Jay Morris

Morris said the public nature of the announcement could send ripples through the industry. 

“For Lumen, which has challenges in the channel anyway, what did this buy them? Other than maybe securing an obscure credibility statement, yet they will still rely on all the TSBs and subs for 99% of indirect sales. For Upstack, they still have to rely on TSBs for supplier products not scaled. Point is, any one agency alone is barely a blip on the Lumen radar, but TSBs as a whole are huge to Lumen. Will TSBs decide to push back on both of them? Will some suppliers (much larger than Lumen) push back as well? This could get ugly and for what? Egos that just had to ring a bell and be heard and noticed for something that has been happening in the channel for 30 years. Who drank whose Kool-Aid on this?”