CVx Show Daily Day 1

2 2 CVx at ITEXPO I FEBRUARY 12 - 14, 2020 www.bekabusinessmedia.com DAY 1 CloudGenix Helps Aaron’s Blaze Trail for Modern Retail Infrastructure Telarus Names VP of Biz Dev, Contact Center C loudGenix, a leader in enterprise SD-WAN, this week announced its partnership with Aaron’s, Inc., a leading omnichannel provider of lease- purchase solutions, and its divisions Aaron’s and Progressive Leasing, as the retail company continues its digital trans- formation. CloudGenix assists Aaron’s with cloud services and branch office connectivity. With $3.9 billion in LTM revenues and nearly two million customers, Aaron’s serves a large market through multiple channels and products. The Atlanta-area based specialty retailer has been in busi- ness since 1955 and supports roughly 10,000 employees. The company’s tech- nology team includes 250 people focused on support, infrastructure and application development, along with product manage- ment and user experience. The tech- nology team is based in Kennesaw, Ga., with field technology employees assisting with store updates.  Aaron’s has adopted the CloudGenix CloudBlades platform to deliver IT solu- tions to all the company’s 1,600 stores. The first step was to create a founda- tion with SD-WAN to centralize IT. Then the technology team adopted more cloud services for general productivity applications. The company migrated from on-premises Microsoft Exchange to Office 365, allowing stores to be online and connected to the network. As a result, the technology team is now nimbler in providing a better user experi- ence for employees and customers, said the companies. “With CloudGenix, not only are our applications and data moving to the cloud but also our remote office infrastructure. We now have an app-centric view of the world and not a protocol sense of the world. We are becoming less and less beholden to hardware refresh cycles and burdensome integration,” said Aaron’s chief information officer John Trainor. Today, the technology team can deploy point-of-sale systems to all 1,600 locations in 27 minutes, and with the CloudGenix analytics tools, the company’s technology team has greater visibility into daily opera- tions, said Trainor. “What takes other retailers many months, we do continuously. And, because of our centralized model conver- sion, we aggregate data from stores in real time. With analytics at our fingertips, we can better serve our stores. We truly have a modern development environ- ment,” he added. In addition to providing better network performance, CloudGenix assisted the company with a smooth migra- tion to VoIP. CloudGenix balanced the network and cloud infrastructure through bimodal IT, which eliminated a “boat anchor issue.” CloudGenix also helped the company achieve network parity with DevOps, support, monitoring and analytics through guidance on multi- cloud services and layer abstraction. Trainor and his team plan to continue to partner with CloudGenix, implementing more of the CloudGenix CloudBlades platform. CloudBlades securely delivers best-of-breed branch infrastructure from the cloud. With CloudBlades, network (SD-WAN), security, voice, multi-cloud access and operational tools can be delivered without additional hardware or software. CloudBlades also supports Aaron’s desire for an API driven network infrastructure. Trainor and his team pointed to the challenge of getting network performance right, and he credits the CloudGenix part- nership with empowering the infrastruc- ture team: “CloudGenix helps put them in a lean-forward position versus a lean- backward position,” he said. “The level of engagement of CloudGenix is unmatched. The team, including the CEO, is easy to work with and responsive.” p M aster agent and CVx exhibitor Telarus recently announced the hiring of industry-veteran, Brandon Knight, as its new vice president of business development – contact center. In this role as head contact center evangelist, Knight will specialize in helping Telarus sales partners design, present and close large unified communications and contact center opportunities. According to Telarus, unified communications and contact center are the fastest-growing segments of the company’s product portfolio. When selling these tech- nologies, Telarus sales partners will have access to Knight’s extensive knowledge and can present him to their customers under their brand. Knight comes to Telarus having run global sales for Serenova, a leading contact center provider. He also ran the CCaaS practice of Intelisys, where he designed training and directly supported channel partners with their complex CCaaS deals. Before getting into the channel, Knight was a contact center manager for Humana, Healthsystems, Travelers and Sprint. “We are excited to turn the keys of our CCaaS prac- tice over to someone as dynamic and knowledgeable as Brandon,” said Roger Blohm, executive vice president and leader of the Telarus business development team. “Everyone who knows Brandon knows he is an all-star in the CCaaS industry. With over 25 years of combined experience running contact centers, consulting for contact centers and running contact center practices, he’ll hit the ground running with our sales partner community hungry to sell CCaaS.” Knight’s greatest skill isn’t just understanding the differences between the many suppliers in this space, said Blohm; “it’s knowing exactly when and where each one is a fit. His ability to understand the customer’s needs, to design the perfect solution, and then to help present that solution directly to the client will help our partners be experts in front of their customers.” “There is only one person I know who understands how to sell complex contact center infrastructure, knows how to inspire our sales partners, and knows how to lead a contact center practice with optimism, strategic thinking, and straight-talk, and that person is Brandon Knight,” said Scott Forbush, senior vice president of sales for Telarus. “During the many years I’ve worked with Brandon, I have seen first-hand his ability to educate customers and agents in a way that is rare in this industry. This ability to listen, ask question and carefully step customers and sales partners through the design process will be key to Brandon leading our CCaaS busi- ness development efforts.” p