The Bridgecast with Scott Kinka

Latest Episodes:

The Rise of AI with Swapnil Jain Jun 05, 2023

Show notes

On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Swapnil Jain, CEO and Co-Founder of Observe.AI. We’re talking about the rise of AI and solutions that are making real-world changes right now.

Observe.AI is the fastest way to boost contact center performance with live conversation intelligence. Built on the most accurate AI engine in the industry, Observe.AI uncovers insights from 100% of customer interactions and maximizes frontline team performance through coaching and end-to-end workflow automation.

During our conversation, we discuss what lead Swapnil to build a conversation intelligence platform to improve productivity and how Observe.AI combines AI technology with human agents for improved performance and customer outcomes. We also talk about how the rise of AI had lead to more conversations about responsible AI usage and how we can balance innovation with societal impact, and so much more.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the pandemic and hybrid work model escalated the need for AI tools in contact centers.
How real-time monitoring helps supervisors identify potential sales that may not happen and intervene to convert the sale during the call.
The need for guardrails and protocols to ensure the right use of AI.
Recent advancements in AI, particularly in generative AI and large language models
Responsible use (and potential misuse) of AI and the importance of considering the societal impact.
The role of empathy and human emotions in customer experience.
Customer concerns regarding data privacy and security.
Self-policing and government involvement in regulating AI.
Swapnil’s predictions of large companies emerging based on generative AI and the potential threat to established companies.

ABOUT SWAPNIL JAIN

Swapnil is the Founder and CEO of Observe.AI. Observe.AI, a leader in Contact Center AI, transforms customer experiences and improves agent performance by helping top brands analyze 100% of calls and streamline quality assurance workflows. With Observe.AI, businesses transcribe every call with high accuracy and coach agents while gaining full visibility into their customer service operations. Observe.AI brings the power of agent assistance, automatic speech recognition, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to modern contact centers and their frontline teams. Observe.AI is trusted by more than 150 customers and partners, including Root Insurance, Alcon Laboratories, Tripadvisor, and Pearson. Backed by Menlo Ventures, Next47, NGP Capital, Scale Ventures, Nexus Ventures, and Y-Combinator, Observe.AI’s headquarters is in San Francisco with an office in Bangalore, India. For more information, visit www.observe.ai.

CONTACT SWAPNIL

Web.

LinkedIn.

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Technology Hype Cycles with Jason Carolan May 22, 2023

Show notes

On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Jason Carolan, CIO at Flexential. We’re talking about how the label of the day is for people and workloads is ‘hybrid’, and what it really means to be a digital-first company.

Flexential empowers the IT journey of the nation’s most complex businesses by offering tailored hybrid IT solutions delivered via the FlexAnywhere™ platform of integrated colocation, cloud, connectivity, data protection, managed and professional services, with three million square feet of data center space in 19 highly connected markets.

During our conversation, we discuss the challenges and opportunities related to adopting a digital-first approach, workload portability, and infrastructure management, We also talk about what it means to be a recovering CTO, and the satisfaction and growth in finding the right place — not necessarily the cool one — for workloads and for people.

Topics covered in this episode:

Flexential’s focus on delivering infrastructure as a service across the United States.
Why Flexential’s superpower lies in the expertise and skill sets of its 1000-person team.
The concept of a “recovering CTO”.
Why the conversation around digital transformation has shifted towards digital-first thinking.
Why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for technology solutions and workload placement decisions.
How the macro-economic environment is driving companies to take a digital-first look at the economics of their technology stack and how it drives the conversation around inventory and assessment of applications to get to the correct equation.
The challenges and opportunities related to workload portability and infrastructure management.
The crucial role of the network for bringing together different types of workloads.
The idea of not throwing anything away, with data being a valuable asset that informs AI and contributes to building new products.
The limitations and challenges of artificial intelligence and the concept of singularity.
Predictions for the next 18 to 24 months.

ABOUT JASON CAROLAN

Jason drives next generation network-enabled technologies at Flexential. He and his cross-functional team translates market trends into strategic initiatives that inform the investment decisions across the company’s development, builds early stage products, and go to market strategies. Jason joined the company in 2011 and has held various technology and business leadership roles in product, operations and technical management, including CTO. Jason is a recognized thought leader and industry expert in distributed computing, network systems and cloud computing.

Jason has over 25 years of experience in leadership positions in IT, system architecture, software development, and technical sales and support across a variety of companies, including Sun Microsystems, where Jason was honored as a “Distinguished Engineer." During his tenure at Sun he helped architect and implement some of the most advanced systems and platforms in financial, e-commerce, IoT, and cloud services.

Jason also led a team at VMware to develop and implement some of the first cloud provider technologies. At the Mayo Clinic he heard a variety of roles, including IT support analyst, help desk manager, developer and Unix/Network administrator working closely with clinic and research staff.

Jason was a lead author of “Building N1 Grid Solutions,” one of the first books highlighting the combined use of virtualization and automation. He also has several patents in networking, data center resource management, virtualization, and security.

He is a member and contributor to the Wall Street Journal CIO Network and Forbes Technology Council. Guest lecturer and contributor - Galvanize Denver, CU-Boulder on Cloud and Open Source Licensing / Methedologies, and former member of University of Denver AMPLIFY committee for Business / Engineering eco-system development.

CONTACT JASON

Web. https://www.flexential.com/

Twitter. https://twitter.com/jtcarolan

LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtcarolan/

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

The Business Process Outsourcing Model with David McAbee May 15, 2023

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Bridge, I sit down with David McAbee, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions here at Bridgepointe, to discuss leveraging the business process outsourcing model.

Bridgepointe helps mid-market and enterprise clients make quicker, more informed tech investments. We help our clients save time by shortening the IT procurement process while saving money and increasing ROI.

During this conversation, we talk about some of the myths we hear about the business process outsourcing model and how companies can get better results for less money.

We also talk about what happens when you have the most discerning customers with high service expectations and combine that with a slowing economy, as well as why leveraging the business process outsourcing model to cut costs doesn’t automatically mean sacrificing customer experience.

Topics covered in this episode:

● Why the business process outsourcing model is evolving rapidly.

● The actual cost of choosing the wrong business process outsourcing model.

● The role that business process outsourcing models play in skill sets and talent enhancement.

● What makes companies reluctant to embrace the business process outsourcing model?

● The importance of documentation and expert guidance when choosing the proper business process outsourcing model.

● Myths about the business process outsourcing model.

● The mainstreaming of AI technology

David’s predictions about the rise of the AI superagent.

ABOUT DAVID MCABEE

There are many things that lead to poor customer experiences including knowledge gaps, lack of insight, tech debt, and lack of vision. I help my clients overcome these challenges to achieve efficient and repeatable customer journeys across all touch points.

CONTACT DAVID

Email. david.mcabee@bptcx.net

LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmcabee/

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

The Future of Collaboration and Productivity With Zoom’s Gary Sorrentino May 08, 2023

Show notes

On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Gary Sorrentino, CIO at Zoom. We’re talking about how 2020 changed everything and what the future of collaboration and productivity looks like in today’s world.

Zoom’s frictionless communications platform is the only one that started with video as its foundation, and they have set the standard for innovation ever since. That’s why they’re an intuitive, scalable, and secure choice for large enterprises, small businesses, and individuals alike.

During this episode, we talk about the hard questions employers must ask themselves before asking employees to return to work in the office and what the impacts on collaboration and productivity might be from these decisions.

We also dive into how Zoom went from a noun to a verb, its evolution from a meeting app to a platform providing solutions for employees, customers, and developers, their goal of shaping the future of work, productivity and collaboration, and so much more.

Topics covered in this episode:

● Gary’s experience in the technology and finance industries.

● The role of Global CIO at Zoom and the importance of understanding client needs in providing practical solutions.

● The responsibility that comes with providing a technology that has changed how we work since 2020.

● Expanding Zoom’s platform to provide solutions that eliminate or decrease burnout and increase productivity.

● How Zoom had to adapt culturally to overcome challenges during the pandemic.

● The need for upskilling employees to work differently rather than simply training them.

● The importance of earning employees' commute by creating a collaborative environment that people want to come to.

● The difficulty of measuring productivity for knowledge workers and the problem of proximity bias in the workplace.

Predictions for the next 18-24 months.

ABOUT GARY SORRENTINO

Gary Sorrentino serves as Zoom’s Global CIO, after spending over two years as our Global Deputy CIO. A former Managing Director for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, Gary was the Global Head of Client Cyber Awareness and Education.

For over 12 years, Gary was the Chief Technology Officer for J.P. Morgan AWM’s global technology infrastructure initiatives, where he managed its Data Privacy program and was responsible for Infrastructure, Application and End User Technology Production Support. In 2014, he assumed a new role as the lead for their Cybersecurity efforts and developed a firm wide “Protect the Client” Cyber program designed to raise cybersecurity awareness among employees and clients.

With almost 40 years of experience in Information Technology, Gary has served in various other IT leadership positions in firms across the financial services industry. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 2005, Gary was Head of Global Infrastructure and Head of Technology Efficiencies at Citi Private Bank, where he was responsible for Global Infrastructure Support and strategic technology initiatives. Other roles he has held include Global Technology CFO at Credit Suisse and North America IT Controller at UBS.

CONTACT GARY

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/zoom/

INSTA: https://www.instagram.com/zoom/?hl=en

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Zoom

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garysorrentino/

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoom-video-communications/mycompany/verification/

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Cyber Resilience with 11:11 System’s Dante Orsini Apr 24, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Dante Orsini, Chief Strategy Officer at 11:11 Systems. We’re talking about building cyber resilience and the aftereffects of the rush to pivot workforces during the pandemic.

11:11 Systems is a managed infrastructure solutions provider that holistically addresses the most pressing cloud, connectivity, and security challenges — like cyber resilience — of today while preparing businesses for tomorrow.

During this episode, we talk about how we paused being careful during the pandemic. We rushed in and deployed tech without too much thought to our cyber resilience. As a result, the pandemic was a force multiplier for bad actors.

Plus, we discuss how despite being prevention and security-obsessed, we don’t talk about cyber resilience and recovery enough, and it’s treated like a different (and less interesting) topic. Ultimately, humans and non-technology remain the riskiest aspect of cyber resilience in all our businesses.

Topics discussed in this episode:

11:11 Systems' strategy to help organizations modernize their applications, secure their data, increase cyber resilience, and ensure application availability, regardless of where the workload exists.
The changes in security, cyber resilience, and disaster recovery in the current work environment.
The need for companies to have a multi-layered strategy to protect against attacks and improve their cyber resilience.
The importance of cyber recovery and resilience, and the move towards bringing disaster recovery into the security framework.
The challenge of retaining security talent in a highly competitive job market.
The need for a comprehensive approach to security that includes people, processes, and technology.
The role of vendors and consultants in helping organizations to build governance and ensure compliance.

ABOUT DANTE ORSINI

Dante Orsini serves as 11:11 Systems’ Chief Strategy Officer. He brings more than 20 years of experience leading direct and indirect sales teams, ideally positioning him to lead customer-focused strategy across all facets, from planning to execution, business transformation, and partner growth.

In his role as Senior Vice President of Business Development for iland, he oversaw the global direction and execution of iland’s strategic and channel partnerships. Additionally, Dante along with his team were responsible for designing iland’s robust global, partner ecosystem from the ground up. He sits on the VMware Service Provider Advisory Council, as well as the HPE, Veeam, and Zerto Partner Advisory Boards.

Dante was instrumental in helping iland to achieve “Leader” status in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service from 2016 through 2019 when the report was retired. Additionally, Dante and his team led iland to win CRN’s Partner Program (Five-Star rating) for five consecutive years as well as the Veeam Impact Partner of the Year award for four consecutive years and the Zerto Cloud Service Partner of the Year for three consecutive years.

Dante’s background, combined with his thought leadership in cloud computing and cloud infrastructure, have ensured that he is repeatedly tapped to present at events across the globe.

Dante holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interpersonal Communications from Bowling Green State University.

CONTACT DANTE

WEB: https://1111systems.com/why-1111/leadership/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danteorsini/

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Avi Lonstein of AireSpring Apr 17, 2023

Show notes

On this week’s episode of The Bridge, my guest is Avi Longstein, CEO of AireSpring. We’re talking about the idea that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, secure access service edge (SASE) and so much more.

AireSpring is a 21-year-old managed service provider (MSP) with a legacy in connectivity and communications. Today they focus on managed services including SASE, SD-WAN and have a commitment to covering international requirements.

During this episode, we discuss how managing complex services across multiple vendors can be a significant workload, especially when dealing with local regulations, laws, exchange rates, and import/export controls.

We also chat about productivity and the value proposition of AireSpring. Avi shares how they’re able to provide a higher level of service and support to mid-sized businesses with a wide set of managed solutions covering connectivity, security, secure access service edge, SD-WAN, cloud communications, and mobility and wireless services.

Topics covered in the episode:

How the pandemic has shown that a hybrid work environment can work.
Why the pandemic accelerated the trend towards cloud-based security infrastructure, with secure access service edge being a key driver for the flexible environment going forward.
How conversations with clients have shifted from measuring the number of locations to how many people are in the organization and how to connect them.
Airespring offers international services driven by customer demand, and they have a team and relationships with hundreds of international carriers worldwide.
Why AI is an essential trend that will have a big part to play in the security and telecom industry in the coming years.
Why there should be some regulation and smart thought around safety to ensure that technology is not used irresponsibly as governments attempt to curtail technology.

FOR FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com/secure-access-service-edge

ABOUT AVI LONSTEIN

Avi Lonstein, CEO, AireSpring Avi Lonstein has been a telecom entrepreneur for over 30 years. In 1989, Mr. Lonstein co-founded ADDTEL Communications. As President of ADDTEL, he was directly responsible for growing the company from a start-up operation to one of the country’s most successful nationwide long-distance resellers. Under Mr. Lonstein’s direction, ADDTEL was recognized as one of the telecom industry’s most innovative and well-managed companies, and experienced substantial growth during his tenure.

Mr. Lonstein’s next entrepreneurial venture was AireSpring which he co-founded in 2001. Mr. Lonstein and his team foresaw the massive changes in telecom technology, and rapidly built AireSpring’s own next-generation IP network to become a full-fledged VoIP carrier, offering a range of SIP Trunking and telephony services. Mr. Lonstein later spearheaded development of the company’s own nationwide MPLS network and created an innovative Mesh MPLS product that has won several awards. As chief executive officer for AireSpring, Mr. Lonstein is responsible for the company’s operations, strategy, and transformation into a nationwide provider of managed services for IP communications, intelligent networking and cloud computing applications and services. He continues to lead AireSpring as the company expands its portfolio of award-winning services and applications to keep it on the cutting edge.

CONTACT AVI

Web: www.airespring.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/airespring

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avi-lonstein-0b52b/

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Terry Barbounis of Lumen Apr 10, 2023

Show notes

Hi, and welcome to the Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode of the Bridge is Terry Barbounis. He's the Director of innovation and Strategy at Lumen, or A director of innovation and strategy at Lumen. By his explanation, he gets paid to daydream and his focus is on edge.

A phrase we hear every day, and assuming frankly we all know what that means. Terry is himself a podcast host of Lumens podcast, “Light, Data Action”. We'll give you some information in the liner notes to make sure you can check that out. He's also, by his definition, a reformed standup. He's got a silky radio voice. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little bit jealous of that.

Terry talks in big concepts and I love that, but, but he also does a great job of making them simple, his definition. Or explanation I should say, of Edge as an example during the pod was particularly compelling. You know, why is it important now? Is this new tech or a new need?

And the answer in a lot of ways is both, right? We've moved critical apps to the cloud from the office data center. We've moved people out of the office as a result of the pandemic. So, while the regional pops of a traditional tier one telco provider like Lumen, you know, might be less important perhaps as a means to deliver last mile.

Offices that may sit in the wan, they're frankly more important now as a means to get in microservices content availability and applications closer to the users. And to the applications themselves out in the field. We get into quite a bit on that. Moving to softer topics, though, we talked a lot about our new normal and the concept of busyness.

We're measuring value and productivity based on hours and not output, and how that's culturally started falling apart. Right. Primarily because of the concept of office work has changed and the way we think about it, the way we talk about it, our culture hasn't really caught up. I mean, I won't spill the popcorn.

You'll have to listen to the episode to get a little bit more. We got a little AI nerdy in the conversation. Talked about a bit about pending regulatory government oversight, how close we are to the singularity or the moment when AI achieves self-awareness. Something we've been concerned about since, you know, the sci-fi of the thirties and forties.

Frankly, what struck me most though in listening to Terry throughout the chat, and as I look back on the notes, is that Terry's opinions are all still really about. They're people centered. We talk about collab and AI and robotic process automation and the dawn of a new era, and yet people have never been more at the center of how we run our businesses post pandemic.

Is technology driving people or people driving technology, or is it both? This was a great intellectually honest chat that I really appreciated, and I hope you find it as compelling as I did. Here is my chat with Terry Barbounis, director of Innovation and Strategy at Lumen Technologies.

ABOUT TERRY BARBOUNIS

As a Director of Innovation Strategy, Terry excels in identifying emerging technologies and their impact on business outcomes. His primary focus is discovering opportunities to develop innovative products and services that address modern organizational challenges. Collaborating with external analysts, internal teams, and industry leaders, Terry seeks to uncover untapped markets with the potential for significant impact.

With 30 years of experience in the IT sector, Terry has held prestigious roles, including CIO for Blue Aspen Capital, L.P., and CTO/Director, PMO for the Christian Science Publishing Society, managing global infrastructure and IT services operations.

Terry is a sought-after speaker at industry conferences and seminars, addressing topics such as hybrid IT, edge cloud computing, and the Future of Work. He also hosts the insightful podcast, Light, Data, Action!, where he speaks with industry experts and thought leaders to demystify the latest trends and technologies.

CONTACT TERRY

Web: http://www.lumen.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tbarbounis/

Podcast: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/LNULE4903599501

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Maile Kaiser of CoreSite Feb 20, 2023

Show notes

Here are the links to two new CoreSite videos, mentioned in this episode:

OCX Demo:

https://www.coresite.com/multimedia/open-cloud-exchange-demo

Native Cloud On Ramps:

https://www.coresite.com/multimedia/what-is-cloud-direct-connection-and-how-can-it-support-your-hybrid-it-strategy

Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is Maile Kaiser. She's the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CoreSite. She's been there for about 11 years. In her past, she was at Oracle and IO Data Centers, which eventually became Iron Mountain. Personally, three kids, two dogs, loves to travel.

But in terms of CoreSite, very domestic data center provider owned by American Tower, who is one of the largest global REITs. CoreSite’s data centers are in 10 major markets in the US or what they consider interconnection-rich, data center campuses.

Let me read that back to you. Interconnection-rich, Data Center campuses. Their focus is on building communities of companies that together interoperate their workloads. Kind of a right tool for the right job approach. Storage here. Back office in the Colos, scale computing and app front ends in the public cloud, you know, applications for CRM and collaboration connect out to them.

CoreSite wants to be in the middle of all that, you know, effectively functioning as the new headquarters for the business. Now of course that we've seen the importance of the actual headquarters, wane post pandemic. From there, obviously in their data centers, they're expecting their customers to connect out in logical, in some case, private connections to the various apps and providers in the community.

It's not all that unlike some of the other stories we've heard from data center providers, at the end of the day. We know data centers are real estate at the core. But I really enjoyed CoreSite’s story around this interconnection-rich campus and community. Also interesting, is how they think about what they're calling the repatriation of data into the colo from public hyperscalers.

Customers have learned that limitless scale is valuable but not necessary and certainly more expensive in most cases than static workloads. This really comes down to a simple question. In particular, the data center space, but I think across many of the sessions we've had lately: compete or coexist. I think our post pandemic IT strategy has really changed how service providers of all kinds think about that question. “Coexist” is the principal theme behind CoreSite's approach their open and cloud exchange, which is a logical network connection platform for customers in their data centers. I won't steal her thunder. She tells the story much better than I could possibly tell it. You'll need to listen in to learn a little bit more.

This is my conversation with Maile Kaiser, the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for CoreSite.

ABOUT MAILE KAISER

Maile Kaiser is CoreSite’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. She is responsible for overseeing revenue growth through CoreSite's national sales organization, and provides oversight to marketing, business development and sales operations. Maile joined CoreSite in 2012 and was previously Senior Vice President of Sales. Maile brings over 25 years of direct sales and management experience in the data center, network communications, software and managed services industries driving growth and innovation for large enterprises. Prior to joining CoreSite, Maile was responsible for wholesale and large enterprise sales at IO Datacenters (now Iron Mountain) and ran the Southwest region for Abovenet Communications (now Zayo). Maile started her career with Oracle Corporation. Maile received a BA in English Literature from the University of California, at Berkeley. Maile also serves on the board of the Advanced Imaging Society and is the Chairman of the Awareness and Communications Committee for the iMasons.

CONTACT MAILE KAISER

Web: http://www.CoreSite.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mailekaiser/

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Chris Reaburn of Nextiva Feb 14, 2023

Show notes

Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. My guest on this episode is Chris Reaburn, the Chief Marketing Officer of Nextiva. He's a Chiefs fan, and I'm recording this intro a day after the Super Bowl; one for the ages, and one of my Eagles did not win. So, as hard as it is to be gracious right now, I still have to say this is one of my favorite episodes.

Chris is a C-level exec and a marketer in a company that Chris considers the anti-tech company. They started out like several businesses that we've talked to on the pod as a UCaaS provider based around the BroadSoft stack, which was a software platform that eventually got purchased by Cisco that powered many of the early way providers.

Back then, the conversation with customers was about moving from prem to cloud. It wasn't really about features, until it became about features when several SaaS companies jumped in to become part of the story. You're not good if you're running other people's software. It's all about the features valuations followed.

Today, even those companies, those great companies are reckoning with the post covid dominance of Teams and Zoom. And yet Nextiva survived and thrived throughout all of those stages when everyone else was developing their own app to communicate, Nextiva was focused on how complicated it was going to get when all of those applications reached critical mass in adoption. By their numbers, the average worker uses 15 to 20 applications per day to communicate, losing up to two hours or so in contact switching. Nextiva is indeed a hosted voice provider with their own software, but that software is designed as a conversation based work hub where all of your apps can be seen in real time, including their own features. Voice chat meetings, sure, but also Teams, Slack, zoom messaging apps, CRMs one place.

Their mission to eliminate silos is what makes up their market approach today. Rather than fight the others, they decided to play nice with all of them and take advantage of our desire for ease of use, and in the meantime, they're gonna get some valuable time back. What's the best app? Well, according to Chris, the right channel for customers is the one they want to use.

Okay, I can get behind that.

Let's check out my conversation with Chris Reaburn from Nextiva.

ABOUT CHRIS REABURN

Chris Reaburn is the Chief Marketing Officer at Nextiva, responsible for championing Nextiva's brand and products in the market in support of the company's vision to change the way businesses around the world work together and serve their customers.

With 20+ years leading marketing and strategy in communications, software and services businesses after a career as a naval officer, Chris leads with his unabashed love for Nextiva customers, ensuring the entire brand experience is best-in-class at every touch point.

More than 100,000 businesses depend on Nextiva to start more than 6 billion conversations each year. Chris is known within Nextiva for wearing a t-shirt with a customer logo to work every day, bringing a Nextiva customer into every meeting and each conversation.

CONTACT CHRIS REABURN

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reaburn/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/reaburn

Website: http://www.nextiva.com

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Mark Palmer of Granite Telecommunications Feb 07, 2023

Show notes

Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is Mark Palmer. Mark is the Vice President of Managed Services at Granite. Mark is a telecom lifer. His dad worked at Bell Atlantic. He was a service splice technician to pay for college. His first job was selling telco and like many of us, he went through the dot bomb in the early 2000. And he eventually ended up at Granite where he's been for 20 years at this point. I have some history with Granite. At my previous employer, we used them for field services. Experts at sourcing, training, hiring and mechanically, and consistently deploying people for other tech companies to do physical install work, onsite troubleshooting, et cetera.

This is a business that grew out of, not so much a tech focus as a use case focus, right? In this case, businesses with lots of consistently deployed small to mid-size locations, right? LD became local. Local became internet aggregation, pots replacement field services, eventually security and SASE. Today, their field services alone, are larger themselves than many tech companies.

But yet they've never wavered in that market. Specialists in multi-location, 1500 sites, 5,000 sites, 7,500 sites. We took all the time on this pod about how the pandemic changed the way we do our jobs. The way we construct our networks, the way we secure our workers, the changing state of hybrid work, and the fact that we really haven't figured it out yet.

But very often we talk about the changing value of location in the IT equation. We've moved to people-centered IT. So what happens when you're a company whose entire identity is around lots of consistent little locations? You double down and you grow as a result. This is a great story about leaning into headwinds and finding your niche.

And of course, Mark picked the Eagles to win the Super Bowl this weekend. So I loved it, but we'll see how well that holds up when we release next week's episode. In the meantime, here is an informative post0-COVID look at location focused Managed Services Provider, Granite, and they're VP of Managed Services, Mark Palmer.

ABOUT MARK

Mark Palmer is Vice President of Managed Services at Granite Telecommunications. Mark currently works to build solutions to help customers have better visibility and control over the health of their networks. Mark previously worked at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) in 1995 - 1996 as a service splice technician upgrading phone services at older facilities. In 1999, Mark moved his career to direct sales, working for Network Plus. By 2001, Mark was helped launch a new Network Plus office in Philadelphia, PA.

Mark joined the Granite Telecommunications team shortly after its founding in 2002, selling analog phone lines. In 2011, he was asked to help start the data team at Granite to sell non-POTS service to our customer base. In 2015 Mark was named one of the first directors in the Relationship Development team, which was more proactive in understanding customer goals and ensuring that we were helping to meet them. In 2017, Mark hit his 15th year with Granite Telecommunications and was asked to work with the Granite Channels team to develop programs introducing current clients and agents to next generation products Granite delivers today. In 2022, Mark celebrated his 20th anniversary with Granite.

Mark lives in Rhode Island with his wife and three children. He is currently the President of the non-profit, Burrillville Junior Hockey League and very much enjoys coaching his children’s hockey teams.

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-palmer-14b4a07/

Web

www.granitenet.com

The Bridgecast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so