Image Gallery: Telarus Partner Summit

The fifth annual Telarus Partner Summit began with Casino Night fun and ended with an awards banquet and some dancing that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning.

In between was a report on the “state of Telarus”; educational sessions on VXSuite, the analytics software that the master agent bought last year, panels on hosted UC and partner best practices; and more.

Several hundred supplier reps and Telarus partners packed the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Deer Valley, Utah, for three days last week. Channel Partners was there too.

Flip through our image gallery for a recap of the event. You’re bound to see someone you know.

Follow senior online managing editor Craig Galbraith on Twitter.

Telarus CEO Adam Edwards (on stage) welcomed a record-breaking crowd to the fifth annual event on the evening of June 21.

The three-day event kicked off with words from Edwards followed by Casino Night, where partners could take funny money and turn it into raffle tickets for a variety of prizes. 

Edwards and co-founder Patrick Oborn opened the first full day of the Summit with a “State of Telarus” presentation.

The master’s biggest move since this crowd gathered here a year ago was the acquisition of VXSuite, software that provides partners the analytics to ensure the quality of voice traffic on the data networks they sell.

And speaking of networks, Telarus said it will be pushing agents to sell advanced services a lot in the next 12 months — think bandwidth, network monitoring and unified communications. That push doesn’t come without an incentive. The company introduced the new Triple Crown Award, which reduces the revenue requirement to become a member of its President’s Club for partners who sell those services.

As you can see on this slide, Telarus’ plans for the next year go far beyond new-services sales.

Among the highlights:

• Adding fiber routes and easily identifiable lit buildings to the Telarus mobile app
• Increasing the number of partners using the master agent’s management services, which it says can help them focus more on selling
• Getting more providers in the GeoQuote, Telarus’ pricing tool. The company last week added hosted VoIP functionality to GeoQuote, which spits out a recommendation for a provider after an agent selects various criteria that fit the client’s needs.

Capt. Ron Fry, retired Green Beret, delivered the motivational keynote address on June 22, making connections between his time waging “unconventional warfare” in Afghanistan — and lessons in business.

He told stories from his time spent in the Pech Valley, where his team was focused on diplomacy. In his book, “Hammerhead Six,” Fry talks about the success he had working with Afghan people to get them to resist the temptations of the Taliban.

Fry grew up with Telarus’ Edwards and Oborn in California.

This panel of representatives from UC suppliers tackled a number of questions about unified communications.

Perhaps the most interesting being, “Why isn’t hosted UC being adopted more quickly?”

Broadview Networks’ David Dixon recommended that partners dive deep with members of a potential customer’s C-suite to learn about their business and see how they can make the company’s employees more “productive and effective.”

Jive’s Roy Jackson said to go back and hit up some of those midsize companies that turned you down a couple of years ago. “It’s worth revisiting those,” he said, because those are the businesses that now are adoption UC at a rapid pace.

Here, a rep from Comm-Core shows off some of his company’s hosted IP solutions.

The company promises that partners can place their first order in “only minutes,” see the exact commission immediately on every sale, and decide who invoices the end user.

OK, so it wasn’t really a costume “party,” per se, but Doug Tolley, Telarus SVP of Sales, somehow got these “volunteers” to dress up in wacky outfits to represent the various points on the network.

It was part of his presentation, “VXSuite, Cloud Transparency and How It Works.”

Telarus bills VXSuite as a differentiator, noting how it can be very tough to compete against direct sales teams.

“We can offer a network monitoring tool versus a direct tool. It’s a pretty big advantage,” Jason Para, founder of agency Broadstring Communications, told Channel Partners.

The best-practices panel, moderated by Telarus co-founder Patrick Oborn (standing, left) featured some of the master agent’s most successful agents.

The session included stories of how each has successfully used VXSuite.

The Summit concluded with the P awards dinner where Telarus honored its top partners and suppliers for the year.

Among the most notable:

• Partners’ Choice Award, Best Overall: Time Warner Cable Business Class/NaviSite
• Partners’ Choice Award, Top Supplier: Comcast Business
• Partners’ Choice Award, Best New Supplier: Exede Business
• Partners’ Choice Award, Best National Channel Manager: Robert Czech, Time Warner Cable Business Class/NaviSite; Charles Lomond, AireSpring
• Sales Performance Award, Top Partner: Dynamic Network Advisors
• Rookie of the Year: Sumo Communications