What's Inside

1. AireSpring Receives 2018 Unified Communications Excellence Award!
2. Visit AireSpring at Channel Partners Conference & Expo Las Vegas, April 9-12
3. AireSpring Hosts Partners at CoreSite LA2 Data Center Tour
4. AireSpring Hosts NY Data Center-60 Hudson Street Tour and Lunch & Learn
5. Product Update - AT&T Wireless Broadband 
6. April Promo - Double SPIFF on SD-WAN!
7. Partner Training -  Become a QuoteSpring and DAX Master
8. Visit AireSpring at These Events
9. Partner Spotlight - Paul Nahon, IT Sales Consultant, 2Evolve Technologies
10. Meet the AireSpring Team - Greg Haines, Director of Service Assurance

AireSpring at Channel Partners Conference & Expo -   Las Vegas, April 9-12, 2019

AireSpring will again be out in force at the coming Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, April 9-12. Visit AireSpring in Booth #453. This event is the largest national channel event and will attract Partners, VARs, MSPs, Integrators and Service Providers to network and learn about new trends and rapidly advancing technology. The show is right in line with AireSpring's all-channel focus and emphasis on state-of-the-art solutions.

AireSpring and AT&T Partner Exchange will again co-host our popular Partner Appreciation Luncheon. The invitation-only event will take place on Thursday, April 11, at Aureole Restaurant inside Mandalay Bay. AT&T AVP of Sales & Marketing, Sara Straley will be our featured guest speaker. AireSpring President & CRO, Daniel Lonstein, will present a dynamic overview with insights into the growing AireSpring product lineup and the many advantages of our longstanding AT&T Partner Exchange status as a Platinum Solution Provider. This is an invitation-only luncheon event with limited seating and reservations required. Please contact your Channel Manager for more information, email Kailyn.Wolf@airespring.com, or RSVP below to reserve your space:

AT&T Wireless Broadband

AireSpring is pleased to announce that we have introduced a new AT&T Wireless Broadband offering. This is a symmetrical business broadband service that can be used as a primary circuit and is available with two speed options for Wireless Broadband at 8 Mbps or 12 Mbps.

AT&T Wireless Broadband can be quoted two different ways: as a Wireless Service or as Internet Connectivity. If quoted as a Wireless Service, the customer can choose their LTE hardware from AireSpring or they can provide their own hardware. If quoted as Internet Connectivity, AireSpring will provide a BEC MX-200e R6 along with a static IP address.

Wireless Broadband is available on the AT&T owned network in the U.S. For specific location availability please visit the AT&T Coverage Map. 

Explore the full range of access options available in our QuoteSpring^TM online quoting tool. Please contact your AireSpring Channel Manager for more information about all pricing and about updating current QuoteSpring quotes.

Stand Firm with AireSpring Stability

Reach out to your AireSpring Channel Manager today or call us at 888.389.2899.

Experience AireSpring's QuoteSpring^TM Real-time, Online Quoting and DAX Order Tracking and Status Reporting Programs 

AireSpring gladly provides concierge service to our channel partners, but we also offer fantastic automation tools. If you haven’t seen a demo or been trained on how to use QuoteSpring and DAX, our premiere back office tools, you are in for a treat.
 
Our real-time, online quoting tool, QuoteSpring, is the major component of our innovative agentStar back office portal. With QuoteSpring you get:

• Virtually every available option, at every available speed, at every address in the USA.
• Fiber; Broadband, DSL, U-verse, FiOS, Cable Modem, DS-1, T1, etc.
• Real-time Quotes in minutes! Not days or weeks like other carriers.
• 20-plus carriers integrated into a common network.
• Single quote for multiple services and speeds.

Our National Channel Manager and QuoteSpring Jedi Master, Chris Abbott will provide an in-depth overview into QuoteSpring including a live demo of creating a quote and proposal. You'll learn how to leverage the tool to win more deals and beat your competitors.

In addition to QuoteSpring, Chris will provide a deep dive into DAX, our sophisticated, 24x7, real-time order tracking and status program. DAX offers a wealth of information, including: 

• FOC dates
• Circuit info
• Tracking Order status
• Order notes
• Contact information for AireSpring Project Coordinators (PC) and Managed Services Engineers (MSE)
• Visibility on emails sent and received on each order and much more!

Join us Tuesday, April 23, 2019 to discover the wealth of information that is waiting for you in agentStar. See how these programs can give you the edge you need to offer excellent service to your clients and stand out from the crowd.

Complete our brief survey at the end for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card!

Visit AireSpring at these Coming Events:

TBI CLOUD COMMISSION
Crowne Plaza HY36
Manhattan
New York, NY
April 2, 2019

CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO
Mandalay Bay
Las Vegas, NV
April 9-12, 2019
Visit us at Booth #453
Register Here with PROMO CODE Airespring for Discounted Expo & Conference Pass

AIRESPRING & AT&T 
PARTNER APPRECIATION LUNCHEON
Guest Speaker: Sara Straley, AT&T AVP Sales & Marketing
Aureole Restaurant, Mandalay Bay
April 11, 2019
11:30 AM to 1:30 PM

Invitation Only - Limited Seating - Contact Your Channel Manager for information, send an email to Kailyn.Wolf@airespring.com or RSVP below:

AIRESPRING DATA CENTER TOUR 
Digital Realty's 60 Hudson Street
New York, NY
May 7, 2019
10:30 AM to 11:30 AM

LUNCHEON 
Sarabeth's Tribeca
339 Greenwich Street, corner of Jay Street
New York, NY 10013
11:30 AM to 1:30 PM

Invitation Only - Limited Seating -Contact Your Channel Manager for information, send an email to kailyn.wolf@airespring.com or RSVP below:

Welcome to the latest edition in our series of profiles, shining the spotlight on AireSpring’s amazing partners. This month, we’re speaking with Paul Nahon, IT Sales Consultant, 2Evolve Technologies.

Hello Paul, thank you for agreeing to speak with us today. To begin, please tell us a little about yourself and your professional background.

I’ve been in the industry for close to 30 years and I developed my sales skills early in my career. I attended college at Missouri State University where I earned a degree in accounting. After college, I moved to Los Angeles and landed a position as a general accountant in Downtown Los Angeles for the Auto Club of Southern California (ACSC). During that time, I noticed that many of my friends had gotten jobs in cable TV sales. They were working in jeans and t-shirts, making a lot of money while I was going to work in a suit. I quickly made the move into cable TV sales and went from sitting behind a desk to knocking on doors. It was a very lucrative and wide-open field at the time. Eventually, I moved into yacht sales with a gentleman named Steve Curran at California Yacht Co. in Marina del Rey, CA. I became one of his top producers for quite a few years.

I returned to my home state of Missouri and was introduced to telecom sales with a company called Pioneer TeleTechnologies (PTT), which was soon acquired by MCI. Progressing up through the MCI management chain, I worked on their behalf, lobbying Congress in Washington, DC. Transitioning into MCI outside sales, I sold voice and data networks, as well as supporting voice and data infrastructure for a broad range of clients.

At MCI we had local support for service and implementation, but when Verizon acquired MCI, the nature of the organization changed to a more impersonal environment and we lost the personal touch. I became the implementation manager for my customers, which gave me a lot more direct contact with them and allowed me to develop great relationships and strong customer loyalty. As a result, I connected with and went to work for a client which was an equipment company called Alexander Open Systems (AOS, later acquired by ConvergeOne). AOS did voice and data infrastructure, switches, storage, VMware sales and more. After a time, I made the choice to establish a better life balance so that I could spend time with my family. I joined Qwest Communications International and stayed with them through their acquisition by CenturyLink. Around that time, I started talking with Tony Bailey, president of 2Evolve Technologies SW Region, who introduced me to the channel. I decided it was time to go out on my own and become an agent, and I have never looked back.

2Evolve is very broadly based, with no vertical focus. They provide great support and a backstop for anything I try to do. They are always there for support, including technical, and I can contact them up to the level of CEO Cindy Ried, as well as Tony. They will escalate anything that I need, and they offer a great rate structure for their agents, while compensating us well for the work we do.

What do you like about working with AireSpring?

Initially, I started working with AireSpring by bringing one small client to test, a leading nationwide talent group in the entertainment and special event industry, and it has been a great experience. Why do I like working with AireSpring? First of all, Jon Massad (AireSpring National Channel Manager) is fast and always there to get me a quote when I need it right away. I’ve also looked at your QuoteSpring tool and the agentstar.net website for the channel which are extremely valuable tools for partners like me. I’ve worked with Chuck Long (AireSpring Solutions Engineer) on design work. He is phenomenal on a technical level, getting down in the weeds when that’s what is necessary.

Many of my clients are very technical and he can always lead them to the next step. He understands the legacy technology a lot of organizations still have and he can work with them on transitioning. Some even have old Nortel phones that are about to go out of service. He understands that and the need for them to make a quantum leap to the Cloud. I’ve also worked with Mike Chase (AireSpring SVP Solutions Engineering) and listened several times to Mike Chase’s presentation on SD-WAN and “Why AireSpring.” It is phenomenal and really in-depth. It’s strong from the technical level as well as offering a comprehensive overview. We’ve created several hybrid proposals for my clients that include SD-WAN. I was on the carrier side for so long that I can see that carriers are trying through acquisition to put the different components of their business together. They are burdened with a lot of different silos, but with AireSpring you already have your products defined. You’re looking for ways to enhance those products through the various carriers instead of defining the products through your existing infrastructure. The carriers, by contrast, are challenged with finding ways to utilize their assets. That’s what I love about AireSpring—you’re not locked into a model utilizing assets that are in the ground or in the air, so your upside potential is huge. I have clients on CenturyLink and other platforms where the assets are not consolidated, but now there are options to go around those barriers. Another great thing about AireSpring is that you are private, and therefore, are not beholden to investors.

I haven’t seen another provider with an SD-WAN product like AireSpring’s, with the VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud™ platform and your bandwidth approach for in-tunnel traffic. You are moving to get the boxes out to people sooner rather than later so they can start working with it quickly. You’re not a carrier that’s locked into a single product. I got in on the front end of SIP Trunking and VoIP early on with other providers, when installations could take six months with some of my large clients. That was painful. I feel confident that AireSpring has the capability to take those kinds of headaches off my hands.

Also, I find the monthly partner trainings to be very useful. I really enjoyed Chuck Long’s recent webinar in which he explained the OSI System Layers 1 through 7. I liked the way he related it to AireSpring’s products. That helped to really drive home the concepts.

What would you say is the secret to being a successful agent?

It takes knocking on doors and leveraging the relationships you’ve had in the past. The most critical component is understanding the products and the technical side. It’s important for you to understand the engineering too, because as an agent, you can’t take an engineer with you. I understood that fact early on, because I was working in Springfield, MO when my support was in Kansas City, so I never had a sales engineer with me.

What is the "next big thing" you think agents should be aware of in 2019?

Right now it’s SD-WAN and the cloud—those two things are happening very quickly. They represent a transition to the cloud that has happened in the last few years. Initially a lot of customers were concerned about putting their WAN on the internet. They were skeptical about moving data off-site and having someone else house their applications, but now with SD-WAN, there is more confidence and it has become mainstream. They were worried about security and about the cost to own the assets, but companies that want to be scalable and operate efficiently have to consider those systems. All of that is going to drive the business for the next couple of years. I think we’ll see a major transformation. It will be interesting to see where the carriers land in all this, and if they will write off their in-the-ground assets. Even smaller companies are now spending a lot of money on assets for one location, and ultimately, they will need to write them off and adopt cloud-based solutions.

What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of telecom?

I have always been an avid tennis player. I started playing when I was about eight years old. I played competitively starting back when I attended Missouri State where I served as Tennis Team Captain. Today I am the General Manager of a World Tennis team, the Springfield Lasers, and have been helping them out for seven years. I really committed myself to the business side of the team as GM and was fortunate to work with Billie Jean King and her staff when she was an owner of the team. One of our owners is also in the IT biz and started a company called ServiceNow, in San Diego. They bought the league from Billie Jean and are putting a lot of money into growing it even more. We are all involved because we have a passion for tennis. Our season is three weeks a year, starting right after Wimbledon. It runs from July 14 through August 2. There are eight teams in our league with a number of professional players, including John Isner. Andy Roddick played for us for a couple of years along with Jack Sock. I played a lot in college and was semi-pro, but when I realized I couldn’t make a living at it, I focused on my career. I also got involved in sailboat racing in Marina del Rey and raced up and down the Pacific Coast. I still pursue that when I can, volunteering with our small yacht club in Stockton Lake, Stockton, Missouri, while helping to build support at the grassroots level.

A lot of people still play tennis into their 80s and 90s, just as they do with sailing. I have a little Melges sailboat, and love to travel and race, also on a couple of larger boats. One is a Mills 43, a custom-built race boat that a friend of mine owns, and a J-29. We race on Block Island, near Nantucket. It’s a beautiful place, very rugged, foggy and rainy.

Paul, thank you for taking time to talk with us today.

At AireSpring, we know that it is our dedication to customer service that sets us apart, and customer service begins with great employees. Here is your chance to get to know another key member of the AireSpring team. This month we are talking with Greg Haines, Director of Service Assurance.

Hello Greg. To begin, please tell us about your professional background and how long you've been in the telecom industry.

I’ve been in the telecom industry about 25 years. I got out of high school and went into the Army first for about four years, working in the telecommunications arena. I was first a lineman, then worked on radio retransmissions. I was lucky to be stationed first in North Carolina, where I completed jump school. Next, I was stationed in Germany and became a communications specialist, working with the Patriot Missile. During that time, I was deployed to Bosnia. We were one of the first troops sent into the conflict and our battalion set up communications for everyone coming in after us.

My uncle was a vice president for TCG’s East Coast Region when I was finishing high school. He promised me that if I got out of the military with an honorable discharge, he would help me get a job in telecom, so when I got out of the Army, I was fortunate to go to work in New York for TCG. I transferred to Dallas, then stayed on with them for a short time after TCG was acquired by AT&T. When the vice president of AT&T’s Central Region, Phil Puccio, relocated to southern California and helped David Glickman start TelePacific communications (now TPX), he called and offered me a job. I immediately packed up and moved to California.

As one of the first TelePacific employees, I was able to wear many hats, first in provisioning for a bit, then doing engineering and central office buildouts, until we started to grow. I moved into running all field operations in the central office for a few years, and then on to running the Repair organization for about six years. At that point, TPx changed strategy to a more UCaaS hosted environment, and I took on building a new department for their UCaaS launch. That meant I was managing the translations team, the MACD organization (handling orders to move, add, change, or delete a service), the repair department and the help desk. The idea was to have a one-stop shop for customers. After two years we acquired DSCI, an East Coast company that had their own network. TPx had been white labeling the Momentum product for VoIP and UCaaS, so I got involved in moving products off the Momentum platform onto the new TPx platform. After getting the project done ahead of schedule and under budget, I moved into their provisioning organization for about a year before joining AireSpring.

Tell us about your role at AireSpring and how long you’ve been with the
company.

I joined AireSpring just about six months ago as Director of Service Assurance. I manage the Repair organization and a part of Customer Care, where we work with special needs customers and monitor maintenance of their service. The Repair team proactively monitors customer circuits, working within our AireNMS real-time network monitoring system to anticipate possible troubleshooting needs. We take steps to proactively open trouble tickets where we see a potential issue developing. We monitor the percentage of our customer base reporting trouble per month, including those we proactively open, and have developed successful strategies to reduce those numbers every month. My goal is to expand on the proactive side of our activity, to the point where we can look at CPU utilizations, taking the approach that the carrier is my partner in this business as we look for solutions to prevent trouble from occurring. 

We have expanded our Repair group, adding some call center teams in diverse locations, which is a great advantage in maintaining operations at all times in the face of possible disaster situations. We’ve also built dashboards within our ticketing system, focusing on placing different priority level tickets into various buckets—low, medium, high. We can address customers first that have service-impacting events and keep moving through the next levels. We gain the ability to quickly and directly help customers that are unable to operate their business. Our goal is always to focus on customer excellence, and our policy is to leave a ticket open for up to 72 hours if needed to monitor that the service is complete and a new issue doesn’t develop.

We have developed a new system for surveying customers who report trouble. As a result, the satisfaction rate among customers surveyed has gone up every month to achieve 100% satisfaction, so we can better understand our customer pain points and get people the assistance that they need. Our speed to answer trouble calls is now setting the industry standard, averaging under 20 seconds. My primary focus is managing day-to-day trouble tickets to ensure that they are resolved to the customer’s satisfaction in a timely fashion. At the end of the day, we want to get a clean handshake with the customer.

My next goal is to introduce more automation, giving the customer additional tools to self-manage and do trouble-shooting as well as fault isolation. We want to develop more education on the AireSpring products for both customers and agents, and show them how they can benefit from solutions like AireCare, the online customer portal that provides 24/7/365 access to essential and mission critical services. Customers can easily manage their communications needs in real time, doing things like ordering additional toll free numbers (TFNs) or DIDs in minutes, and so much more. We want to be ahead of the market and ready to perform, to support customers and make it all seamless for them. The big differentiator is education and investing in training and retraining over time. I provide my team with paid time every month to use exclusively on certification, and more of our team members are getting Cisco and other valuable certifications. We also want to reeducate customers and agents so they know who to speak with at AireSpring for which specific needs. The best example of our commitment to all these goals is the AireSpring Escalation List, which every AireSpring customer receives and includes the escalation and executive email and phone numbers all the way up to our CEO. Everyone on that list is aware of any contacts and issues that arise, as demonstrated by the fact that the executive team really does get engaged on these issues. That commitment is real.

What do you enjoy most about working with AireSpring?

Everyone here at AireSpring is incredible and all are willing to share their knowledge. It’s one of the reasons I believe AireSpring is an industry leader with our SD-WAN and Firewall products. We are small and nimble enough to put ideas forward and get things done. If you have an idea, people are willing to listen and respond to it. The employee game room is an example of how the company supports employees. That space gives you a chance to take a few minutes to play a game of pool if you feel overwhelmed, so you can clear your head and come back ready to take on your work with a fresh approach. People here have more passion about what they do, and the longevity is amazing. AireSpring has exceeded my expectations in a lot of areas, I thought there would be a lot of walls put up between groups, but that is not at all the case. 

Working with Amy Gallardo, our Director of Customer Experience, is a great advantage to our overall effort. Together we can say, "If I were that customer, how would I feel?"

What are some of your hobbies or interests outside of the office?

Most of my spare time is spent with my wife, Gloria, and my daughter, Dylan, age 14. Gloria and I have had a chance to travel quite a bit, including a visit to Japan. Dylan loves indoor rock climbing, and we do a lot of that together on the weekends. She is involved in rock-climbing competitions, which really suit her best after trying dance, gymnastics and doing a lot of surfing. She is about to transition into public school which will be an interesting change.

My wife and I like to go to flea markets to do treasure hunting, mostly as just a fun way to spend time together, and we have date night every Friday. We also do a lot of hiking in the Pasadena area or near Whittier, CA. We used to live about 4 blocks from the big Pasadena Flea Market, where we found everything vintage we needed to furnish our 1920s Craftsman bungalow there. Now, we have relocated to Downey (in Orange County). We have a little dog, my buddy, Jack. He’s an 11-year-old rescued mutt.

Greg, thank you for sharing your story with us!

AireSpring is an award-winning provider of Managed Connectivity and Cloud Communications solutions providing fully managed and connected end-to-end, next-generation solutions for multi-location enterprise customers, including:

• AireContact Cloud Contact Center
• AirePBX Cloud Phone System
• MPLS Mesh
• SD-WAN
• SIP Trunking
• Managed Connectivity
• Managed Failover
• Dedicated Internet Access
• Wholesale Long Distance

AireSpring's services are delivered over its revolutionary nationwide MPLS Mesh Network, providing customers a fully integrated, end-to-end solution from a single vendor.

sales@airespring.com | 888.389.2899 | www.airespring.com