Archive for the 'SaaS' Category

« Older posts

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 »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

2020 – a year like no other at Datagate

December 17, 2020

At the start of this year, we thought 2020 was going to be “special” because it marked the start of an exciting new decade for Datagate. While that might still be the case, that particular aspect of 2020 was about to be overshadowed by what unfolded in the coming months with the global Covid-19 pandemic.

2020- A year like no other

For Datagate, being an international business, a major impact of Covid-19 for us was finding that we were restricted from travelling, both locally and internationally, and we were forced to do 100% of our meetings and interactions on-line. All our staff suddenly had to work from home, and we soon found that working from home was actually more productive and efficient than working from a city office. We’ve now decided to stay with the work-from-home model, as it works better for our staff and our business.

The whirlwind that was 2020

Despite all the Covid-19 carnage and disruption around the world, and being forced to work from home and not travel, the Datagate team, along with our partners and clients, managed to achieve a lot.

In January we formalized our new and very successful distribution partnership with SkySwitch – a leading US white-label wholesale VoIP, UCaaS provider for MSPs, who are based in Florida.

In February, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, we attended what was to be our last in-person conference for a while, the ITExpo in Fort Lauderdale FL, where we met with a number of our partners and clients.

In March the Covid-19 outbreak took hold, and our plans for travelling and industry conferences came to an abrupt halt. At the same time we could see that our MSP clients were becoming even more busy than usual. The world had changed and the demand for VoIP and UCaaS solutions from businesses everywhere was skyrocketing, to enable staff to work from home. Fortunately for us, being a Cloud-based business, we could keep up with this higher level of demand under our new working-from-home configuration.

Our MSP-Telecom industry conferences started announcing that for health & safety reasons, they were “going virtual”, so that meant we became booth-sponsors of Canadian Channel Partners 2020- virtual, Cloud Connections Summit, Channel Partners 2020 Virtual, and ConnectWise‘s IT Nation Connect 2020. We found that virtual conferences were a great option when there are no in-person conferences, but they really are not as good as the real thing for the purpose of connecting with people. We certainly missed all the great MSP & Telecom conferences that we normally attend, and look forward to when they restart.

In addition to SkySwitch, we also signed Datagate distribution deals with OITVoIP of Miami, Florida and Access4 of Australia, so we now have three strong white-label VoIP -UCaaS providers selling Datagate telecom billing solutions to their MSP resellers.

During the year we also formed a number of new integrated-product partnerships – all of whom we consider important to our MSP customer base. These include Avalara and their AvaTax for Communications tax engine, ConnectBooster and their popular payment automation solution, the quoting solution Quoter, payment solutions IPPay, Stripe and Authorize.net and MSP analytics solution, Cognition360.

We produced and participated in MSP-focused webinars with AdavantageIVR (professional voices for phone systems) and Cognition360 (advanced analytics for ConnectWise and Datagate), as well as with ConnectBooster, SkySwitch, OITVoIP and Avalara.

Geographically, we expanded our footprint in 2020 to include Sydney, Australia and London, UK. These added to our existing locations of Jacksonville Florida, Vancouver Canada and Auckland, New Zealand. We’ve also added five new staff to our North American customer services team, to increase capacity to serve our MSP clients.

Further to all the above, we did a lot of great work in collaboration with our established industry partners (in no particular order): ConnectWise, Microsoft, CCH SureTax, Compliance Solutions, GSA/CLA, RTC, Xero, QuickBooks and others,

It’s been quite a year!

Happy New Year! Roll on 2021!

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Communication, Datagate, MSPs, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Virtual events for MSPs in 2020

August 28, 2020

Covid-19 has eliminated in-person conferences for the foreseeable future, and this has forced the conference industry to “go virtual”. In addition to virtual-conferences, we’re also seeing an increased quantity of webinars and podcasts.

Whilst there are obvious advantages to the in-person events, there can also be a different set of advantages to the virtual events, if they are done thoughtfully and well.

Virtual-events are a relatively new phenomenon, so the industry is still early in its learning curve. I’m noticing that as time goes on, the conferences are getting more successful. It’s as if there is a collective learning process happening within the industry.

Last month, my company Datagate (telecom billing for MSPs) was a sponsor/exhibitor at OITVoIP‘s Cloud Connections Summit 2020 (#CCS2020)

What impressed me about #CCS2020 was the impressive line-up of very interesting and relevant speakers, over and above the sponsors, including myself, who also got to present. My team and I attended many of the presentations because they had such good material.

OITVoIP’s President, Ray Orsini did a great job as host, and Sean Lardo (OITVoIP’s VP of Channel Development) was also great as co-host and counterfoil to Ray, with constant amusing banter between the two of them.

Ray Orsini, Presdent OITVoIP

It was noticeable that the audience tended to move around together to attend whatever was the current presentation, rather than wander around the virtual conference center on their own, visiting booths etc. I think Ray picked up on this early on, and ensured that the group not only attended the presentations, but also visited the sponsor booths. This was done, for example, by organizing and announcing a demonstration at the Datagate booth at a preset time, that was complementary to the event’s main schedule. It worked well.

As an attendee of the virtual conference, it played out much like a big television show, where you had the ability to self navigate through the virtual conference center, between or during presentations. I could see it was important that they had gaps in the schedule, similar to ad breaks in a television show, so that attendees have the ability to do what they need to do from time to time throughout the day (after all, they are all really sitting at a computer screen at home, so plenty of potential distractions).

At the end of the conference, Datagate came away with a list of contacts who expressed interest in our telecom billing solution and a good level of promotion and exposure to our target market – MSPs who sell VoIP. Maybe not the same level of personal interaction we would have had at an in-person conference, but still a good level of promotion, considering we didn’t have to fly across the country to get there!

Another virtual event that worked well for Datagate in early July, was a webinar we held in partnership with ConnectBooster (the automated payment collection portal). Datagate and ConnectBooster are complementary products, both aimed at MSPs, so holding a joint event meant that we both benefited from each other’s community. We had around 80 attendees, which resulted in some good sales activity afterwards.

Ryan Goodman
President ConnectBooster

The webinar featured presentations from Datagate and ConnectBooster, including ConectBooster’s president Ryan Goodman and me.

A video recording of the Datagate-ConnectBooster webinar is available online, here.

A short while later, Ryan and I recorded a podcast interview that will be released on ConnectBooster’s web site soon.

Early next month, Datagate will be a sponsor-exhibitor at Channel Partners Virtual 2020. If you’d like to join us, click here for a free or discounted pass.

With all this activity… I sometimes have to remind myself that, well – it’s all virtual. We haven’t actually gone anywhere to do this…

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Datagate, MSPs, Networking, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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 »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Conferences “go virtual”

June 30, 2020

IT industry conferences have always been a big part of our marketing strategy at Datagate, particularly in the United States, where there are so many great conferences that are very well attended.

Our target market is defined as “Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who sell VoIP and other telecom services”, so the conferences we target to market our telecom-billing solution are those that cater to MSPs and the telecommunications industry. Our regular favorites are; Channel Partners, IT Expo, Robin Robins and ConnectWise’s IT Nation. Our white-label telecom partner SkySwitch, also has an excellent conference, called Vectors.

These conferences are where we make new industry contacts, and meet with potential partners and clients. Meeting face to face with someone is the best way to start any kind of relationship where trust is required. After meeting at a conference, it’s more easy to continue the conversation remotely via email, phone or web conference.

As a general rule, it’s easier to do business with someone you’ve met in person. This is not to say that meeting someone in person is essential to doing business.

Datagate at the IT Nation Connect Conference in Australia, 2019

Having an exhibitor booth with good clear signage about what you do, is the best way to meet relevant industry contacts. When you don’t have a booth you are more limited to seeking out relevant people who have booths, but when you have a booth, relevant people will come to you and you can still go and talk with others who have booths.

The advent of COVID-19 this year has seen all of the 2020 conferences we’ve been booked into since early March 2020, get initially postponed from their original dates, and then finally switched over to become “virtual conferences”. A virtual conference is an event held over the Internet using a software platform that mimics and enables many of the activities that happen in an “in person” conference.

From our perspective at Datagate, there seem to be positives and negatives with virtual conferences compared to real in-person conference, which I’ve listed below:

Positive aspects of
Virtual Conferences		Negative aspects of
Virtual Conferences
Greatly reduced COVID-19 infection riskHuman interaction is reduced. Relationship building ability is compromised.
No travel and accommodation costs. Less time away from the regular business environment. Some attendees like visiting conference destinations as a vacation, for them and/or their families. This attraction is lost.
Attendees can split their time between the conference and their regular work.Attendees will split their time between the conference and their regular work, adding the risk of distraction and forgetting about the conference.
Less cost or no cost to attendees.Less commitment and buy-in from attendees.
Larger potential audience, because people can attend from anywhere and cost is not such a barrier.It’s harder to make the conference “special” and differentiate from other Internet/web content.
Positive and Negative aspects of Virtual Conferences

With all the necessary restrictions in place to slow down the spread of COVID-19, real in-person conferences are not going to be able to be held in North America for at least the next six months, possibly longer.

The conference industry is still the early stages of learning how to make virtual conferences work. I believe we will see significant improvements over the coming months and years, which may well make virtual conferences a permanent and viable option.

For now, businesses will make the best of the options available to them and many of these options, including virtual conferences, might become a more permanent option beyond the COVID-19 era. However, I’m confident that the “good-old” in-person conferences will come back with a vengeance as soon as the COVID-19 situation permits.

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Communication, Datagate, MSPs, Networking, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,

Software product design and staying in your lane

April 30, 2020

In designing a software product, it’s fundamentally important to be clear on your answers to the following questions:

  • What is the software’s primary purpose – what need does it meet?
  • Who is the software designed for – what is the target market?
  • What other systems will your software need to interact with?
  • Who are your competitors – how will you differentiate?
  • Who are your partners?

We say we are “staying in our lane” when we ensure that all design decisions for the product remain true to the answers to the above questions.

In the case of Datagate, our answers to the above are;

  • Primary purpose – Telecom billing and distribution of those bills to customers and other software systems used by customers in our target market.
  • Target market – Managed Service Providers who resell telecom and related services.
  • Other Systems – Professional Service Automation packages, such as ConnectWise Manage; and Accounting Systems, such as QuickBooks, Xero and others.
  • Competitors – other companies that provide telecom billing systems. These are different in each country we operate in. We differentiate by being true to our target market and integrations to systems that are important and used by our target customers.
  • Partners – include white-label wholesale telecom providers, telecom tax engines, telecom tax & compliance partners and vendors of products that align with Datagate and appeal to our target market.

The best way to ensure we stay in our lane is to closely monitor feedback from our target customers, provide integrations to other systems they commonly use and avoid replicating functionality that those other systems and partners already provide. It’s important to ensure the software serves its primary purpose and works well as a component of the total software solution.

Prime examples of how this approach works for Datagate clients are given in our extensive set of case studies, and in particular our two most recent case studies for In-Telecom and DS Tech.

Software product development is always a race to stay ahead of competitors, by bringing new features and functionality to market faster, and providing the best customer experience. Staying in your lane means that you only invest precious development resources into what is relevant and beneficial to your product and customers.

So in closing; for any kind of race, it’s always more efficient to stay in your lane.

Posted in Billing, Datagate, MSPs, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,

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 »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

There’s never been a better time to work from home

March 10, 2020

The argument in favor of working at home has been getting stronger and stronger, year by year, as a result of the following factors;

  • Major advances in communication and collaboration systems
  • Major advances in Cloud-based business systems
  • Increased congestion on roads and public transport
    • Increased time wasted on travelling to a work place
    • Increased awareness of environmental issues
    • Costs associated with travelling, parking etc
  • Increasing costs related to buildings (in many geographies)
  • Increased productivity due to less distractions and less wasted time
  • Increased staff retention (studies show most staff prefer working from home)
  • Increased potential profitability due to decreased costs and increased efficiencies

Now, adding the current coronavirus crisis to the list, the argument for working from home has just become more compelling than ever.

Working from home is now more practical and compelling than ever before

If all or most of the staff at your business are still working from a business premise and the nature of your business is not dependent on your physical location (for example, shops, warehouses, factories and other businesses dependent on location and/or physical goods or equipment), I suggest considering the following actions;

  • Review the advantages (if any) of having your staff located in your business location and how these advantages stack up against the above list of reasons for working at home.
  • Implement a Unified Communications system. This enables your staff to be accessible and on-line to your business via their smartphone and/or computer, no matter where they are, from a single phone number.
  • Implement a team collaboration system for your business, such as Microsoft Teams or Slack, to enable fast and efficient communication, collaboration, meetings and co-working between your staff. Microsoft Teams can also be configured as a Unified Communications system, and also be used for communicating with customers and other people outside your business.
  • Switch to using Cloud based business software, such as Office 365, Google Apps and on-line accounting systems that can be accessed from anywhere, including staff working from home.
  • Establish regular catchup-up meetings (stand-ups) with your staff to ensure your team(s) gets to communicate and know what’s happening around the business.
  • Arrange social activities periodically where practical, so that your staff have opportunities to interact in a social setting. This contributes to maintaining a healthy team culture.

Working from home is the way of today and the way of the future for many businesses. If you need help in setting up your business for remote working, contact your Managed Service Provider (MSP).

Posted in Cloud, Datagate, MSPs, MYOB Advanced, MYOB EXO, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,

Datagate at IT Expo and Channel Partners 2020 conferences

February 28, 2020

These days, so much business is getting done over the Internet, where the parties involved don’t even get to meet each other in person.

I believe there is a lot of value in meeting in person, and for that reason I like to attend industry conferences, because that is where I get to meet in person with Datagate’s customers, prospects and partners – all in one place!

Once you’ve met someone in person, your understanding of them and your ongoing remote communication steps up to a much more improved level.

Datagate’s Greg Robinson and I attended ITExpo 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida earlier in February. The event was very well supported, with many of the key players of the IT and Telecommunications industries there, including many of Datagate’s industry partners.

A photo opportunity with SkySwitch’s Harlon Hamlin, Eric Hernaez and Ben Macalindong

At the conference we announced our new partnership with SkySwitch, where they now offer Datagate as a billing solution for their reseller clients. Datagate and SkySwitch are both ConnectWise Invent Partners, which means our solutions are designed to integrate with the ConnectWise platform, which is so popular with our MSP clients.

It was also great to meet Shawn and Jimmy from In-Telecom at the conference. They are a top Datagate client, who had just traveled in from Louisiana that morning.

Meeting Shawn Torres and Jimmy Burns of In-Telecom

In March, Datagate will be an exhibitor at Channel Partners in Las Vegas, being held at The Venetian this year (booth #1253). We are offering reduced price entry passes at this link (before March 6th), if you’d like to meet us there.

On April 23rd, Datagate will be an exhibitor at the Canadian Channel Partners event in Vancouver. Contact us at Datagate if you’d like a free pass to meet us at this event.

Stay tuned for more events!

Posted in Billing, Datagate, MSPs, Networking, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,

« Older posts