[asterisk-biz] Partition of Sylantro or BroadWorks

[Alex Balashov]

We have not never dealt with Commpartners personally, but a number of 
our clients have.

There are lots of vendors that offer this type of thing, and the number 
one fear is that they are fly-by-night.  A lot of them are.  Some of 
them can actually put the technology together somewhat decently, but 
that's where their competency and value stops outright.

What seems to set Commpartners about is that they understand that viable 
business is mostly about good execution -- and, as part of that 
desiderata, great process -- not just pieces of equipment. You can't 
just plug in a resale platform on a few Asterisk boxes and say, "OK, 
sell VoIP!"  It's that kind of intellectual coherence, conceptual 
integrity, and understanding of economics that I think good resellers 
are looking for.

Although opinions certainly vary, there is consensus among my clients 
that use them that Commpartners seems to have a good provisioning 
process, a viable and worthwhile and usable support process, a lot of 
up-front white-label marketing and promotional material and other 
content to help get folks started, timely and up-to-date rate sheets and 
product definition and other things that help create a solid rebranding 
fabric, and stuff like that.  It's fairly turn-key, although I'm sure 
not without its problems.

It's getting that stuff right that sets serious vendors apart from the 
cottage industry in this space.  It's critical to do something for 
business development in order to actually enable resellers to:

(1) Actually market;

(2) Actually sell;

(3) Develop streamlined workflow processes that can be replicated at 
decreasing marginal cost.

Many small providers of this type of setup in the cottage industry are 
too busy being enamoured with the technology and ogling their servers to 
have any grasp of this.  They may have the network elements, but not the 
people elements, nor the backoffice tools, nor the product fundamentals 
to get the operational formula right for a real-world reseller.

Just my $.02, based on what we've seen working with several successful 
ITSPs' decisionmaking process.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
Mobile : (+1) (678) 237-1775