Next Level BizTech

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 227-Inside the Win: POTS Replacement Opportunities and School District Case Study with Ooma Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of Inside the Win, Graeme Scott from Telarus and David Beagle from Ooma discuss the growing market for POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) replacement. Beagle explains how major carriers like AT&T are aggressively shutting down copper infrastructure, creating a massive opportunity for partners to migrate customers to modern solutions. He introduces the POTS Tracker, an AI-driven tool that scrapes FCC filings to help partners identify market shifts and protect their customer base. The discussion features a detailed case study of a large school district in Georgia where Ooma successfully implemented 1100 lines and 300 devices, outperforming competitors through superior management software and the AirDial device's specific capabilities for emergency use cases. Beagle concludes by advising partners to look for distributed environments like municipalities and retail to find large-scale opportunities.

Ep. 226- What is Actually Running Inside Your Customer's Building? with Josh Lupresto Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

When new tech walks into a customer’s environment, who’s asking the hard questions? In this episode Josh Lupresto (SVP, Sales Engineering — Telarus) breaks down the real risk behind the headlines: devices with cameras and microphones, low-cost AI models, and shiny demos that may be vaporware, unsafe, or legitimately worth doing. Using the viral example of a robot dog with a hidden backdoor and an open‑weight AI model that rattled Washington, Josh shows why unbiased advisors matter more than ever.

What you’ll learn:

The three buckets every new technology falls into: Vaporware, Unsafe, or Real & Worth Doing
How cheap, capable tech can turn into compliance, continuity, and security nightmares
Why a vendor won’t tell you what you need to know — and how you can become the trusted advisor who does

Questions to open the conversation (use these with customers):

Do you have a full inventory of every connected device and software, and do you know where each one sends its data?
For the newest tech you’ve added, who makes it and where does the data live?
How many AI tools have teams adopted in the last six months — and were they evaluated?
If a tool you depend on gets banned or the vendor vanishes, what would break and do you have a Plan B?

Ep. 225 Inside the Win: From CapEx to OpEx — Turning a Firewall Refresh into a Managed Cybersecurity Win Jul 29, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of Inside the Win, Jason Kaufman sits down with Senior Field Solutions Engineer Joshua “Haas” Hazelhorst to unpack a real-world cybersecurity win. Learn how engineering expertise and creative partner playbooks turned a stalled, capital-intensive firewall refresh into a fully managed, 100% Opex service — delivering stronger security, predictable monthly revenue, and a delighted customer. We break down vendor deal-registration pitfalls, SD‑WAN vs. next‑gen firewall tradeoffs, financing challenges, and how to position partners as trusted advisors.

What you’ll get from this episode:

Practical tactics to convert transactional hardware deals into recurring managed services
How to navigate vendor registrations and partner politics without losing the deal
Real examples of financing options and operational considerations for small customers

Who this episode is for:
Technology Advisors, MSPs, solutions architects, and cybersecurity leaders who want to increase MRR, reduce sales friction, and deliver real risk reduction for customers.

Ep.224- The AI Inference Flip — Why Speed, Cost, and “Everywhere” Just Won- with Josh Lupresto Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

The AI race just flipped. For years it was all about building bigger models. Now the center of gravity has moved to serving those models fast, cheap, and everywhere. Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering, breaks down the “Inference Flip” in plain English: what training vs. inference really mean, why today’s models “think” before they answer, and how that shift pushes the hard problem—and the money—into real‑time inference.

What you’ll learn

Training vs. inference, explained simply (write the textbook once, read it billions of times)
Why letting models “think” increases tokens 10–100x at answer time—and shifts cost to inference
The memory wall: why moving data, not math, bottlenecks GPUs
New hardware built for inference: wafer‑scale systems (e.g., Cerebras), LPUs (e.g., Groq), and system‑level designs
What changes in the real world: costs fall, latency drops, and AI moves to the edge (“physical AI”)
Where trusted advisors win as customers face more diverse AI deployment choices

Practical takeaways

Real-time use cases become feasible: voice agents without awkward lag, live translation, multi‑step agents, instant fraud checks
Edge/onsite AI gets viable for latency, cost, or data‑residency needs
Reopen “shelved” AI projects—math and performance assumptions may have flipped

Ep.223- The AI Bill Shock and the Runaway Cost that Nobody is Governing with Josh Lupresto Jul 15, 2026

Show notes

The conversation explores the challenges and implications of implementing AI tools in business, particularly focusing on budgeting issues that arise after initial success. It highlights a real-world example involving Uber, where the rapid adoption of an AI coding tool led to unexpected budget constraints, prompting a reevaluation of financial planning and resource allocation.

Ep.222- Microsoft Copilot in Healthcare: Turning 75 Users into 7,500 with Mobile Mentor Jul 08, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of Inside the Win, Telarus VP of Cloud Chad Muckenfuss sits down with Jay Hanley, Head of Solution Architecture at Mobile Mentor, to break down a major Microsoft Copilot win in the enterprise healthcare space.

What started as a small Copilot deployment quickly grew into a large-scale AI adoption strategy for 7,500 users. Jay explains how Mobile Mentor helped the organization address data security, governance, user enablement, business use cases, and ROI before expanding Copilot across the health system.

Learn how Mobile Mentor used Microsoft technologies like Copilot, Purview, and Defender to help a healthcare organization move from AI experimentation to secure, scalable adoption. This episode is a practical look at how technology advisors can uncover bigger Microsoft opportunities by helping customers unlock the full value of the tools they already own.

Ep.221- The Booth at Denny's and the Long Technology Bet Jul 01, 2026

Show notes

What can technology advisors learn from NVIDIA’s near-misses and ultimate success? Josh Lupresto shares how Jensen Huang and team navigated setbacks—like product pivots and industry disruptions—to become a leader in AI. Discover practical advice for navigating tech shifts, leading with discovery questions, and being the trusted guide clients count on no matter how fast technology changes. Perfect for advisors facing complex changes in AI, security, and cloud.

Ep. 220- Inside the Win: Call Center Power Partnership Case Study with James Cammareri Jun 24, 2026

Show notes

Mike Baillargeon from Telarus interviews James Cammareri from Call Center Power about a successful multi-phase partnership deal. The conversation covers Call Center Power's capabilities as a contact center consulting and technology enablement company, focusing on a specific win with a home security company in Charlotte. The project started with a $42,000 Genesys Cloud CX implementation and grew into an ongoing managed services contract worth significant monthly recurring revenue. James explains how Call Center Power differentiates itself by being vendor-agnostic while offering implementation, integration, and post-go-live management across platforms like Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud CX, Zoom Contact Center, and Zendesk. The discussion also covers their BPO brokerage network of over 230 vetted providers and how trusted advisors can generate revenue through various engagement models including implementations, managed services, and outsourcing solutions.

Ep.219- The $14 Billion Tell & How the AI Giants Just Validated the Advisor Jun 17, 2026

Show notes

95% of enterprise AI projects deliver little to no measurable impact — and it’s not the model that’s failing. In this solo episode of Next Level BizTech, Josh Lupresto (SVP, Sales Engineering at Telarus) explains why the hard part has moved from building models to deploying them inside messy, real-world environments. He breaks down the recent push by major AI labs to embed engineers on customer sites, why forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) are reshaping the market, and what that means for advisors, MSPs, and VARs.

Listen for:

Why deployment — not the model — is the real product
How channel partners can turn the deployment gap into a competitive advantage
A practical playbook: build AI fluency, stay vendor-neutral, and own the integration layer

If you sell or advise on technology, this episode reframes AI as an opportunity. Subscribe to Next Level BizTech and share this with someone who needs to hear it.

Ep.218- Inside the Win: How Graphiant Turned 1 Circuit into 600 Connections with Justin Lyle-Purdy of Graphiant Jun 10, 2026

Show notes

In this episode of Inside the Win, Graeme Scott from Telarus interviews Justin Lyle-Purdy from Graphiant about network as a service (NAS) and how it's changing the way customers buy network solutions. They discuss a recent customer win that started as a simple request for a single circuit connection between two locations for a medical manufacturer but evolved into a 600-connection solution. The customer needed to connect their headquarters to Azure with an express route but faced 90-110 day lead times from traditional carriers. Graphiant's network as a service solution provided same-day connectivity using the customer's existing public internet infrastructure. The win expanded when they discovered the customer was paying over $20,000 monthly to connect 600 doctor's offices to their Azure environment through business-to-business VPNs. Graphiant's secure network fabric could replace this expensive managed service solution while providing the same connectivity with professional services included. The discussion highlights how NAS represents a fundamental shift in networking, comparable to previous transitions from frame relay to MPLS to SD-WAN and SASE, and positions it as the next major revolution in network connectivity.

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