What's Inside

1. Barry Friedman Joins AireSpring Team as Director of Product Management
2. AireSpring Featured in CRN 2018 Cloud Partner Program Guide
3. AireSpring Adds WOW! Broadband Coverage for Central and Southeast U.S.
4. Get AireSpring FREE Expo Pass and Visit Us at Channel Partners Evolution
5. AireSpring October Promo
6. Partner Training Webinar: Harness the Power of AireSpring Global SD-WAN for Modern Global Enterprise Customers
7. Visit AireSpring at These Events 
8. Partner Spotlight - Barclay Gaston, CT Solutions
9. Meet the AireSpring Team - Darek Niedojadlo, Managed Services Manager

We are excited to announce that Barry Friedman has joined the AireSpring team to fill the position of Director of Product Management. Barry will lead AireSpring's team of product management professionals as we continue to grow and expand our next generation product offerings.

Barry has over 25 years of telecom and SaaS experience, starting out in his career working with Satellite Business Systems (SBS), a subsidiary of IBM which was later acquired by MCI. He was recruited by EarthLink to direct strategic planning and worked in various roles for 12 years, including business development and voice services. He moved on to work at Citrix where he was Principal Product Line Manager for the GoToMeeting product line, including desktop and mobile applications, global localization and

AireSpring Featured in CRN 2018 Cloud Partner Program Guide

CRN Guide Highlights Leading Cloud Partner Programs

AireSpring is very proud to be recognized in the CRN 2018 Cloud Partner Program Guide. The Guide features a list of the leading technology vendors with cloud-related partner programs that enable and accelerate the growth of solution providers' cloud initiatives. This honor reflects AireSpring's position as a leader in cloud communications and managed services with a 100% channel focus, serving master agencies, VARs, MSPs and their customers. "With so many options available in the cloud marketplace today, solution providers often have a difficult time deciding which vendors offer the best program to complement their business strategy," said Bob Skelley, CEO of the Channel Company. "The CRN Cloud Partner Program Guide helps to simplify the process by researching and identifying the

cloud partner programs with the most comprehensive combination of resources, support, training, and financial incentives."

As we continue to build channel presence in all regional and national markets, we are growing a team of highly talented solutions architects and engineers who are top experts in cloud communications. The newest AireSpring cloud solution is Multi-Cloud Connect, an enhanced way to securely connect to leading cloud services providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Alibaba, Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce.

"We are honored to be included in the CRN 2018 Cloud Partner Program Guide, as a leader in both cloud communications and robust partner programs," stated Daniel Lonstein, AireSpring President and Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). "We continue to build our extensive menu of cloud services and products to keep pace with fast-changing technologies, as we work to expand partnerships through our 100% channel focused business model."

The CRN Cloud Partner Program Guide will be featured in the October issue of CRN and can be viewed online at www.crn.com/cloud-ppg.

AireSpring Adds WOW! Broadband Coverage
for Central and Southeast U.S.

AireSpring has added WOW! Broadband coverage for more broadband than ever in the Central and Southeast U.S. It's another step in our aggressive expansion of connectivity options in the Eastern

region. We continue to build our selection of carriers, fulfilling our commitment to provide more ways for businesses to get the bandwidth they need, when they need it.

Your customers can take advantage of more Broadband internet options, bringing you valuable opportunities for increased earnings in this key region. You can confidently deliver crystal clear voice and reliable data service for small, medium and enterprise level businesses in an ever-growing geographic area.

Download new rates and commissions from our partner portal at: www.agentstar.net.
For more information on new rate sheets and more, please contact your Channel Manager.

Knock Out the Competition with AireSpring!

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

Learn how AireSpring combines the power of SD-WAN with the reliability of our Global Enterprise-Grade Private Network

In this webinar, you'll learn how AireSpring's Global SD-WAN delivers the benefits of SD-WAN with a global private network, bypassing the unpredictability of the public internet over long distances and providing a reliable, holistic network. Today's global enterprises rely increasingly on cloud platforms, SaaS applications, video and voice for business-critical needs. Built on the layered strength of an SD-WAN solution with the power of the AireSpring Global Private Network, Global SD-WAN advances connectivity to a new level, taking down barriers that formerly challenged global enterprises and solving problems like quality of service over longer distances, as well as regulatory restrictions in certain geographic locations.

Learn why Global SD-WAN offers your customers with multiple office and data centers in geographically diverse locations a solution for their modern distributed enterprise needs. Get to know the powerful advantages of Global SD-WAN, including:

• addressing the need for increased bandwidth by combining the power of multiple connections
• combining low-cost internet with carrier-grade MPLS and route data for overall lower costs
• a simplified branch network that delivers more agile implementation and management with the use of virtualized network services at the edge.

Expand your inventory of must-have AireSpring solutions when you get to know all that Global SD-WAN has to offer your customers!

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

Visit AireSpring at these coming events:

INTELYSIS CHANNEL CONNECT 2018
Monterey Conference Center
Monterey, CA
October 3-5, 2018

CHANNEL PARTNERS EVOLUTION 2018
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Philadelphia, PA
October 10-12, 2018

USE CODE AIRESPRING for a FREE EXPO PASS

THE INCOMPAS SHOW
ARIA Resort & Casino
Las Vegas, NV
October 29-31, 2018

Welcome to the latest edition in our series of profiles, shining the spotlight on AireSpring’s amazing partners. This month, we’re speaking with Barclay Gaston, Unified Communications & Carrier Services Specialist at CT Solutions.

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

I’m originally from Columbus, GA, which is located just at the Alabama state line.  We moved there right before the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. I went off to college at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Texas, then after graduation returned to Georgia. I really fell into telecom in 2010 at Cbeyond Communications (acquired by Birch Communications in 2014). That was my first real job after college. It was cold calling, getting my feet wet in sales, knocking on 50-plus doors a day. At the time we had T1s, 2-bonded T1s and 3-bonded T1s, and those were my products, so it was limited. After about a year and-a-half, I went to work for EarthLink Business, soon after they acquired ITC DeltaCom, Inc. and One Communications. At EarthLink I started to see the solutions approach and the ability to design different networks, and that’s when I got hooked, and really began to enjoy the industry, knowing it was not a cookie cutter approach to every opportunity. I was in major accounts with them for a little over two years, learning more about UCaaS, MPLS and in general, a much broader product space.

After I left EarthLink, I got into the broker side of things, in part because there were so many times when our price or profile didn’t seem to fit. I’d get my foot in the door with a customer, then because I only had one set of products to sell, it wouldn’t work out. I moved into doing my own independent brokering business called Tech Solutions Hunter, which led me into the channel side, and I saw some early success with that. CT Solutions was my top referral partner—we had worked together whenever I needed cabling or phone products, so after talking with their upper management, it made sense for me to join forces with them. I came on board to start their Carrier Services Division in September 2014 and have been there ever since. We experienced some rapid revenue growth on the carrier side, and we have a great group now, with no sign of stopping.

CT Solutions is a traditional telephony vendor. Our target customer varies widely. I have businesses ranging in size from three phone lines to my largest at 1600 end points. Our sweet spot is about the range of 50 to 500 user count. We do a lot with very complex contact center applications, and we have three rural power providers in Georgia that we support

for their call center users. We do extremely well with medical, legal and manufacturing businesses, plus a lot of miscellaneous types of business.Through AireSpring, we sell a lot of fiber with integrated voice access, whether it’s PRI or analog. We also sell a ton of your standalone internet with integrated voice and some SD-WAN as well. Plus, we are an AireSpring customer ourselves. It helps us to place you with more of our customers because we have such a comfort level with AireSpring’s product management and support team. If I have a question about a problem with a carrier and their lack of response, we always know that partly because you are a flat organization, we’re going to get more TLC for our customer base.

CT Solutions is a support and service organization. Our ownership mostly comes from the service side, not as much sales. A lot of our competitors like the cloud model because they can cut back on their field techs, but we are continuing to add to ours. We have about 32 employees with only 6 in sales. The rest is all operations, install, and field tech support—low voltage work. One of our big differentiators is that we are very hands-on and have high level techs from a service and support standpoint. That’s why we have a loyal customer base. When I started up our Service Division, our customers were used to coming to us with questions and asking for carrier recommendations, instead of having to go to the carrier directly. We are different from some brokers that just sell and move on, and the customer is left working directly with the carrier. We are also technically supporting the customer, opening tickets and eliminating the finger-pointing. That has been very successful for business in our offices in Atlanta and Miami.

What do you like about working with AireSpring?

We started doing a lot of AireSpring business as soon as I started at CT Solutions in 2014, because it was so much easier to tell customers that even if they were unfamiliar with the AireSpring name, we’ve done a lot with you and you do a great job on install. We can put people at ease because we are talking about our own first-hand experience as a customer of yours. The big thing is that on the front end, I can always count on Charlie Lomond [AireSpring National Channel Director] to turn around a quote for us really quickly, which helps so much when you get a customer that’s very upset with a carrier and they want to change things right then and there. Being able to turn around on price quickly really helps us close business—but more than that, Charlie really is not afraid to get his hands dirty if something needs attention. He jumps in there and supports us very well. Some other carriers’ products are fine but their channel managers really leave something to be desired when it comes to support. It’s my job to provide the design, so it’s helpful to know that I have the backup of our channel manager to be sure that what I provide works properly.

Charlie is very good at filling in the technical knowledge gaps when needed, and if the customer asks us for something one-off or out of the box, he is great about letting us bounce ideas off of him to come up with a solution. If he thinks it is a bad idea, he will say so, or he’ll go to engineering to ask for more ideas.

Mike Chase [AireSpring Senior VP Solutions Engineering] has jumped on calls with us for SD-Wan and security. He really helped us a lot on a call when an MPLS customer’s IT vendor was trying to sway the conversation in another direction. Mike managed to talk circles around the IT vendor, convincing the customer that AireSpring would be well able to support their needs. 

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

I think the first thing is integrity. We often come in behind other agents that have sold the customer something based on their self-interest, not the customer’s. I find that by being honest up front and not just saying whatever we need to say to get the ink on paper, recommending to the customer based on what serves their needs, we have created a loyal customer base and are seeing a lot of referrals. It’s also important to be confident in what you’re talking about and not be just a quote house. You have to be able to provide a solution and be able to back it up with information as to why you designed it that way.

Networking is also really important. We specialize in phone systems and circuits, so we partner with IT VARs and whether they’re sub-agents or not, they work with us because they know our solution is going to be designed properly. At Cbeyond, most of the channel managers sat in the same office, and you could see that one channel manager could sell three times what others were doing, and that was because he was networking with IT VARs and providing a level of support like Charlie does. Agents knew that when they came to him, they’d get treated well and be taken care of, and it’s the same thing at AireSpring with Charlie.

What is the “next big thing” you think agents should be aware of in 2018 and into 2019?

As a traditional equipment vendor selling on-premise PBX systems, we are seeing a real shift toward UCaaS. Everything is more of an as-a-service model, whether it’s software or other communications. A lot of people who started out trying to go with the cheapest

solution like a broadband connection, are finding that as they move their information off-site to cloud communications, it’s driving their need for additional bandwidth. We also are mindful of all the consolidation that is taking place in the industry right now. We see that the big carriers are getting bigger, like CenturyLink, Verizon and others, and that is going to create more opportunity for carriers like AireSpring. It is our preference not to deal with the big carriers, because they are so big they can’t get anything done. We are careful to avoid the possibility of niche players grabbing business by calling into and poaching our customer base. We know that with AireSpring’s 100% channel focus that will never be a problem.

Another growing concern for the industry is disaster recovery. We have an office in south Florida, which is hurricane central, and we’ve had a lot more conversations with customers about that subject, especially relating to UCaaS and planning what to do if we are without power for a few days. Storing all our information in the cloud meant that after Hurricane Irma last fall, we were able to get our Miami office up and running faster than our Atlanta offices, where we had to operate on generator power for almost a full week. Our customers are more receptive to this discussion lately, and businesses are not as tolerant of outages as they once were. Three years ago they might not have been convinced, but now we can show them that we can put everything in the cloud, including their data, and they know they need backups and failovers in order to stay in business.

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

My wife Caroline and I just returned from our honeymoon in Costa Rica. We love to travel together and have taken a lot of side trips. I’m a big golfer—it’s not really a mutual interest, although I’m working on her. Our parents live close by so we see both of our families frequently. We just really enjoy each other’s company. I even convinced Caroline to try ziplining on our trip to Costa Rica—a bit to my surprise. She is always willing to give something a try, even when it wouldn’t be her first choice.

Barclay, 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 Darek Niedojadlo, Managed Services Manager.

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

I have been in telecom for about 11 years and in the information technologies industry all my life. I had a neighbor growing up who was a network administrator. He started teaching me to build my own computers when I was around eight years old--in fact, my family was first on the block to get a cable modem. When I was 10, my Dad got me my first computer, an Intel Pentium 33 that we upgraded to 90. I played a lot of games on it, then when the internet came out I got into Torrent for downloading movies—at that time it was one of the only ways to access entertainment online, and it wasn’t really regulated yet. After high school, that same neighbor steered me into attending a tech school, and I ended up completing the whole Microsoft 2000 track to become a network administrator. I went on to pursue a degree in Management Information Systems.

My first tech job was with Priority Tech Support, supporting their entire D-Link product line, which included every product that had the D-Link 800-number on the back. It involved everything from setting up wireless cameras to network cards to wireless routers. It taught me a great deal about interacting with customers and solving network problems. I started in Tier 1 and ended up as a lead, until the company downsized our whole department. I next worked for Go Remote as a Support Engineer, providing support for routers and sales teams. We had a number of Fortune 500 customers, including Merrill Lynch and Bridgestone Tires, where we performed day-one installation and technical support. After working there for four years, I took a two-year hiatus to travel in Europe and reconnect with my family in Poland. It was an amazing adventure and I got the chance to attend two of my cousins’ weddings—Polish weddings are quite a party.

After returning to the U.S. in 2007, I started working with Telekenex, my first real telecom job, as a Network Operations Center (NOC) Engineer. I got to learn all about hosting, how the backend all fits together, and how networks function. I was quickly promoted to managing the department of seven people, and managing a data center. Ralph Romero [AireSpring Vice President of Service Delivery] was the customer service director there and I was the NOC manager. In 2010 we started a solutions center in El Salvador and I got to travel there every few months for a few weeks at a time. The people were wonderful and I loved getting to see another culture and travel to nearby countries, including Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In 2012, the entire department was laid off. I contracted independently with several companies, like Kelley Blue Book, doing technical and network administration.

In 2014 I started at TelePacific, which became TPx, working again with Ralph Romero in his Managed Services Division. I was a hosted IP Engineer, designing hosted IP phone systems for customers when it was a new and very exciting thing. During that time, we acquired an East Coast company called DSCI to help with the platform. 

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

Ralph [Romero] eventually went to work for AireSpring and once again, he recruited me to join the AireSpring team, which I did in February of 2018, as Managed Services Manager. I was really attracted to the company in part because its smaller size means you can have more of an impact and really make a difference. I knew my skills would be a good fit for AireSpring, helping to give direction to a team of engineers. It was also a growth opportunity—we are expanding and hiring more talented engineers every month.

What do you enjoy most about working with AireSpring?

I enjoy the fact that whatever the sales team sells, we are going to make it work. Every day is entirely different, and that is what makes it so fun. We have a very broad range of different products and technologies, and you get to design and redesign the setup to fit every situation.

The best thing about working at AireSpring is the people. They really do care what happens with their customers and that is something special. Everyone goes the extra mile to do what it takes to make the customer happy. That helps me to do my job and if I don’t know the solution to an issue, I have an incredible team in the Network Operations Center (NOC) to tap into. The level of knowledge among the staff is truly amazing, from products to processes and technologies. I learn a lot from them every day, especially with people like Jesus Aguilar and Joe Qritiem [AireSpring Network Operations Technicians]. We do need to constantly learn about a lot of different products and technologies to keep up. I am very people-oriented and team-oriented. It’s important to enjoy your co-workers since you spend so much time with them.

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

I was raised with a deep connection to my Polish background. Poland has a rich history and I am very proud of that heritage, including the amazing food. I love pierogi and especially piroshki. Growing up I was always in the Polish Boy Scouts, from the age of six, and even became an Eagle Scout within the Polish organization. I got to attend a Detroit instructor camp for three weeks, twice, learning outdoor knowledge, as well as the leadership aspects and all about Polish history. I went to Polish school every weekend throughout my childhood, and was raised in the Polish church. I did the folk dancing too for a while, but Scouts was my main focus. I went to the Jamboree in Canada for two weeks, when I was 18.

I love to travel and am planning my next trip in November to Paradise Island in the Bahamas. My real obsession is my car, a BMW335, one of the fastest cars on the road…the color is “space grey.” I have owned all the Xboxes, and am a fan of Xbox sports, but my true sport is hockey—the Las Vegas Knights are my team. I got a chance to see them in the playoffs in March, in Las Vegas, with tickets sitting right up at the glass—that was incredibly exciting.

Darek, 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