Channel Insightz Jan2025

Dave and David chat about the channel with John Cognata of SoftTel amd William Rubio of Calltower.

Transcript

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Welcome to Talking Heads, the informative, entertaining, and brilliant podcast on enterprise communications from the team at TalkingPoints. Before we get into today's podcast, we have a special offer for our listeners who are part of the channel. David, should we tell them about our special offer? Wow. Really? A special offer? Please tell me. We we I'm glad I'm notifying you now. We have a special offer for the members of the channel to subscribe to talking points. And so do you know do you know who the channel are? Yeah. That's everybody between the software and hardware providers and the end users. That's VARs, that's that's channel partners, that's integrators, that that covers that whole space. If if the people that make it all work, right, that make that make it all work, and they can now subscribe to premium paid talking points content for a 5th of the price. This includes the insider reports. An annual subscription has 12 insider reports. The 1st month of each week, we publish. 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So so people should go to talking points with a z.com/var and subscribe now. Greetings, and welcome everybody to UC Weekly News. I'm your host, David Dantoo, and I'm joined by my partner Dave Michaels today. Dave, say hi to everybody. Hello, everybody. So what we're going to do right now is have a conversation, a discussion, a debate about what's going on in the channels with some of our channel partner guests, and I'd like them to introduce themselves. John, why don't we start with you? Who are you, and what do you do? What's your company? Well, thank you, Dave. My name is John Fagnotta. I am the president of Softell Communications. Softell Communications is a solutions provider, managed services provider, systems integrator, everything, application developer, and we've been at this for 30 years. Our focus is specifically around CCaaS contact center and, unified communications, particularly around Microsoft Microsoft Teams. And, of course, AI is the glue that is bringing everything together. So we have quite a bit of expertise around Microsoft AI, but we also look at different AI platforms, and we can get into that. And our customer base is primarily enterprise, government. Our footprint is global, mostly based out of the US, but we have a very strong team in EMEA and in, Asia Pac. And as a company, I'm, very proud to say that we speak 13 languages, everything from Mandarin to Hebrew. So, you can speak to us whatever language you choose within those 13 languages. Well, I think I'm gonna stay with English at least for the rest of this conversation because that's the only one that I can handle. Although I just did get back from CES with a lot of translation earbuds, but I'm not wearing any of them now. William, your turn. Tell us who you are and what your company does. Yeah. Well, Dave and David, thank you very much for for having me on, and, I'm glad to be able to share some time here with John as well. I've known John in the channel for a long time. My name is William Rubio. I'm the chief revenue officer at Calltower. Calltower is a unified communications as a service provider and a contact center as a service provider. We, currently are one of the largest Microsoft Teams operator connect partners on a global level. So we spend, 4 different continents in over 45 countries that we provide operator connect. We are one of the largest, Cisco CCP providers as well. So we do PSTN with Cisco Webex and with Zoom Phone. So those are really the 3 major, applications that we do on the unified communication side. We are a large partner with 59 going back about 8 years, on the enterprise contact center space. Happy to, announce that we just recently acquired an organization out of Canada that it is a gold partner with Genesys contact center. So that might be a subject of a conversation here in a in a few, but, been in the channel for over 25 years overall. We have a very good relationship with our partners and our customers. We continue to grow year over year and really just, focus on expertise and and really try to bring the wrapper around those, solution providers that are out there to really bring a unique differentiator to make sure that we could provide a full turnkey solution to our customers. That's, we've got some, steamed speakers here, but but you guys are both dinosaurs because the channel's dead. The whole everybody's going direct. I mean, the the whole model is going direct. So so explain to me how you talk to customers that tell you what I just told you. You know, it's, I'll I'll start here if that's alright. It's kinda funny that, you know, when you say that they that the channel's dead. I mean, about 70% of our business still comes direct from the channel. Right? Overall, we have some some value added reseller relationships and so forth that we do with some SIs, but, 70% still comes from our channel, and we're still growing north of 30% year over year. So anybody who says that the channel's dead, I'll definitely go ahead and, call them out on that and say, let's let's go see the partners and the opportunity that explain that way because you're a channel, and then you have a channel. And then and so this is like the this is a Emily or something. What what what's going on here? What what explain this to me. Yeah. You know, so that that's well, that's fine. I haven't heard that in years. They now now we are dinosaurs for sure. Well, I'm a dinosaur. Yeah. I know. With us, the the channels means a couple different things to a couple different folks. Right? Just depending where you're at. Where you're looking in North America, primarily, we work with what we call the TSDs. Right? The technology solution distributors that are out there. The likes of an Avant or an Intelysis, a Sandler, an AppDirect, that we have to work with Telarus. Right? Those are kind of the big ones in in the United States or in North America that we do work with. And, you know, those guys have always been our lifeline, and we partner with them, for the past 15, 14 years that I've been the CRO over at Call Tower, and we do work with them. And, it's a really great partnership because there's a lot of education. Right? I mean, going back and forth and understanding what their customer needs and us trying to make sure that we could fulfill, their requirements and then always trying to stay ahead of the curve to make sure that we can provide all those different services that customers are looking to go ahead and bundle together. So over in Asia Pac and over in EMEA, the relationships are a little bit different there. Right? When we start talking about the channel, it's really more about having relationships with, different system integrators, having relationships with different value added resellers. It's a lot more touch, to the end user customer because a lot of those partners are actually billing, the end users directly, the way that their relationships work out there. So it's still partner relationships that we do work within the channel. It's just a little bit different on how you actually partner with these organizations overall, and and working with them. But, definitely the value there, we're still seeing customers come to us through our partnerships that we have saying, hey. I need what you guys have, and I need more. And that's what these channel partners are bringing to the table, which is a huge value add to their customers, especially with the way that IT organizations today are getting limited and the amount of resources that they have, that they're looking for their partners to bring more to the table so that they could have they don't have to do all the the vendor management and have to really piecemeal all these different solutions together that their end users need. John, is that your experience as well? So it it actually is. I echo, William's sentiments about, you know, at any given year, our business is 60 to 70% channel driven. But, however, our channel is primarily, composed of service providers across the globe or telcos. I have to be careful because some of them don't like to be called telcos, but service providers, and our solutions bolt down to their network. And then the other component of our business comes from the manufacturers, be it, you know, the the the technology providers or to whereby we're creating solutions or adding value or a term that we like to use is we mind the gaps. So there's always gaps in technology, there's gaps in services, and what we're really, really good at is, delivering value, minding those gaps, and then bolting that onto, the various networks to to provide that service on a recurring, for consumption base. Alright. Well, let me let me, William, you mentioned that your business is split between, Microsoft and Cisco. You're doing a lot of Teams. You're doing a lot of Webex. Is there a stereotype? Tell me tell me about tell me about what the differences are between a Microsoft customer and a Teams customer. Well, you mean Microsoft and a Webex. You you said Microsoft and Teams. Yes. I got I understand you. I not a problem. Yeah. You know, I I think when you look at the the different platforms and and, Dave, we also do, Zoom as well. I think when you're looking at all of those 3 leading platforms, what they are. Right? I think if you go back kind of pre COVID and then you kinda go into what Microsoft did with Teams and their collaboration and what Cisco did with the BroadSoft and what Zoom has done with their conferencing solution and really kind of enabling, the the the phone part of it overall, I think they all bring kind of a unique, aspect to the different platforms that they bring. I think 1st and foremost, and we say this all the time to customers, when you're looking at Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Teams is a pure collaboration platform that does telephony. Right? So I think that's it's it's it's worded that way because it is a specific way of what it actually does. They look at voice as an application just like they look at instant messaging and they look at video and so forth. When you're looking at Cisco with Cisco Webex, I think Cisco is really your more purest telephony play that really would complement or be at par with more of, like, your traditional PBX, your more traditional prem based type solution that you have, and what they bring to the table with their AI solutions and their transcriptions, their their voice quality. I mean, definitely superior as far as what they bring. And then when you're looking at Zoom, you know, Zoom really kind of bundles it all together with its more conferencing first and then bringing in the the Zoom phone as kind of on the wrapper on the back side. So I think all 3 of them have a different angle of how they're coming into the marketplace and why they're winning and why customers are looking to what's most important to them and then making the decisions on which platforms they're going to based on the requirements of their end users. And, John, you dropped the bomb on on on this conversation in your introduction when you started to mention about AI. You know, just in the last week, we've had new machinations about AI with with with Google talking about how they're not gonna provide theirs for free, but they're gonna raise prices with, with Microsoft, you know, renaming their copilots for the 350,000th time. Are you you know, and there's a lot of camps around AI where some people believe that they want customers wanna hear more about it, but some people believe that customers are getting burned out by all the the the the noise flow. When everybody's got AI, nobody's got AI. What are you hearing from the people that you work with on a daily basis? So, Dave, it's a really good question because there isn't a day that goes by forget about a day, an hour when I don't hear AI, AI. Yeah. I'm just sick of AI hearing AI. So, where we focus is on the data, data integrity, data security. Because one of the the the the biggest I I would from our experience, anyway, the biggest issues towards implementing AI is, do I have my is my data do I have data integrity? Do is my data compliant to regulations? Is my data secure? Is my data blah blah blah blah blah blah? So this is what we focus on, and we build AI applications with the knowledge of having tools, and we do a lot of tooling. We have a lot of expertise in building tooling and working with tools that ensure and secure that that data is, is optimal for AI applications depending on the use case. So that that's really where our focus on is is really on the data, and then take that data to create applications, AI applications or use cases that that that solve a business need, mostly at the enterprise level where we focus. Now we're also looking because our focus is really, you know, we don't we don't want we don't wanna boil the ocean. We're very focused in our approach. We have a long history of legacy of working in contact centers. You know, we've worked Genesys since the days that Greg Schechman was the CEO. And you and talk about being a dinosaur. You know, who he is, if you've been around that long in terms of of, contact centers. And so we we come from a background of working with, back in the day, Nortel, Genesys, Avaya, Aspect. We have that skill in house. But today, over the last few years, our focus has strictly been Microsoft Teams, Microsoft AI, and of the contact center platforms that we focus on, it's NICE, CXone. And we work with them on a global level. And in terms of building AI applications, we focus around a Microsoft AI that then could be serve the needs of contact center platforms like NICE. So we know that NICE have their own contacts, excuse me, their own AI platforms, but we would rather build a an AI platform with Microsoft AI that could serve the need of a nice customer. So that's our approach to things, but all is fundamental to the data. And Well, I would ask you AI is secure. I would ask you both around this concept of AI because I think everybody's curious. I'm curious. Clearly, Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom, Google, all the other players have have this has been, I would say, 90% of their messaging going forward. There are other things as well, but it's been there. Has it helped your business? Has it hurt your business? Or is it irrelevant to your business because you guys are the ones that have to parse it out and deal with the customers? So this is I'll step in, and I'll just say it's actually helped our business because it's created so much confusion that you need consultants, expert to come in and provide value. So for us, it's it's helped our business. It's actually helped our business. But this is the value you provide, is talking them off a ledge and telling them that the AI AI is not gonna meet their expectations? Yeah. It is. It it is. It's it's well, it's level setting expectations. It's given the real the real goods. It's not just selling a product or selling blah blah blah. In fact, we have to go back and say, well, yeah, but be careful about this. Be careful about that. This is how it's done. Here's let me show you because this is real, and this is talking about dinosaurs. Do y'all remember that commercial, this is real, this is Memorex? I don't know if you remember that commercial. I just I don't remember. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is real, and this is it's it's it's hype. So we're focused on the real stuff. You know, it's kind of it's kind of funny, Dave, that we're I'm actually sitting here in a in a hotel room. We're finishing up our sales kickoff for 2025. And, Microsoft, Cisco, we've had about 13 different suppliers, vendors that have come out here. And Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom, about 50% or 60% of their presentation for over 3 hours was AI. And the big joke we had internally was every time time somebody said AI, we had to clap twice. And I think everyone's hands were hurting at the end of 3 days that we were here because it was all about AI. And and then the funny thing that we talk about with our customers and and being on the UCaaS and on the CCaaS side is we get customers all the time that call in and they tell us, I wanna buy AI. And we say, great. What do you wanna do with it? Well, I don't know, but I just wanna buy it. Right? And so going back to John's comment about the, you know, about the education of, you know, how you could use it, how you can make it effective for your employees and make it productive and understanding the security, you know, around it that goes with it. Right? You don't wanna go ahead and open up copilot. Everybody talks about copilot, and we're a cloud service provider of Microsoft globally. And people saying, I wanna buy copilot. Great. Did you have your SharePoint locked down on salaries? What do you mean? Well, anybody could say, what's the CEO salary? What are all the executive salary if you don't have that locked down? So there's a lot of security around it, but I think the biggest thing that folks like John and myself could do with our organizations and for our customers is really educate the customers that are out there and how they could use AI, how could they leverage it. In some cases, it's baby steps. Right? Just going in, maybe using it internally, then start using it for some type of exchange with their customer base overall, but understanding the the risks around. And that's only just the risk, the advantages, but understanding how to apply AI in their businesses to make their employees more productive. Right? That's what they wanna do. They wanna go ahead and they wanna say, hey. If I'm taking a task that takes 30 minutes a day that is very repetitive, if I could take that away from my employee and I can leverage AI to do that, whether it's around voice or CCaaS or so forth, and I could do that, and I could basically make my employee more productive. They're gonna be happier, and they're gonna be more productive. And that's really Can you do that, William? Can you can you deliver that? We can deliver it as long as we understand what the application is. Right? So, I mean, we kinda sit there and we say, we're like doctors. Right? I mean, you're coming in and you're saying, well, I don't feel well. Well, what don't you feel well? Is it your heart? Is it your knee? Is it your head? Right? So it's really that give and take back. And, you know, we've we've done lots of studies with customers and focus groups of let's try to understand and let's sit down and have discovery, understand your business, understand what it is you're like you're trying to accomplish, and then let's try to get there together. But it's not just coming in and just buy it off the shelf. Sounds very, that sounds very reasonable. The the the hype cycle is I'm gonna get rid of all my agents tomorrow. Everything's gonna be fully automated. And it's like, you know, it's just it's just kinda ridiculous there. Now now because we're talking about UCaaS 2 and telephony, I I gotta ask you a question that comes up. I get this question every every, I I I get this question regularly and I've been for the last 10 years. Are phones dead yet? And so certainly their phones are dead in the contact center. Certainly phones are dead in, you know, the home office seems to go with the softphone now nowadays. I think both of you right now are actually on mobile phones. And so so so my question is, who's use who's buying phones? Where where do you see phones still being installed and implemented? Is it a is it a role thing? Is it a mental thing? Is it a industry thing? What do you what do you see about phones? So, Michael, if I can answer that question, it's we think at least, we think it's a culture thing. And by that, I mean, we're we're we do a lot of migrations. We're specialized in migration. We have a lot of tools to migrate that do that help with the automation of migration, and part of that is adoption. And so when you look at what the adoption models, what, you know, what facilitates adoption? What are the elements of adoption? Well, there is technology, making it seamless, there's integration issues, and there are culture issues that if someone's always been used to using a phone, and you have to, wing that phone away from that individual, into headsets, or it is a process. There's a process, and we're we're seeing a lot of heads handsets of phones because we do a lot of government businesses in the government sector, but we're not seeing it that much in the enterprise or actually we're seeing less of it in the enterprise. But in enterprise, but in certain agencies, certain government sector, sectors, we do see still see the need for phones. Now the other thing that comes up is where are these phones made? Are they made in China? Are they made in the US? Are they US components? And that comes up a lot. And so that just engages us in a different discussion because the whole China thing gets in the way, unfortunately. But I'm calling it out for what it is, and that that comes up often. So, yeah, that's that's what we're So when they find out when they find out the phone has been in China, do they say no phone or do they say find me another phone? They say find me another phone because, again, it's that culture thing. Right? They want the phone. For them, they're used to using the phone. They may be used to using an old Avaya phone. In some cases, even an old Nortel phone, and and they're now moving away from it or a Cisco phone for that matter. Now Cisco phones, some of them could work within a Teams environment depending on the model, but, yeah, we're seeing we're seeing a lot of that. Dave, are you saying time for me to get rid of my butt set? But we we thought when, when when COVID hit, we thought that the phone was dead. Right? I mean, that was really kind of our biggest thing. Everyone going remote. Right? Everyone's using multiple different devices to connect. And funny enough, I actually got the reports at the beginning of the year. Our, our equipment sales as far as for physical handsets has been pretty stable for the last two and a half years. It hasn't decreased. It hasn't increased, but it's been pretty stable. And I think there are certain industries, like John mentioned, in the government sector, a lot of retail, more traditional manufacturing that still needs some shop phones, right, for emergencies and so forth. I still think in common area phones, you're still gonna continue to see those. I don't think that those are gonna go, go ahead and go away. Video. Right? Video equipment, when you're looking at conference room, that's kinda making a resurgence because now you're starting to get the struggle of people trying to come back into the office, but everybody's saying, we're no longer gonna have a cubicle. We're now gonna have these work pods. Right? These little group environments that you need kinda like a mini 4 or 5 person. So you're starting to see an emergence of that come into the workplace. And then how do you integrate that with whatever platform that you have? And, oh, by the way, I don't wanna give up my old Avaya because I still have 200 employees out of a 1,000 or so forth that that are still using it. So can you integrate those overall? So it's kind of interesting on the equipment play that you kinda see some spikes, you know, where it happens depending on the, obviously, in the industry overall. But on the equipment side or on the video side, we're seeing a lot more of that, lately, and it's kind of interesting to see that. Gentlemen, let me take you in a slightly different direction here, and I really want you to think about this. If I gave you a manufacturer and a software provider magic wand where you could change anything one thing about the companies that you do business with, the products you sell, the people you're dealing with, the the way they do it. What's your biggest pain point in this industry? Why what what what would you be changing? Well, William, why don't you go first on that one if you got one? Oh, wow. That's that's a that's definitely a tough question. But I I think really the the migration going into the cloud. Right? And and I'll just stick with Microsoft right now is I think that they're doing a pretty good job, and we're we're big into doing cloud migrations, moving people into the cloud. But that magic wand is really when you start to look at organizations that need mass type of movements and mass type of management of even devices themselves. Right? I mean, we were talking the other day to a customer that we have a template that that we're able to build with them that, it takes them 4 minutes to provision a phone, and the guy has 35 100 phones. So think about that trying to actually move that over to Microsoft Teams. And our magic wand, which we're trying to get when we work more with with Microsoft Teams is, hey. I could do those 35 100 phones in 3 minutes because we're building these templates to go ahead and work. So I think if Microsoft opens up their APIs more and what they're doing with devices, I think that magic wand would just be great. It just it's a lot easier instead of physically having I mean, we've had customers that have had to deploy, people feet on the street to actually go into retail shops to actually provision those phones. And as much as, you know, we talked earlier about equipment and where it's going and so forth, there's people still want phones to a certain point. So that will be my magic wand of just doing that. We're getting there. So our magic wand is a little bit closer, I think, than, you know, than other people as far as what they're doing. I'm surprised by that. I'll go back to that, but I I wanna hear, John's response. So so, John, what would you change if you could? So for us, Michael and David, where we what what we would change before I talk about what we would change, let's talk about the fact that they've not changed this is an opportunity for Softgel. In terms of the ability to automate some of the migrations from a different platform onto Teams, that is a huge opportunity for us because we've developed a lot of the tooling that enables that migration at scale cost effectively. And so that's been a great, a great thing. So as as long as they keep going that way, that's okay. We'll figure out. We'll mind the gaps as I said earlier. That's a gap and that we can take we do that and we do that well. But the one thing that I would change is when we work with a partner, we become an extension of that partner. We are that partner. So when we work with a manufacturer and we are either a race acting as in the reseller mode or acting as a consultant or acting as a deployment or creating products with that box, and we're focused, we don't expect that partner to compete with us. That is the one thing that I would change in the industry. If you're working with us, then work with us. But if you're gonna work with us and compete with us at the same time, maybe I'm too much of a dinosaur, maybe I'm too old school. That model, I don't know. It's like, are you working with us? Are you competing with us? So that is Yeah. That was my first question. Everyone's going direct. I think they they all say they're going direct until they find out it doesn't work, and then they then they go it it's like this constant pendulum swinging back and forth. But, I I wanna I wanna challenge both of you because I think you answered David's question wrong. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna clarify something here and and and ask you to be if I if I'm right or or or wrong here. But but you both made a point about migration and migration specifically to the cloud. I get the sense that cloud is over. Now now when cloud was new 10, 20 years ago, whatever, it was all about OPEX. It was all about evergreen software. It was all but all that is is true no matter what now. It doesn't really matter. And I don't really see cloud as as the draw anymore. Now Teams is that software product that people like, and so I'm not saying that Teams is over. Teams is doing great. I'm not saying that that, I'm just questioning, when you talk about and and migrations will always be a part of the business and particularly for the for people like yourself. So migrations will always be there. But is cloud is cloud really a draw still? I mean, do do you find that or I mean, I mean, Gartner says that more than half the contact center agents are still not on CCaaS. I mean, this has been 20 years of migration, and there's still not even half. I mean, it's like is it over? I mean It's an interesting question, Michael. I John, you gotta stop calling me Michael. I know I know this is hard for you, but, but we're on a first name basis. You really gotta call me Dave. But but go ahead. Alright, Dave. I I'm so sorry. I I thank you for correcting me. I I apologize. Just thank you, Dave. Interesting question because cloud is not over. It's it's far from over. However, there are, at least from our optics, from what we see, from our experience, you know, security comes into play a lot. Instances where they're not they're on the customer's tenant and not the the cloud. Issues of where AI is now reducing, in some cases, the number of users that subscription users that you need on the cloud, where in one instance in one use case, we had a customer that needed, you know, 200 users on the cloud. Now with AI, you only need 1. So that reduces the the the the revenue of that AI provider. So we're seeing this sort of thing. I doubt very much that, the cloud is over, far from it. I I think the cloud is still gonna be around. There's definitely, areas of improvement towards the cloud. If you look at, you know, the the the need for hosting environments. You know, if you want to invest anywhere, you want to put your money on a hosting companies, you know, that's a place to do it. There's a lot of companies out there that are doing really well in creating data centers because the cloud is still there and still growing from our experience. Liam? Yeah. I mean, so, you know, simple answer there to your question is no. The the the cloud is not dead. Right? I think, I think like everything else, it evolves. Right? Right? So I think when you're looking and you're going back to the days of VoIP, right, I remember going back to, you know, the early 2010, 2008 time frame that everything was around VoIP, and now it's all unified communications. Right? Nobody says even nobody knows what voice over IP even stands for anymore. It's all UCaaS. And now you're starting to see the I the AI version of it. We still run into customers that have a portion of their business in the cloud, and the other portion is still prem based, and you're still doing that. And then there's even others that are saying, yeah. I'm completely in the cloud, but now what's my next step in the cloud? Is it tightening up security? Is it moving to more robust, more efficient, that thing? So I don't think the cloud's ever gonna die, and I think customers have to realize gonna die. I didn't I didn't mean that it was dead, but in when I said it's over. I just meant from a sales perspective Oh, god. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's not it's not what's driving the business. What's driving the business is is like other things and and 100%. Yeah. And I think for folks like John and I, we have to continue to evolve and listen to our channel partners and listen to our customers of what they need and make sure that we stay on top of those requirements into the cloud. Yeah. You know, recently, I think I heard a, post or some noise about Microsoft's executive saying that, the cloud is is dead or something to that effect or or They said SaaS. They said SaaS will be over. SaaS. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You know? It's always interesting when the litter and SaaS says it's over, but, yeah. Yep. Very good. John, William, thank you very much for joining us. We're gonna have more of these conversations and hope you'll join us for the next one. Very briefly, William, if somebody wants to reach out to you and find out more about your company, where do they go on the net? That's real simple. They just go to calltower.com. That's real easy. They just go to our website. There's a contact us right there. We'll definitely get back to you, and we'll get you the right expertise on the phone, and and, go ahead and just talk to your solution. Awesome. John, same question. How would somebody reach out to you or your company? So we're actually re reformatting our website because they can go to softtel.com, s o s p e l dot com, contact information, there and or reach out to me. I will definitely put you in contact with the right folks. My email is jcognata@softel.com.jcognata@softel.com. I really have enjoyed this. Thank you, David and Dave. Appreciate it. Mike and David, I'm sorry for calling you Michael. That was a mistake. That was a big no no. Not the not the first. Not the first. And and, Dave, how would somebody find out more about talking points? Yes. You know, that's, you know, I think I I think, Talking Points is an open book, and we're on all the different social channels. But, of course, talking points.com. And we're gonna be covering a lot more around you know what? Actually, I didn't even ask my first question. We're gonna be talking a lot more around what I call the channel. I don't even know what to call it. I mean, you got solution providers. You've got service providers. You've got VARs. I mean, I don't even know what what to call this anymore. And and and even when you when you guys introduced yourselves, you used, like, 12 terms each of the other and they were all different, I might throw out. But, but but so but we're gonna be trying to cover this space a lot more. I guess I guess I guess we'll just call it the go to market, how how these solutions go to market. But but, we'll be covering a lot more of this, so talking points.com, and that's points with a z on the end because the one with the s was taken. Yeah. And, Dave, I I've always used the concept of, of, of of VARs except whenever you use VAR, then somebody's gonna jump up and say, what actually is the value that's being added? And it opens up this whole can of worms that I don't wanna get into. But, thank you, Dave and Joe and value. Dave, it's all about value. All about value. Thanks very much for listening today. Again, we wanna remind you of the special offer that we have for members of the channel. Take a listen. David, should we tell them about our special offer? Wow. Really? A special offer? Please tell me. We we I'm glad I'm glad I'm notifying you now. We have a special offer for the members of the channel to subscribe to talking points. And so do you know do you know who the channel are? Yeah. That's everybody between the software and hardware providers and the end users. That's VARs. That's that's channel partners. That's integrators. That that covers that whole space. If the people that make it all work, right, that make that make it all work, and they can now subscribe to premium paid talking points content for a 5th of the price. We this includes the insider reports. An annual subscription has 12 insider reports. The 1st month of each week, we publish. I don't know, what's how do you describe the insider report, David? It's it's a concise yet chock full of information recap of everything that happened in the prior month, sometimes up to the prior hour before we published it. And, and it also has, you know, our analysis of what it means. What does what is the stories what do the stories actually mean? Curated and opinionated news, and it it's the most efficient way for a busy executive to stay current. But then you also get, wait. There's more. But it also includes our deep dive reports, like 5 8 5, 6, 7 of these a year. I don't know. 8 of these a year. These are these are our deep dive reports where 1, you or me or both of us go deep into a subject and cover some some subject or event, everything they need to know about about something. Like, you did one recently on the on hybrid work. Yeah. And we learned a lot of things by doing that report, and we explained it to a lot of people who didn't know that either. And by being a subscriber, you also get, special special opportunities that are not available to the general public. Yeah. It's access to us. That's, you know, some private conversations and some consultations. It's a it's a great ability to to really get a get a get a handle on what's going on in the space. So so the way you get this special offer for the channel is you go to talking points.com. That's points with a z on the end. Talking points.com/bar. That's the only place you're gonna find this because it's not listed anywhere else. Talking points with a z.com/var, v a r. And what is the offer? What's the cost? The offer is, for 1 a single a single seat subscriber, 9.95 a year. Oh, you're right. That's that's even less than a 5th of what the cost typically is. Even less. Certainly, to get an edge on your competition and know what's going on in the space in a way that you wouldn't have. Limited time only. Okay. So so people should go to talking points with a z.com/var and subscribe now.