Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

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• SmarTrak.ai Turns Cisco Data Into Partner Growth, Podcast 02.07.2026

  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.
• Airsys: Steve Brock on Why Cooling Is Becoming Critical Infrastructure for AI and Telecom Networks, Podcast 02.07.2026 16dk

  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 01.07.2026

  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.
• TTS Company: The Feedback Conversations Managers Wait Too Long to Have, Podcast 01.07.2026 12dk

  “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  
• YouMail Protective Services Offers Telecom Resellers a New Way to Sell Robocall Protection, Podcast 01.07.2026 10dk

  “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, Podcast 29.06.2026

  Virtuozzo Makes the Case for AI-Ready Cloud Infrastructure, TR Podcast
• TNS Helps CSPs Modernize Voice Infrastructure Without the Rip-and-Replace Risk, Podcast 29.06.2026

  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 28.06.2026

  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/
• Deepgram on Voice AI Infrastructure and the Road to Production-Grade Agents, Podcast 24.06.2026

  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  
• Rubrik on Cyber Resilience in Healthcare, Podcast 24.06.2026 13dk

  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  
• Voix House on AI Rollouts and Change Management, Podcast 24.06.2026

  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  
• SoloTruth on Asset Relationship Management for Enterprises, Podcast 24.06.2026

  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 22.06.2026 15dk

  “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.
• Versa Networks on Zero Trust MCP and the Hidden Risk of Agentic AI, Podcast 19.06.2026

  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  
• Kentik on Network Intelligence and AI Infrastructure Pressure, Podcast 19.06.2026

  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  
• Nile on Infrastructure Budgeting in the AI Era, Podcast 18.06.2026

  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  
• AI Across the Stack: Philipp Heltewig on Cognigy’s Integration into NICE, Podcast 18.06.2026 6dk

  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/
• The Channel Architect: Dorothy Copeland’s Plan for Partner Growth at NiCE, Podcast 18.06.2026

  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.
• Cisco IQ Moves CX from Support to Lifecycle Intelligence, Podcast 18.06.2026

  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  
• ICA AI on the Future of AI Communications and Consumer Voice Protection, Podcast 17.06.2026

  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