BizTech Podcasts

53. UC & Microsoft Teams: When is it the right fit? – With Shams Khan of SCB Global

January 25, 2023

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Do you want to dive deeper into the Microsoft Teams roadmap and understand Teams at a deeper level? Tune in to hear Shams Khan of SCB Global as he discusses their unique and rare partnership with Microsoft that helps them (and you) architect high-level Microsoft Teams and voice solutions on a global scale!

Transcript of episode can be found below.

Josh Lupresto (00:01):
Welcome to the podcast that is designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus. And this is Next Level BizTech. All right, everybody, welcome back. We are talking about unified comms, Microsoft teams, everything in between. And so today I would like to welcome in one of the world’s most well-traveled men, Shams Khan, VP at SCB Global Shams. Welcome onto the show, man. Excited to have you.

Shams Kahn (00:35):
Hey, Josh. Thank you for having me here. And I’m just trying to meet the levels of, you know, how much you would travel from one side of the cost to the other. Yeah, not, not there yet.

Josh Lupresto (00:48):
Not, not there, but you, you have touched pieces of the world that I think give you so much cool experience, and we’ll get into that here in a minute, and Sure. Maybe that, maybe it kicks us off with that. I, I, I wanna, I want everybody to learn a little bit about you. You know, we’ll get to SCB in just a second, but, but talk to me about your personal background. You know, how did you get into this space? Where did you start? And, and let’s kick it off there.

Shams Kahn (01:11):
Sure. So there will probably many things that will be you know, uncovered, as I say, and probably your audience or people who are listening to this will learn a lot more about me on the personal front. So I started in this space when it comes to this space, meaning communications at a very tender age of 10. And people will not know this I’m 34 now, but I started at, at the age of 10 because of our family business. I think I’ve mentioned some of this in our personal conversations with you, Josh, but it was more so internet was booming and communication was one of the things that we are an ISP in Mumbai. I got interested by it computers and, you know, my father or the computer trainer. So I was always around computers, and I think I’m of the generation that I used computers and I played games on computers, which were pixelated versus, you know, team games, right?

Shams Kahn (02:06):
Or consults. So computer was really the center of my universe in terms of how I grew up. And communication was really exciting. And I was 16 when I started to really take the reins of the business our networking, internet communications within the s p world. And that too was a life event where somebody said, Hey, you, you know, you guys are just delivering this service because you got Monopoly in this area. And that kind of kicked me off you know, as a trigger moment, as, as I would say to try and say, no, it’s not really true. And I decided to learn that in the first of two years, and then decided to study that that led me to come to United Kingdom study at Chapel Hallam University doing computer and network engineering as a degree which is where I came here and I said, I wanna study now that I’ve kind of got a background in understanding.

Shams Kahn (03:02):
And the idea was to always go into something that will help me in my career path, right? And that is how it started. Now, what got me into cloud is another life event. It was 2009 ish, I would say. I was coming back from my you know, like normal class in, in my college or university, as we call it, here in the UK. And somebody had broken into our house. I was renting a house with my friends and, and they stole my laptop. And this was really like, you know, college fees and everything my parents were sponsoring and funding before. I’m like, how do I now retrieve my assignments? You know, they’ve just taken in the space of the 10 minutes that we had that me and my friend were out and coming back from our you know class.

Shams Kahn (03:52):
So I was like, there must be a way to find something that I can, you know, store somewhere as opposed to carrying u sb. And that led me into cloud computing. I decided to do dissertation on cloud which was my research paper that got published. And I really took on that path to say there is a way of solving the problem that I experienced or others. And that’s how I graduated. I got my paper published, and I was looking for a break in, in this space. And I did not get it until f e b global come in 2013 in December. I still remember that time I was speaking to my, who’s a math CEO now of the company that it’s coming up to almost 10 years that you met me. And I had to find a br, you know, an opportunity where I can showcase my skills. But I started as an intern for the company where I’m the VP in the space of nine years or so. So that’s the background. My real life story life events brought me into the space. And also that knack that I have of solving problems for of the world was something that I faced. And I, and I believed truly that that is what technology in this space where I’m in should be able to offer for the earth to come. So that’s the little bit of a background for your listeners.

Josh Lupresto (05:22):
Love it. I, I think you’re the first person on this podcast that has written a dissertation on clouds. So you’ve definitely moved up a qualification level. And like I say, we always learn, learned things about people that we knew, that we thought we knew. No, that’s awesome. And, but I think it does solidify all the great, great inventions or great movements or great ways to go in a different direction were created outta necessity. So, cool story. Awesome background.

Shams Kahn (05:48):
Thank you.

Josh Lupresto (05:50):
So let’s talk about the now. Who is SCB Global and what is your current role?

Shams Kahn (05:56):
Sure. So as SCB Global came out with a heritage of voice communication. So like you and ACT talking right now was available, but not really easily possible where SCB had that wealth and knowledge whereby you had I L D N or, you know, traditional base of communication. And SEV was really in the inception of saying, Hey, look at this. You know, this is IP based communication. And they kept doing that until I came into the picture which was IP based on-premise communication, being a licensed operator like your you know, our, a licensed operator like Verizons or B VPs of the world who are in different space. But SCB was very much a boutique as the name is global, where we can be that single hand to shake to provide you the voice communication. The springboard moment came in 2015, and that’s where my dissertation story and my experience in India was put together as a business plan.

Shams Kahn (06:54):
And we discussed this in the board meeting today. SCB really needs to be the springboard to take things in the cloud and really power these platforms. So we started from empowering global business to enabling global business now to optimizing global businesses using the wealth of voice licenses that we carry to provide voice communication in exotic locations to easy locations, but also giving the customer a springboard to move into the cloud pretty much in the Microsoft space that we are championed now. And there is history there as well. What happened, and we will probably go into that too. My role in the business is really as a VP go-to market, working with tactical and strategic partners to build a UK and fecal story for their customers. How we can help them augment, optimize, and unlock the existing investment that they ha carry quite often than not breaking those silos that generally tax start to occur. And that will naturally, at the end, drive efficiency and cost.

Josh Lupresto (07:59):
Yeah. You know, you guys are, I think, a good example of the evolution of our channel where five to 10 years ago, maybe partners were just traditionally selling, all they had to sell was connectivity and voice, right? You talked about prs, tdm, things like that. And, and, and that was all it looked like we had access to. But in the meantime, over here, you know, we’ve got, in this parallel universe, we’ve got Microsoft developing you know, their licensing products, their office products, but over here is link over here is Skype, over here is teams and direct routing and operator connect. And so there are, you know, that for the longest time, there was no way to monetize any of that in our channel. So we just stood by and, and hoped it didn’t have too much success, right? , and I think what, what you guys have solidified is that there’s a lot of value in the Microsoft side of the solution, and there’s been a lot of a lot of growth and a lot of product, product maturity in that side of it.

Josh Lupresto (08:57):
And now, thankfully regardless of what direction the customers want to go, whether they say, oh, I’m, I want to go this route with a, a more traditional uc provider that, that we know, or I’m going Microsoft, we don’t have to any longer say oh, well, sorry, you know, we, we can’t help you with that. So yeah, you guys, we will get into some of the products that’s here in a second and, and some of maybe what’s new and what’s coming. But you guys, to me, are a really great example of how, how the channel has molded, how the channel has shifted. And quite honestly, we’re thankful to have somebody like you with your level of expertise in the portfolio, because it gives our partners that confidence to go in and say whatever you want to cover from a voice perspective, anything, Microsoft, anywhere that, that falls under that under that funnel, we got you covered.

Shams Kahn (09:44):
Yep. And I think there’s another interesting anecdote I wish to share here for the listeners as well. If you see that Microsoft has tried to enter this space time and time again with acquisitions that were billions of dollars and it’s never clicked, but it’s always been there, you know, somewhere in that space. And so is the other collaboration companies that are out there as well, have tried. What happened here is that when Microsoft Teams came, and I remember this really well, saying to our board members here, that 2018, you know, teams is something that is new, it’s different, it was more heavily around collaboration. It was a framework, and that’s what we recognized. So the enabling global business, like ethos I mentioned was to enable people who are using these platforms. And I remember in 2019, we had a event here in London, international Partners came over a room of 200 people, and I remember so well that it was pretty much everybody said in that room, teams are the distraction teams is a red herring, you know, and it pretty much put to the side.

Shams Kahn (10:47):
And from there, it was only three, four months later, you know, the world experienced the pandemic and everybody was like throwing hook line and nnc, as I say, on Microsoft and other forms of, you know, solutions. So naturally there was a wave that came through. We had confusion as well to a lot of companies, a lot of partners in your, in, in the space as well that needed that clarification and unlearn what they were told. There has been that side of effort the s St P has been putting in, because as I say, they couldn’t join the wave sorry, they couldn’t fight the wave, they had to join the wave, right? Mm-Hmm. . So that is another thing that happened that we saw. And it’s important, right? Because as I say regulations or calamities will bring about either change in behavior or so of society, or even innovation. And that’s exactly what we have experienced as a society.

Josh Lupresto (11:43):
Yeah, great point. I mean, we, we, we, we knew that Microsoft would get it, right? They might not get it perfect, but we knew that they would get it right or more, right? They would, would iterate and they wouldn’t waste all of that money. Yeah, certainly seeing what you’re seeing on the sidelines, we’re just waiting for them to kind of get it right, but also wanna be prepared when they get it right. And, and everything that happens in between, so. Yep. Good point. So let’s talk about, you know, what you’ve seen, you mentioned you’re coming up kind of on this 10 year mark, right? I, I’m, I’m kind of interested, you’ve talked about, you know, I know your personality, you’ve always been hey, let me figure out a way to fix it. Let me figure out a way to help you sell it. What, what have you seen that has been, or what have you learned that has been the most valuable in, in these evolutions over the last five plus years?

Shams Kahn (12:31):
I feel quite often as ses or even as, you know, people who are selling technology, it’s always I have noticed in my experience that it focuses on the new flashy product or, you know, features and functionality and not so much on the adoption. So everybody talks about, yeah, we’ve got a better product, we do this in the cloud, it’s easy, it’s simple, but the factor is that the world comes with different people with different levels of, you know, knowledge and experience. Adoption has been an area that I often get missed. And another area would be because you are working in the space of software as a service now or everything, there’s an app for it, right? You wanna order something, there’s an app for it. If you want a cleaner, there’s an app for it. You know, you wanna wash your clothes, there’s an app for it.

Shams Kahn (13:23):
So that, that’s the problem. So there’s so many application hopping that does, and that obviously leads to a problem that is efficiency enablers, where the reason why these apps came about, they became efficiency blockers growth. That is another area which I will see the adoption and the efficiency, which kind of leads, because of silos that gets created was sometimes even now, it gets missed when people talk hybrid. I was at an event in London last week, and a lot of people were talking hybrid, but then the whole objective of not having hybrid is you don’t want to have people causing, you know, two applications or platforms that they wish to run. And if they are, they need to be immensely integrated or be, have an immersive experience versus, you know, a purely an integration that looks integrated, but it’s not really integrated. But that’s the, those are the three areas of vertical that I feel despite what’s gonna happen, if we relieve that in the background, then that will cause a problem for you know, all of us pretty much, right? Yeah.

Josh Lupresto (14:31):
I wanna get into evolution. I feel like this is a really big topic, evolution and differentiators. So what, I mean, what I mean by that is I, you guys have been able to see and, and be witness to all the different evolutions that Microsoft has had, but let, let’s talk about evolutions in the sense of how you’ve matured your products, how you guys have invested, how you guys see the world in r and d. And then, then we’ll get to the differentiators the the heavy hitter speed dating stuff. But, but, but talk to me, you know, you, you and I talked a lot about where you’re traveling, where you’re going, the different countries, the different, you’re connected at a different level. Let me just put it that way. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna prime the pump with that, and then maybe you can tell us about how you guys look at evolving in the future and being ready for what’s next.

Shams Kahn (15:18):
Sure. So I think you mentioned, right, Microsoft has evolved and I have this thing that I learned, again, going back in my personal space when I was in my placement here with a pharmaceutical company called Eli Lilly, they were going to lose a patent on schizophrenia. And what I found is my land managers were changing. And one thing I experienced after that, you know, my laptop getting stolen, if you don’t roll with a change, you become part of the change, right? And that is exactly what you are seeing right now with some businesses. They didn’t wanna roll with the change and they were replaced by someone else. You know companies have been replaced as well. So evolution absolutely is there. You gotta be with time. Absolutely. For us as a SCB we have this analogy that we really stick by.

Shams Kahn (16:05):
We are on that racetrack, you know, of going 200 miles an hour with us, you know, cannot take our foot of the gas even on the bends one, the front one other back, or we cannot lose control and we cannot slow down. And that is how we see us as a business where, where we are going with, with this story of communication, right? So all these different islands of communication, collaboration, customer experience that are siloed, we see that the customer is not gonna buy telephone system that they used to the way used to buy before. They’re gonna buy a framework or a platform that is gonna give them the ability to do much more than just picking up the phone and making a call, or have somebody in the receptionist take a call on a console because that person or that technology can and should be available from anywhere, which is the workplace transformation.

Shams Kahn (17:01):
So that is the, the, the pa you know, area that we feel evolution would be, would be and will be is the work and place, both are being transformed. Everyone’s talking about it, the future world to work, but it’s more so what do you enable that future worker world with? Is it plethora of applications or is there a framework that allows you to meet the demands and needs of all your persona types of user type? And that’s where we are going to be really focusing on as a business, using the analogy that I gave. But now to answer your second part of the question is what is SCB doing? SCB has really seen these big platforms, you know, I mean, you look at Gartner Magic Cord, right? Right now Microsoft is at the forefront, SCB really making Microsoft teams fully capable with all the features, functionalities, and capabilities because of the framework that Microsoft is facilitated as a gateway or the customer adoption to occur with all the points that I mentioned, or the persona types or communication, collaboration, whatever that may be. And that is where SCB really laser the focus in because we don’t see communication as it was before. We call it comms4.org, Which is the generation after ipbs communication. And that is what we feel will be the next era for businesses. And SCB’s focus is gonna be really connecting people to people and people to applications in that era.

Josh Lupresto (18:31):
Love it. Alright. I want to talk now about some of the kind of technical differentiators, the way that you guys go to market. You know, I think early on when we first learned how critical Microsoft was gonna be, we were able to find some partners that gave us an angle to direct routing that was outside of pure play, full-priced uc seat. And, and that was eyeopening for us. You know, I remember being back in the teams admin center trying to configure some of the call flows, the direct routing, the admin, all that good stuff, and realizing that, you know, hey, I’m, I’m a technical guy. I’ve been a, I’ve been a Linux, I’ve been an AWS guy a majority of my life, and this is not that easy for the end user to do. And so the other thing I think when we came across you guys, and maybe this is where we kick this off of differentiators, is I think one of the first times when we talked and, and heard your comms 4.0 pitch and saw the, you know, 20, 30 plus slides that you have put together of the different ways that you can architect the solution, where the call path goes, where the audio goes, where the data stream goes, it was very eye-opening for us how you guys looked at architecting and the kind of expertise that you had on the backend to build some of these solutions.

Josh Lupresto (19:40):
So if I’m a Telarus partner listening to this, and I, I find out about SCB global and maybe there’s a couple other options in the portfolio that maybe I don’t understand all the differences, what would you say that, what are a couple of those differences from, from you to some of your competitors out there?

Shams Kahn (19:58):
Sure. I think it’s, it’s important and I, I think I would like to ask the viewers or listeners right now to, you know, visualize this. It’s like a pyramid, right? So I really, at the base when you look at any use of your offering there is always going to be a need for you to have a, a tip trunking a provider or partner that powers that platform. The key point, point for SCB is that that baseline that you see, which is gen general tip, which is, as I use an example there, is like everybody, majority of the world at least speaks English or understands English, right? So let’s use that as a terminology for th trunks or th language. That’s the general language. Any IP based systems will understand, be it intercom, be it d or paging system.

Shams Kahn (20:45):
They all will understand that language. So for you to enable the language, you need that layer or that tier SCB, he is the licensed operator in that tier to begin with, to power these UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS platforms. That’s the first win globally, which a lot of these UCaaS/CCaaS or other vendors when you see they did not carry, I mean, we carry that even in the ob secure locations as well. The next layer of the pyramid is Mike, when you look at Microsoft most of the folks will, again, I’ll use an analogy, will bring you to the room, or if it was in, in a building, say this is a Microsoft space, you go and figure out where the life switches are, where you can sit, where you can’t sit, is there a, you know, a bomb underneath somewhere where you can call the problem to yourself.

Shams Kahn (21:30):
They don’t show you that. Whereas for us, we are really the champion. We know exactly how to navigate through this challenge and help the customer go through those hoops and hurdles, but more so also simplify it. So we carry that Microsoft tier. So we are top tier partner for Microsoft top, less than 1% of Microsoft partners in the world. We also manage Microsoft partner, which means we can bring a Microsoft rep on the table if there’s an opportunity where we feel that Microsoft can help us bring the deal or help the customer recognize the value we bring. In addition to that, we are also an EIF program partner, which is End Customer Investment Fund, where Microsoft will sign as a check to help build a customer from any state to Microsoft teams. Wow. And that is, again, a very select or handful of players in this space.

Shams Kahn (22:24):
If you’re thinking of following me on the pyramid, you’ll see the license operator status, the system integration and Microsoft expertise status is there. And now it adding more layers on top where you know, our SDwan can be used for people who are working remotely. Security and compliance can be used inside teams where people haven’t even thought about group chats, whether it’s so many data flow in and out. How do you pro, how do you secure that? You know, it’s got nothing to do with voice, but it’s got everything to do with the platform. We have that contact center, you know, little nuggets of creating better experience with CRM platforms or CPaaS play. That’s the, that’s the tier. If you really start to follow that, we are really championed in that space. We understand whether weaknesses lie on Microsoft, I can use that as a weakness.

Shams Kahn (23:12):
Cause Microsoft’s not everything for everywhere. It’s a gateway. It allows you to build, but quite often people, you know, like a typical salesman actor will be, oh, look, it doesn’t, they don’t have this and that. But more so a reason Microsoft doesn’t have is because Microsoft wants a partner like us to go and build that story, right? You know, in that pyramid. But that’s what we are really going out. And when you look at it from our competitors, they wouldn’t do those things. That what they’re gonna do is they will, and I use an example here is like, you have an Android platform. So imagine that’s your Microsoft platform and you have an iOS platform and that’s the provider’s platform. They’ll create a bridge between the two. So quite often with a third party connector, and now you’ve got a solution. So it looks and feels that is Microsoft, but it’s not really Microsoft. Yeah,

Josh Lupresto (24:01):
Great, great examples. Very good visuals too. Love the analogies in there. Thank you. All right, let’s let’s, let’s get here. As we get towards the latter half of this, let’s talk about examples. So I, I think the interesting thing is we, you know, we don’t always see that the customer environment is not exactly what it was described, right? The, the, the problem, but we don’t really know what the problem is, right? We might hear, we need unified comms, and the reality is they’ve got a beat up ribbon SBC that they can’t control, and they’re trying to tie it to a teams environment, right? Some of that stuff just doesn’t come out. So I, I would love to hear just an example that, that you got brought into. What was the problem statement? What did you uncover? How did you uncover? And then really, what, what, what did you rip out or replace or, or augment or, you know, whatever the story is and, and what did the end solution look like? And, and, and how did it all come to come to fruition?

Shams Kahn (24:54):
Sure. So I’ve got a few, but, so I’m just gonna try and think which one it’s beneficial. Would you want me to just talk about the teams play or talk about bright teams, then we help them move into teams and then contact center? Which one would

Josh Lupresto (25:08):
You, yeah, maybe, maybe just a little bit about what really related around teams and then what, what did it look like and kind of, you know, what were their struggles? I mean, frame it in the thought of, if I’m a partner listening to this, I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be gaining confidence in you guys and your abilities, and I’m gonna look for environments that you paint a picture for me where you’re a fit. So maybe something like that.

Shams Kahn (25:29):
Sure. So we had a couple of instances recently where both of these customers went with a team solution that was a uc. You know, the example I gave of Android and iOS and teams. And it just failed. So there were multiple problems. The customer said, it doesn’t work, obviously, what doesn’t work, we don’t know, right? When we go in and we found out that I gave an example of, you know, somebody taking you to the Microsoft room or the area and the space, and then not showing you inside. When we logged on, we found there were a series of issues that the customer experiences because of the dial plan, the calling policy, the voice policy of the user insight teams. And that’s one of the reasons why that partner could not execute a successful cutover and migration from an on-prem PBX moving into cloud with the PBX provider or a UC provider.

Shams Kahn (26:30):
So when we go, when we logged on immediately, it took us like, what few minutes to go in and find out the problem. The reason it took us few minutes is our approach is very consultative. We like to go in and say to the customer, let us either work with you in the team, Adam admin center, or give us the rights to work on those. And sometimes customers will say, we can’t give you full rights. So we have like a process around that. So anyway, we went in, we found the problem straight away. We fixed them, we rerouted the whole policy and, and everything else within that. And the customer was brought live with an aggressive deadline of like, what, 40 days including number port, including the entire delivery and contact center as well. So that is what we did for this customer.

Shams Kahn (27:20):
And in their own words, they never experienced such fast delivery. Number one, efficiency and clarity. That’s what they mentioned to us. And in fact, the other customer had a similar situation, but with different UC provider where they went ahead and had to roll it back whereby, you know, we came in and we found a problem. Again on the Microsoft side. That’s why, you know, when you asked about our differentiation, a lot of the times people claim they’re Microsoft experts, but they’re not . That’s the, that’s the big, big point that I would say, you gotta be minding, you know, that when you are deciding to choose a partner or a solution.

Josh Lupresto (28:01):
Good, good stuff. Final final couple thoughts here. Walk me through if, I’m a partner, I’m super excited about this, I’ve got a lot of confidence in you guys, I know customers that are gonna be a good fit and that are struggling with this what do you, what kind of talk track, or I’m a big questions guy, what kind of questions do you recommend giving that partner? What, what can they walk away with and take to their customers and go ask X and y and Z to help flush this out a little bit?

Shams Kahn (28:31):
Sure. Well, I mean, we do have a qualification document that we’ve built based on the persona type. So like, for example, regulated countries like China, India have a separate in need and demand that we have created that. And just as a point as well, important to note, we just, just don’t, don’t go and say teams day one, you can start with just pure sip trunking on an existing platform and then crawl, walk, and run, you know, or even coexist with one of you sites going to teams and the other not. So we’ve got qualification questions there, whether the most important and the key point that we always ask, which is a low-hanging fruit to our customers is are they using Microsoft teams today? And obviously, most of often than not, they will say, oh, yes, we are. And if you call a recent numbers from Microsoft as well, of 80 million bond users, but only 12 million using pstn, that’s like roughly 68 million or four have the license, but they don’t use it, you know, and there are 350 million office seats out there that don’t use the whole PSN aspect as well.

Shams Kahn (29:35):
So asking that question absolutely, help us, number one. Number two is what is it their, what is their strategy around you know, workplace transformation? Like with people working, are they using, like, for example, zoom and Microsoft? Are they using different platforms? Are they looking to consolidate? And that, that is an important point as well for us. The third one is where are they, where are they based, you know, and the use account. Cause our strength and pedigree being a full stack provider in 90 plus countries where we can be the licensed operator and, and voice provider you know, depending in different countries, et cetera, we absolutely can start the journey and get into the account or that partner even on sip, for example, those three variables or angles if you want, you know in that time that we have helps us really and our sales team to help the partner obviously, and more important the customer to navigate through that in our consultative approach.

Josh Lupresto (30:35):
Love it. Good stuff. All right final thoughts here. So I was watching a couple of these videos, you know, that, that you get down a rabbit hole of watching this video. And, you know, it was a TikTok that had came over to a YouTube short, and it, it was, I think at the bull market, the height of the crypto run, and it, it somehow this, this kid had been able to surround himself that there was nothing but millionaires walking outta the buildings that he was asking questions at. I don’t know, however that works out, but anyway, he, he was asking, you know, all these questions, how did you have success? What did you, and he asked this one question to this guy who, who made his millions in finance and, and was a little bit into to, to crypto and Bitcoin, and he said, what do you think about this coin?

Josh Lupresto (31:19):
What? And, and the guy said, listen, kid, it’s, it’s not about that coin. It’s, it’s not about, you know, whether this one’s gonna take off or that one’s gonna take off. You gotta have a zoom out mindset, and you gotta think and, and ask yourself, is the world going more digital or less digital over time? And I think we know the answer to that. And so setting the stage in that context, I’m kind of curious if, if, if Shams looks out and SUV Global looks out where do you see this world going? Right? Do you see it going more complex, more detailed, more need? You know, what’s, what’s your, your forethought here, just looking out 12 months, 24 months, right? What should partners be aware of and, and, and things to look for as they walk in to talk to customers?

Shams Kahn (32:06):
Well, I think my take, and, you know, personally what I see, as I said, you know, if you don’t roll with a change, you become part of the change. The, this is not the end of the cycle, you know, where this market is mature, there will be some more things coming. And this is where I, I, I would say to partners that the way people are communicating and collaborating is going to change even more. So bracing yourself with someone who has been on that journey, or at least was at the beginning of the journey to try and say, yes, this is our plan, but is trying to just sell in a reactive way, then that’s, that’s something you gotta be watching out for you know, who you partner with. And the second part is that you see that in, in this space of people where we talked about, you know, collaboration and communication, again, the generation of how accustomed they are you know, of using some tools and application that is also gonna evolve.

Shams Kahn (33:06):
So in the pandemic, even the people who never really used a mobile phone to order online, they were forced to order online. So again, that behavior is gonna stay there is going to be that divide or which allow work from one place or multiple that is gonna happen. But working with a, you know, a company that sees that, that is going to be very, very critical for any of your partners. I feel there is a lot more to happen in this space that is gonna ha evolve and show us direction. And it is only going to be more complex for the one who doesn’t wanna change, but it will be more simple for the one who understands that this is the next wave that we are gonna be hit by. So it is important to, from those people who, who feel that, you know, this is it it’s not, it’s a lot more to evolve.

Josh Lupresto (34:00):
Beautiful. Well, my friend, that brings us up to the end here, Shams, I appreciate you coming on and doing this with me, man. It’s been fun.

Shams Kahn (34:07):
Thank you so much, Josh, for having me, and thank you for this opportunity, Telarus.

Josh Lupresto (34:13):
All right, everybody. That wraps us up for this week, VP of SCB, global Shams Kahn. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus. And this has been the Next Level Biztech podcast.