What’s Next for SkySwitch? Find Out In This Interview, Live at IT EXPO
Andy Abramson, CMO of SkySwitch, talks about the future of the company and the benefits of working within the small to medium business market.
TMC’s Rich Tehrani speaks with Andy Abramson, CMO of SkySwitch, at this year’s IT EXPO, the #TechSuperShow 2020 in Ft. Lauderdale FL about the growth of SkySwitch. Abramson details the benefits of working with the company and how SkySwitch differentiates from competitors.
Rich Tehrani interviews SkySwitch Chief Marketing Officer Andy Ambrahmson at ITEXPO 2020.
Video Transcription:
Rich Tehrani 0:28
Hey, it’s Rich at the ITEXPO Tech Super Show 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On our program today is Andy Abramson. He is the CMO of SkySwitch. Andy, welcome back to the show. How are you?
Andy Abramson 0:39
Rich, it’s great to see ITEXPO and great to see how it’s back, bigger than ever. And having been here now, you know, for so many years dating back to the late 90s. The show has gotten so, so big.
Rich Tehrani 0:51
Thank you so much. Thanks for noticing and pointing that out. My team has done a wonderful job and we’re looking forward to bringing the community together year after year.
Andy Abramson 0:58
Well, it’s really a great time to see all your friends, some of your partners, even some of the people you compete with, but this is the one event of the year where you do get to see everybody in some shape or form.
Rich Tehrani 1:09
Thanks again and thanks for that. And you’re now at a company called sky switch you started last year, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about that organization.
Andy Abramson 1:17
So SkySwitch is a channel only service provider for telecom and other services to the reseller community. So unlike some brands that you’ll know that they’re here, that steal from the channel, we only sell to the channel we don’t sell direct. We don’t use the we don’t take from them. We let the resellers decide what they want to call it, what they want to charge for it.
And we stay in the background as a white label player, which means we market to resellers then we help them with training with support and with marketing.
Rich Tehrani 1:50
That’s fantastic. And as an MSP there are a lot of benefits to white label right?
Andy Abramson 1:55
You own the customer and then use pick your supplier and you’re able to maintain that relationship and as more and more of the big brands that you see are stealing from the channel and going direct, and then also moving upmarket.
It’s leaving an awful lot of small medium-sized businesses who need help and still want that high touch hands-on relationship where they can call the person up and say, “Can I talk about what my needs are?” and you actually know who you’re talking to. You’re not getting some nameless faceless chatbot, or some person who’s answering the phone in a call center halfway around the world.
Rich Tehrani 2:33
That’s great and MSPs really benefit from white label right there. You want to list out all the various financial reasons that white label makes sense?
Andy Abramson 2:43
Well, the first reason is you know what you’re paying. The second reason is, you can determine how much you want to make. You can set your own pricing. You maintain your relationships, and you control the transaction with your customer.
You’re not simply getting a cut on the back-end of something and you’re not simply doing a one-shot like agents get a one-shot. So they bring the business to the brand. And then they’re gone. And then when somebody has a problem, they go back to the agent and the agent says well you’re on your own.
Rich Tehrani 3:13
And there are also some benefits in terms of valuation right MSP’s that own that customer actually can end up with a higher valuation, which is great for if they have any kind of acquisition or anything like that.
Andy Abramson 3:24
Well, the MSP not only owns the customer and owns the relationship and gets to set their pricing, which in turn, determines their value. They helped to grow their own business, they help to grow their customers, businesses, and then you’re seeing consolidation in the MSP space as well across the country.
So what we’re happy about is we’re getting MSP’s are coming to us with hundreds and thousands of seats, and they’re migrating their customers over to us. It’s sometimes all at once, sometimes half now half in a couple more weeks every couple of weeks after that. And we’re growing. We’ve increased our reseller base since vectors very nicely.
Rich Tehrani 4:00
That’s fantastic. That was last September?
Andy Abramson 4:02
It was last October.
Rich Tehrani 4:04
Fantastic. Congratulations. So what’s next for the company?
Andy Abramson 4:06
I think what’s next for the company is a deeper focus on moving into the larger reseller space. We’re getting some traction with that. I think the second big thing is just offering some new and different services as the world is more and more cloudified, we need to be able to make sure that our resellers have the right tools to support their customer base with the right kind of tools. So SD-WAN is something that’s very important to us.
We see that as essential because it helps to manage and shape the traffic that a customer has. So we’re doing that we’re also doing a lot more with SIP Trunking. Now SIP Trunking has been around forever. We’re doing it because we have a high demand for it. Because unfortunately, fiber isn’t everywhere. And superfast broadband isn’t everywhere, or somebody just needs a SIP Trunk. So we’ve put a lot of effort behind that.
And again, we listen to what our resellers are. We’ve also added Granstream as A brand to support what our resellers want. We now sell Poly, Yealink, Granstream, Snom. We’ve also got computer technology who’s a specialist supplier of phones for harsh environments, outdoors, beaches, construction sites.
We’re doing that we also help our resellers, through alliances with companies like REV IO and Datagate on the billing side. We also work with CSI and, and compliance solutions on the compliance side. And these are things that whether it’s on the billing platform or on the compliance platform or taxation.
We’re able to make sure that a reseller can come to SkySwitch and get a full gamut of what they need to run their telephony business, run their business and sell things to their customers.
Rich Tehrani 5:46
That’s great. Now how can people find you?
Andy Abramson 5:47
www.SkySwitch.com
Rich Tehrani 5:50
Thanks for being here.
Andy Abramson 5:51
Thanks, Rich.