reporting can provide important signals. In some cases, consumer reports can help distinguish between legitimate communications and suspicious campaigns. The discussion also looks at the challenge facing legitimate businesses. Many organizations depend on calls and texts to reach customers about appointments, service updates, reminders, and other important matters. But when those calls are mislabeled as spam, consumers do not answer. That has led some legitimate businesses to use large pools of numbers in an effort to reach customers, a technique that can resemble the behavior of scammers. Quilici says better reporting and faster analysis can help reduce that confusion, protect consumers, and improve the ability of legitimate businesses to reach customers. YouMail does not expect the National Spam Reporting Center to eliminate the entire scam and spam problem. The goal is to reduce the damage by moving faster, using consumer-submitted reports, carrier relationships, and YouMail's existing data to identify abuse and support action before larger enforcement processes run their course. For service providers, enterprises, brands, and consumers, the message is clear: spam and scam prevention improves when more people can report what they are seeing and when that information can be acted on quickly. Learn more at spamreporters.com Learn more about YouMail at www.youmail.com  

Expereo: Enterprises Are Racing Into AI, But the Network Still Has to Carry the Load, Podcast, “AI is no longer a debate. Enterprises are already using it. The question now is whether the network is ready to support what comes next,” says Marek Wasilewski of Expereo @Doug Green “AI is no longer a debate. Enterprises are already using it. The question now is whether the network is ready to support what comes next,” says Marek Wasilewski of Expereo. In this Cisco Live 2026 podcast, Doug Green speaks with Marek Wasilewski of Expereo about the company's 2026 Enterprise Horizons report and what it reveals about enterprise AI adoption, network readiness and the growing pressure on global connectivity. This is one of several Cisco Live podcasts worth revisiting after the initial wave of show coverage. The conversation provides interesting insights into how AI is changing the network conversation for enterprises, service providers and channel partners. According to Expereo's research, 92% of enterprises are using AI in some form, while 30% are already using it extensively. At the same time, 70% are investing in AI without carefully measuring ROI. That combination creates both opportunity and risk: enterprises are moving quickly, but many are still building on networks that were not designed for the scale, performance and resilience demands of AI-driven operations. Expereo, a global Network-as-a-Service provider, helps enterprises simplify and manage connectivity across complex international environments. In the podcast, Wasilewski explains why AI success depends not only on models, applications and cloud platforms, but also on the underlying network that connects users, data, workloads and business locations. For channel partners, MSPs and enterprise technology leaders, the message is clear: AI is making the network strategic again. Connectivity is no longer just plumbing. It is becoming a core part of digital transformation, customer experience, automation and business continuity. The conversation also explores how enterprises can think more clearly about AI investment, how global connectivity strategies are changing, and why network visibility, flexibility and reliability will matter even more as AI moves from pilot projects into production environments. Learn more: expereo.com

Network Is Hot Again: Stackpane's Sarbjeet Johal on Cisco Live, AI Infrastructure and Systems Economics, Podcast, Johal brings a unique mix of technical, business, and economics experience to the discussion @Doug Green, Publisher, Technology Reseller News “The network is hot again because a lot more data is traversing on it, and a lot more data will traverse on it,” says Sarbjeet Johal of Stackpane. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Sarbjeet Johal, Founder and CEO of Stackpane, technology analyst, cloud strategist and go-to-market specialist, about why the network has moved back to the center of the enterprise technology conversation. Johal brings an unique mix of technical, business and economics experience to the discussion. A veteran of VMware, Oracle and Dell EMC, Johal has spent decades building and deploying enterprise systems, advising technology providers, and helping buyers understand cloud strategy, infrastructure modernization and digital transformation. At Cisco Live, Johal says the biggest theme was simplification. Cisco, he argues, is working to reduce infrastructure complexity for customers operating across public cloud, on-premises systems, AI workloads and increasingly distributed environments. That includes a renewed focus on infrastructure as code, platform control, and AI-assisted tools such as Cisco IQ, which Johal says can help customers and partners troubleshoot, configure and operate Cisco environments more effectively. The conversation then turns to Johal's recent observation that “the network is hot again.” His point is that AI, real-time systems, digital services, autonomous agents, and API-driven interactions are all placing new demands on network performance. As more data moves across enterprise systems, latency, memory, compute, and connectivity become more strategically important. Johal notes that during AI inference, latency is especially critical, making the network, chips, CPUs, and memory all part of the same infrastructure story. Johal also frames the issue through systems economics. Enterprises are not simply buying more technology for the sake of modernization. They are being forced to ask whether cloud, AI, on-prem infrastructure, and automation actually pencil out in terms of total cost of ownership, return on investment, and operational value. For MSPs, channel partners, and technology providers, that creates an opportunity to help customers make better architecture decisions, not just consume more tools. The podcast closes with a look ahead to a future conversation on token economics, AI infrastructure costs, and where MSPs and channel partners can find real business opportunity as enterprise technology becomes more automated, more data-intensive, and more dependent on resilient network infrastructure. Editor's note: This podcast was recorded at Cisco Live in Las Vegas and is being posted later. With time, the conversation has become even more notable. Johal's central point — that the network is “hot again” — has only gained relevance as AI, automation, cloud infrastructure and real-time digital services continue to place new pressure on enterprise networks. Learn more: Stackpane at stackpane.com

By Moshe Beauford We sat down with Jake Wilcox, Omni-Channel Solutions Architect at Geisinger, to discuss the critical role of context in delivering exceptional customer and patient experiences. Wilcox explained how organizations can reduce friction by ensuring information flows seamlessly across departments and touchpoints, enabling more personalized and efficient interactions. The conversation also examined the business impact of disconnected experiences, the risks friction poses to customer satisfaction and organizational performance, and key considerations for deploying AI-powered solutions in healthcare and other highly regulated environments.

By Moshe Beauford In this episode, Dan Belanger, President of the Americas at NiCE, reveals how strategic partner enablement drives success in the technology channel. He shares NiCE's go-to-market approach, emphasizing how equipping partners with the right tools, preventing overlap, and aligning sales teams creates scalable growth across the Americas.

By Moshe Beauford At NiCE World 2026, Moshe Beauford, Technology Editor at Technology Reseller News, sat down with Justin Robbins, CEO and Founder of Metric Sherpa, for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolving role of AI in customer experience and decision-making process during the technology purchasing phase. Robbins shared insights into his entrepreneurial journey, the growth of Metric Sherpa, and his participation at the event. The discussion explores the current state of AI adoption, practical implementation challenges, strategies for evaluating AI investments, and how organizations can make smarter technology purchasing decisions in an increasingly crowded market.

By Doug Green “We're absolutely on the path, and we're not talking five, six, seven years. We're talking in the next 18 to 24 months.” In this episode of the Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Josh Kindiger, COO and co-founder of Grokstream, about the company's new L1 Agent and what it means for the future of AI-driven network and IT operations. Grokstream is the company behind Grok, an AI-powered predictive agent platform for network and IT operations. The platform comes out of the event intelligence and AIOps space and is designed to help operations teams identify, triage, and resolve recurring issues more efficiently. Kindiger says Grokstream recently released its first role-based agent, the L1 Agent, in beta. The full production release is expected in Q2. The agent is already being used with customers to prove out real-world capabilities. Because many organizations remain cautious about AI-driven automation, Grokstream is starting with low-risk, repeatable use cases. In many operations centers, Kindiger notes, the same incidents occur repeatedly, sometimes accounting for as much as 70% of activity. The L1 Agent is designed to recognize those patterns and guide operators through triage and resolution. For example, if a recurring issue requires a service restart, the system can recommend or automate that step. If a pattern points to a commercial power outage at a site, the agent can help avoid unnecessary dispatches while monitoring backup power systems. Kindiger says the goal is not to remove human oversight immediately, but to build trust through guardrails, staged automation, and operator control. Low-risk automations can be handled end to end, while higher-risk actions may require human approval. The podcast also explores the broader opportunity for enterprises, MSPs, and CSPs. Kindiger says service providers and managed service providers face growing pressure to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and differentiate in competitive markets. AI-driven operations can help them respond faster, lower manual workload, and deliver better service outcomes. The long-term direction is clear: autonomous network operations are coming. Kindiger says companies should begin now because foundational work is needed before they can fully benefit from automation. For MSPs and CSPs, he says the urgency is even greater. Cost pressure is shaping renewals and new customer wins, and AI-powered operations may become a competitive advantage. Learn more at www.grokstream.com