Archive for the 'New Zealand IT Industry' Category

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Learning from our international telecom MSPs and partners

April 29, 2021

One of the things I enjoy most about Datagate Telecom Billing, is that we are an international business, with an international team and international partners, serving an international group of MSP clients. With an ecosystem like we have at Datagate, we’ve learned, and continue to learn so much about how the MSP Telecom business operates around the world.

The MSP industry itself is strong on networking, learning and sharing experiences & knowhow. This is evident in the online forum Reddit and in the great selection of well-attended MSP industry conferences, such as IT Nation, DattoCon, ConnectIT, Channel Partners, ITExpo, Canadian Channel Partners and the list goes on.

At Datagate, we’ve established a series of monthly webinars called “Talking VoIP with Datagate” where we talk with selected partners and clients about their experiences, offerings and business in general. This month we’re talking with Allegiant Technology about telecom offerings to the MSP community, and next month we’ll be talking with Eric Hernaez, the founder and former president of SkySwitch, who recently joined Datagate’s board of directors and is now the CEO of a new technology business called RabbitRun.

Our observations – what is common to all and specific to some MSP geographies

Here is some of what Datagate has observed about the MSP Telecom industry in the countries we operate in, which are the USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

  1. Worldwide, the demand for MSP services appears to be at an all-time high. Most MSPs serve businesses, and the Covid-19 pandemic has increased business reliance on IT and communication systems. The main challenge for most MSPs appears to be keeping up with demand.
  2. More and more businesses are preferring to buy their telecom systems and services from their IT provider. Increasingly, IT and telecommunications are becoming one and the same.
  3. In the United States, telecom tax and regulatory compliance is a big topic and major concern for MSPs who sell telecom services. This is why Datagate has invested so heavily in this area, supporting the best telecom tax engines and partnering with the best telecom tax & compliance service providers. Tax and regulatory compliance is not a major concern for MSPs outside of the United States, however.
  4. MSPs who provide IT and Telecom services commonly use a PSA (Professional Service Automation) system, such as ConnectWise Manage, Datto AutoTask, Kaseya BMS and others. They typically want to process and be able to see both their IT and their telecom business in the same PSA environment. This is actually why Datagate is so successful, because our strategy is to enable telecom billing for these PSA’s.
  5. Inside the United States, the most popular accounting system for MSPs is QuickBooks by a big margin. In second place would be Xero.
  6. Outside the United States (particularly Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand), MSPs more commonly use Xero for their accounting system, by a big margin.
  7. Globally, most MSPs resell UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) or VoIP telecom services provided by a wholesale provider. Wholesale providers can either be “White Label” (where MSPs sell the service to their customers on their own invoice and take responsibility for the tax and regulatory compliance), or have an Agency or Referral model (where the MSP effectively outsources the billing, tax and compliance to the provider). Examples of White Label wholesale providers are SkySwitch (US & Canada), OITVoIP (US), Gamma (UK), Access4 (AU) and Spark Wholesale (NZ). Examples of Agency wholesale providers are Allegiant Technology (US), MedTel Communications (US) and WaveFly (US).
  8. Microsoft Teams is a very strong driver of business for MSPs and the ability of Teams to act as a softphone for making telephone calls through a Cloud PBX is the most popular product offering around for MSPs around the world. The interesting thing about Teams is that it further unifies the worlds of IT and communications – so much so that we’ve added the ability to bill Teams calling to the Datagate telecom billing engine. Microsoft Teams is introducing a lot of MSPs to the world of telecom. TeamMate Technology in the US are doing great things enabling telecom providers to support Teams, as are TeleSmart (NZ & AU) with their Teams calling offer to MSPs. Teams calling is now a “must have” and most of Datagate’s telecom partners are offering this.

It’s a great time to be part of the MSP world, and we look forward to continuing our learning process, especially through Datagate’s “Talking VoIP with Datagate” monthly webinar series. I hope you’ll join us.

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Communication, Datagate, MSPs, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
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New Webinar Series: “Talking VoIP with Datagate”

January 25, 2021

One of the great things about the telecom – MSP industry is that there is no shortage of interesting topics within it to learn about and apply to your business to make it more successful. These include technical, product, business and regulatory subjects (yes, regulatory subjects can be interesting too).

This year Datagate has decided to run a series of webinars called “Talking VoIP with Datagate” where we delve into what we believe are the most interesting subjects to us and our MSP community. In effect, it’s a learning exercise that we want to share with anyone who wants to join us and we will be talking with some of the most interesting and qualified people in the industry on the topics we cover.

At the time of writing, we are still compiling our list of topics and guests for the year, but our first topic will be “Using Microsoft Teams as a softphone” and we’ll be talking with Micah Singer of TeamMate Technology. TeamMate develops the software that connects Microsoft Teams to phone systems and so Micah is on the cutting edge of what can be done with Teams and telecom.

Other topics that we’re considering for the series include “Building a successful telecom business”, “Telecom tax and compliance in the United States”, “Digital marketing for MSPs”, “Data analytics for MSPs”, “Adding value with professional voices” and others. We’re open to suggestions for further topics that would be interesting to our MSP community.

I hope you’ll join us in this series. It should be fun, interesting and educational.

Posted in Billing, Datagate, MSPs, Networking, New Zealand IT Industry, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
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Datagate featuring at IT Nation Connect 2020 – Virtual

November 2, 2020

Next week (November 10th, 11th & 12th) Datagate will be a gold-level booth sponsor for the fourth time in a row at the ConnectWise IT Nation Connect conference, which is traditionally held in Orlando, Florida each year.

This year, due to Coronavirus-related health & safely concerns, the event will be “virtual” for the first time, instead of in-person. This presents a great opportunity for MSPs around the world to “attend”, what I believe to be the greatest industry event for MSPs, without the expense and time commitment that is normally required.

Datagate wins “Best Newcomer” award at IT Nation 2017 in Orlando, Florida

Datagate’s first appearance at IT Nation was in November 2017, which marked the first time that we connected face to face with American MSPs and started to understand their requirements for a telecom-billing solution that would integrate deeply with ConnectWise Manage and handle the inclusion of numerous telecom taxes at the federal, state, county and city level.

We also won the “Best Newcomer” award from ConnectWise and along with that, received a lot of publicity within the ConnectWise MSP world.

We came away from IT Nation 2017 with over a hundred sales leads for MSPs wanting a solution like Datagate, that would save them days of work each month, share its data with ConnectWise Manage and make the complicated task of telecom billing very easy and quick.

This started the ball rolling for Datagate with ConnectWise, and since then we’ve grown to serving over 150 MSP clients using Datagate for telecom billing with ConnectWise Manage. We’ve sponsored each IT Nation Connect event since then, and this year we’re doing the same – except for the first time, it will be a virtual event.

Anyone wanting to virtually attend IT Nation Connect 2020 can register here.

I hope to see you there.

Posted in Billing, Communication, Datagate, MSPs, New Zealand IT Industry, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
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MSPs see strong revenue growth in business VoIP despite Covid-19

September 28, 2020

Computers and phones have converged, so the providers of IT services, known as “Managed Service Providers” or MSPs, are now selling VoIP phone systems as a natural and profitable extension of the managed services they provide to their business clients.

From the strong revenue growth we at Datagate see through these MSPs, even during a global pandemic, it is clear that businesses around the world like to buy their telecom and IT services from the same source – their MSP. This is hardly surprising, given that the network technology is common to both, and nothing can be more frustrating to a business customer than having multiple technology providers pointing to each other when something goes wrong.

After some recent conversations with Ken Davis, the president of ConnectWise BI & Analytics provider Cognition360, I was inspired to look more deeply into the numbers to draw insights into what is happening to the MSPs using Datagate for telecom billing, especially during this complex time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Cognition360 now has the capability of providing analytics specific to Datagate telecom billing within a ConnectWise Manage database – which I am very excited about.

To date, Datagate has signed up over 150 MSPs who use our SaaS billing solution to bill VoIP services, spread throughout the United States, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand (with most in the United States).

In calculating the following numbers, we looked at the period from August 2019 to August 2020 and we only included MSPs that had been with us longer than the measured 12 month period. Six of the twelve months in this period included international Covid-19 restrictions which only appears to have had a somewhat negative effect on New Zealand and Australian telecom revenue.

The international average revenue growth rate for MSPs billing telecom services through Datagate over this period was 33%. In the Australia-New Zealand region the average growth was down to an average 25%, while in the United States, the average was a whopping 77%.

Obviously, achieving a high percentage revenue growth gets harder, the larger a business is, and is was notable that our larger MSPs were still achieving impressive growth rates, with large dollar value increases.

Internationally, Covid-19 seems to have made our MSPs busier, helping their business customers reconfigure for staff working from home, and implementing “Unified Communications” VoIP systems.

My conclusion from looking at these high-level numbers, is that selling VoIP and Unified Communications, is a solid high-growth opportunity for MSPs which seems to be mostly resilient to the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Datagate, MSPs, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO | 1 Comment »
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20 years on: Exonet – my first major software start-up exit

July 30, 2020

In July 2000 I was on top of the world. My co-founders and I had just sold “Exonet”, our New Zealand-based financial software start-up, to an Australian listed company called “Solution6” for AU $30M.

It was the culmination of a fast and furious two years since we started the business. I was the developer who had the outlandish idea to start writing an accounting system and bring in co-founders Maurice Bryham and David McKee Wright to help build a business around it.

Exonet was a “new generation” ERP client-server accounting system with a Windows interface, running on an SQL database. It was all new technology back then, when most accounting systems for SME businesses were still running on MS-DOS with proprietary databases.

Exonet opened offices in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Hwa Lian Tan led our business in Singapore and Simon Butler led our Australian business. Simon’s M&A experience was invaluable in our negotiations with Solution6.

Due to widespread fears about how old accounting software would handle the year 2000 and the market’s desire for the new technology that Exonet was built on, our sales “went ballistic” from the start and exhibited the upward “hockey stick” sales trend that software start-ups still aspire to. This was what attracted Solution6 to acquire us.

Exonet’s main investor was a VC company called IT Capital. At the time of the exit, I recall they had been with Exonet for about 18 months, had invested NZD $1.5M and effectively owned about a third of the business. A $12.7M return on an 18 month investment of NZD $1.5M – that’s still got to be one of the best investments ever made in the business history of New Zealand!

Following its acquisition of Exonet, Solution6 merged with another large Australian software business called MYOB (“Mind Your Own Business”) and so the Exonet software was renamed to MYOB-EXO. Today MYOB-EXO is perhaps the most widely used of the mid-market ERP accounting packages in Australia and New Zealand, with many thousands of companies using it.

Some of the lessons I learnt from the Exonet experience are;

  1. Success comes from a combination of skills, lots of hard work and lots of luck.
  2. Much of the skill required is in recognizing the luck that surrounds you, and knowing what to do with it.
  3. Business success invariably comes from a team of people; specifically, the combined skills, motivation and dedication of those people and the interplay of how they work together.
  4. It’s all about the journey, not the destination.

After the exit, I worked for the Exonet business within Solution6 for a short while and then decided to take some time out, away from business. It was during that time out I realized that, although I reached the destination of an exit, I still missed the journey of getting there. I missed the energy and engagement of the business world, so I dived back in again and co-founded two new software businesses; Enprise and Datasquirt.

Much of the skill required is in recognizing the luck that surrounds you, and knowing what to do with it.

Enprise became of a group of businesses, of which two operated internationally, with a particular emphasis on the United States. One of those was EMS-Cortex, a SaaS software provisioning system that we sold to Citrix in 2011 for US $11M. Also in 2011, we sold ASX-listed Datasquirt to Silicon Valley-based LiveOps for a similar price.

The international software business experience and contacts I gained through Enprise and EMS Cortex set me up for my current role as CEO of Datagate, where I am now based in Vancouver, Canada. Datagate is a SaaS billing solution for MSPs who sell telecom services, which we sell into the USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Another thing I’ve learnt over the last twenty years since the Exonet exit; it normally takes much longer than two years to build a good business!

Posted in Billing, Cortex, Datagate, Datasquirt, Enprise, ERP, MYOB EXO, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS | Leave a Comment »
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Cognition360 analytics is boosting visibility and profitability for ConnectWise and Datagate users

May 23, 2020

In this time of Covid-19, more than ever, business leaders need to keep a close watch on what’s happening in their businesses in real time. They need to see trends, issues and opportunities as they occur, so they can swiftly tune their businesses to protect and maximize their bottom line.

Cognition360 Business Analytics platform

This is why I’m so impressed with Cognition360, which a “next generation” analytics solution that uses machine learning and predictive AI. It’s optimized for users of ConnectWise Manage and is now being further optimized for users of Datagate telecom billing.

Cognition360’s president and co-founder is Ken Davis, who has an impressive IT industry track record, having built and exited a large and successful MSP business in New Zealand. Ken understands the MSP business model implicitly, and that expertise, combined with his knowledge of ConnectWise comes through clearly in Cognition360.

Instead of static monthly reports that show where the business has been, Cognition360 drills down into interactive reports using live data to reveal what is happening in the business right now, day by day. Instead of reacting to what happened last month and not understanding why, you can track your KPIs day by day, immediately seeing what changes you need to make. Your reports become a dynamic part of your day by day tuning of your business.

Now with more than 30 million tickets in its database, Cognition360 is the largest repository of industry-wide ConnectWise data in existence. This enables Cognition360 to show MSPs how they are performing compared to current and accurate industry benchmarks, for all their key metrics. Importantly, this gives them the ability to home in on the areas of their business which can be improved.

Of particular interest to Connectwise MSPs who use Datagate for telecom billing, is that Cognition360 will soon have the ability to recognize Datagate telecom invoices and report on these specifically.

I recommend that all MSPs who use ConnectWise Manage, should have a close look at Cognition360.

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The new normal: Now is a good time to review and upgrade your IT & communications systems

March 24, 2020

It is certain that the Covid-19 pandemic is driving immediate and potentially long-term, changes to the way the world does business.

As always, it’s those businesses that adapt and change to the new situation and the new future that will survive and prosper best. This is an ideal climate for small businesses to become large businesses and for large businesses to to potentially fail if they don’t adapt quickly enough.

If you haven’t done it already, now is the time to move off old systems that require on-premise hardware (on premise servers, computers, PABXs etc) and move onto Cloud-based systems, that you can access from anywhere you have Internet access. Remote working is the “new normal”.

Remote working is the “New Normal”

Your phone system should be a “Unified Communications” system that you can access via an app on your smartphone, tablet or laptop computer. That way you can advertise a single phone number that can always reach you, and you are always in touch with your business and your staff.

Standardize on a collaboration platform, such as Microsoft Teams or Slack, which will enable you to have meetings with your staff, share documents and communicate more easily. Microsoft Teams can also be connected to a phone system, which is a powerful combination for integrating your outside calls with your internal processes.

Move from desktop Office apps to Office 365 or Google’s “G Suite”. This will ensure you have access to your work platform from a range of devices, instead of just one.

There are plenty of Cloud-based accounting packages to suit your business, including QuickBooks Online, Xero, MYOB, Microsoft Dynamics and others.

Popular Cloud CRM systems include SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others.

Now is the time to review your systems and upgrade where needed, to ensure your business can work from anywhere. Contact your Managed Service Provider. This is the new normal.

Posted in Billing, Datagate, MSPs, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
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Integrations key to business software success.

July 25, 2019

These days it seems like most, if not all technology products are getting smaller and more powerful, smaller and faster, smaller and less expensive, smaller and smarter, smaller and better connected.

In business software we’re seeing the same trend, away from the large monolithic systems of old, towards smaller, more targeted “apps” with a specific purpose. These apps connect to other apps and work together to form a larger overall “integrated solution”.

I first noticed this “smaller and connected” trend a few years ago when I worked in the ERP industry. We started seeing smaller accounting systems being used by larger and larger businesses. How could this happen? The answer was and is that the smaller accounting system is plugged into add-on solutions that enable the combined solution to cater to the specific requirements of the industry or user.

In the case of my company’s Datagate Billing Solution, we’ve decided on a product strategy where we focus on the rating and billing piece of the solution for telecom and other utility resellers, and leave the accounting, CRM, and business management functions to other popular solutions dedicated to those purposes. This means each software company focuses on what it’s good at and the integrations between the software packages enable them all to work as a single “integrated” solution.

Being integrated with other popular software products also increases our appeal to prospective customers who already use those products. This in turn leads to partnerships with those software vendors, as per the topic of my previous blog article.

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Datagate, ERP, MYOB Advanced, MYOB EXO, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, SAP Business One, Sap Isv, TELCO, Utilities, Water Utilities | Leave a Comment »
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Vancouver as an ANZ beachhead to North America

May 10, 2019
Vancouver’s other airport

When high-growth businesses from Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) look to expand their presence into North America, they have a range of cities to choose from. Sometimes they don’t even need to choose a single location, when staff can work remotely from different locations. When they do need to choose a beachhead location, most will choose a west coast city within easy reach of ANZ. This will ideally have a major airport close by that has good access to the rest of North America and of course New Zealand or Australia.

My SaaS billing software company, Datagate (which was established in New Zealand), looked at all the following location criteria for setting up a new presence in North America, to complement our existing sales office in Jacksonville, Florida and extend our reach from our base in Auckland, New Zealand;

  • Good time-zone overlap with New Zealand (we still have a many of our customers, partners and key staff located in Auckland, New Zealand).
  • Good time-zone overlap with the North American continent (our major focus and we have customers, partners and prospects spread throughout the wider USA).
  • Some workday time overlap with Australia and the UK (where we also have important customers and prospects).
  • Easy access to a major airport, whereby we can take a single flight to most major cities in North America, UK, Europe, Australia and of course New Zealand (multi-leg flights with stopovers are far more time-consuming and energy-draining)
  • Ease of getting established (incorporating a company, setting up bank accounts, renting premises, telephone systems, utilities etc).
  • Good public transport.
  • The costs of running a business are not overly high.
  • A great place to live, where we can easily attract talented, high-grade employees.

We ended up choosing Vancouver, Canada, ahead of other west coast cities that also met our time-zone and accessibility criteria. We liked that we could set up here relatively quickly and everyone we engaged with was positive, friendly and very helpful.

For me personally, the speed of getting established in Vancouver was boosted by my dual citizenship of Canada and New Zealand, but regardless of this, Vancouver still stacked up well as a place to live and work in North America.

Canada Place

The shift to Vancouver from Auckland, New Zealand has been a positive experience for my wife Lee and I. Vancouver is a beautiful, vibrant, multi-cultural city, surrounded by water, snow-capped mountains and the great outdoors. We live near our office in the downtown city area, where everything we need is within walking distance, including a train to the airport. People here are friendly, helpful and welcoming of newcomers.

From a business perspective, we’ve found it easier to communicate with our North American customers, prospects and partners for longer periods of the day than we could from New Zealand, plus it’s been very convenient to have closer access to the conferences and trade shows that we regularly attend.

Coordination and collaboration with our US sales office in Jacksonville, Florida has also improved greatly. American customers no-longer say our time-zone is “on the dark side of the moon”.

It was fast and easy to register a British Columbia company and open an account with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), who can handle both Canadian and American banking. American business is easy from here and most Canadian establishments are experienced at supporting businesses that operate in the USA.

We’ve had great assistance in getting set up here from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE), Nick Fleming the New Zealand Trade Commissioner, Callaghan Innovation and our local Canadian immigration consultants Sas & Ing.

Lee on the Vancouver waterfront

My advice to high-growth businesses from New Zealand and Australia, who want to set up in North America is… make sure you check out Vancouver!

Posted in Billing, Datagate, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO, Utilities, Water Utilities | Leave a Comment »
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Telecommunications billing, tax and compliance in the USA

September 23, 2018

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) the world over are taking the business telecommunications market by storm.

Computers and phones have converged, voice services are now just an application on your computer or smartphone, so it’s only logical that businesses prefer the simplicity of sourcing their telecommunications solutions from their trusted MSPs.  It’s great recurring margin for the MSPs and better service for their customers, with a single point of supply and support for their ICT services.

In most countries, it’s easy for MSPs to sell and bill telecommunications; they just plug their PBX or upstream telco provider into a SaaS telephony billing system (like Datagate) – and plug that into their accounting system – and away they go!

In the USA however, there is more complexity to it for MSPs who want to sell telecommunications.  Every state, county and city jurisdiction has the ability to add taxes and surcharges to the telecommunications bill, depending on where the calls are made from. In addition to that, there are various registrations and other compliance requirements, some of which are also dependent of where their telecommunications customers are located.  In short, American MSPs need good expert help and advice, along with a billing system that can handle all the taxes to ensure they stay out of trouble and meet all of their compliance obligations.

At Datagate, we’ve made it easy for MSPs to bill telecommunications anywhere in America and still be able to sleep at night.  We’ve teamed up with the top authorities on tax, Wolters Kluwer to include CCH SureTax with every American implementation of our Datagate billing solution. We chose CCH SureTax, because when it comes to tax calculations, you have to get it right, no matter what the complexities.

L to R: Greg and Mark from Datagate, Ben, Evan and Mark from Wolters Kluwer

In addition to Wolters Kluwer, we partnered with two of the best telecommunications tax & compliance consultancies in America; GSA and Telecom Professionals Inc. These two specialist consultancies have the experience, skills and expertise to ensure that MSPs using Datagate and CCH SureTax get their taxes calculated optimally & correctly and are fully compliant in the jurisdictions within which they operate.  They can even help MSPs get out of trouble if they have been selling telecommunications in the past without being compliant.

American telecommunications tax and compliance doesn’t have to be a roadblock if you’re got the right partners with the right expertise on your team.  We’ve packaged that all together for our American customers of Datagate.

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Communication, Datagate, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
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