Windstream Wholesale has announced what the company calls “a game-changing network intelligence tool” within its iconnect customer portal, empowering users to design their own wavelength routes. The Route Creator tool elevates customer control, granting a clear landscape of accessible wave routes on the Windstream Intelligent Converged Optical Network (ICON). Customers can easily evaluate up to five wavelength route options, enhancing their network management capabilities. Customers can view information on mileage, latency and number of network hops aligned to each route option. Additionally, the route tool enables the user to customize the route options by selectively adding route diversity as necessary. The self-service tool also seamlessly integrates into the iconnect customer portal turning the desired design into a quote, making the process faster and more efficient than ever before. One of the most noteworthy and valuable features for customers is the capability to export available route options to KMZ files said the provider. This empowers network planners to download their route designs for operational review and business coordination. The Route Creator will be available to Windstream Wholesale customers at the end of January. “Windstream Wholesale is dedicated to shaping the future of technology and network intelligence,” said Joe Scattareggia, president of Windstream Wholesale. “Equally important is our commitment to eliminating barriers and service obstacles for our customers. We ensure complete network visibility and expedite connections based on our customers’ needs.” ICYMI Google Cloud announced it will no longer charge egress fees for customers that want to migrate their data to another cloud provider or on-premises. Google, along with AWS and Microsoft, have long been criticized for these fees, though it hasn’t seemed to do too much damage to their respective market shares. It’s expected that AWS and Azure will soon follow suit. Customers must move all their data out of Google Cloud to qualify for free data transfer and must first apply and be cleared by Google. Once approved, data must be moved within 60 days. The move applies to data residing in Google Cloud’s BigQuery, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Datastore, Filestore, Spanner and Persistent Disk. The savings for some companies looking to move off Google could be substantial, removing a significant barrier for alternate cloud providers. Cloud communications provider Crexendo recently announced that its cloud communication platform now supports more than four million end users globally. Users are defined as UCaaS application user seats including individual user licenses as well as applications such as conference bridges, call queues and SIP trunks. When Crexendo acquired the NetSapiens platform in June of 2021, there were approximately 1.7 million users on the platform. In September of this year, the company announced that its user base had surpassed 3.5 million users. “With the recent sale of our building and the subsequent elimination of debt on our balance sheet, the continued development of our platform, together with our strong organic growth as well as GAAP profitability, I believe our company is executing well on all fronts,” said Crexendo CEO Jeff Korn. “We look forward to what the year ahead has in store, and we expect more of the same from a growth standpoint.” AireSpring announced that Jeremi Hunter has joined its channel team as regional channel manager for Michigan. Hunter brings more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry to the channel provider. As the former vice president of sales and marketing at Telegration (now AppDirect), Hunter was responsible for developing all direct and channel sales strategies as well as providing support implementation for partners. His career also includes holding various roles such as strategic account manager at US Signal, sales director for Everstream Solutions, and major account executive – enterprise sales at Windstream, where he further executed sales strategies and developed relationships with partners and customers across the Midwest. “We are excited to welcome Jeremi to the AireSpring team,” stated John Young, AireSpring senior vice president of channel sales. “His deep experience in the channel and expertise in SASE and other security and cloud-based solutions, along with the relationships he’s developed throughout his career, will be instrumental to AireSpring’s growth in the Michigan region.” Google Cloud Drops Data Transfer Fees Crexendo Surpasses Four Million Users AireSpring Expands Its Midwestern Channel Team Windstream Wholesale Unveils Self-service Wavelength Route Creator 59 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2024 | CHANNELVISION
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