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Have you ever looked at a telecom or cloud contract and thought "why even bother..."? Matt Milhauser is the VP of Strategy and Innovation for Advantix... and he's also a Samurai of contracts. You'll learn Matt's 5 things to look for in a vendor contract and how to negotiate them so well that you'll walk away as your company's contract HERO!

Learn when Office 365 may not be the best fit for your company... and the great alternatives you might have. Rapidscale Sales Engineer, David Lagumbay, details the specifics that may rule out Office 365 for your company but then explains how you can replicated Office 365 in a private cloud, in order to overcome the standard version's shortcomings.

Learn how IT Professional and AeroComInc.com client, Paul Li, has thrived for 25 years in his IT career. Paul shares his story with us, and tells us about his most difficult time in IT, how he approaches management feedback and much more!

Learn what technologies your company can integrate with your VoIP phone system that will make your employees more productive and happier at work. Sangar Sofi, sales engineer from Jive Communications joins Mike to tell a real customer story of a company that didn't realize how many additional applications they could integrate with their Jive hosted VoIP service... and how ecstatic their employees were when they experienced what could be integrated.

Learn whether or not Office 365's E5 offering is going to make your company's employees shout out of joy or frustration. CallTower's CRO, William Rubio, joins Mike to discuss the intricate details of what E5 is and what it is NOT.

Learn how inContact's new contact center feature is allowing contact centers to integrate diverse workflow tasks into a single contact center queue. Mark Colclasure is a sales engineer for inContact and he will walk you through several examples of how company's can get more efficiency from their contact center staff by integrating a multitude of different workflows.

Learn how to improve your company's VoIP call quality by adding SD-WAN to your VoIP service. Listen to Vonage Business' Sales Engineer, Jake Fry, explain how SD-WAN performs voice improving tasks like Forward Error Correction, Deep Packet Inspection and Multi-Path Selection.

Learn how to make sure your company never gets stuck with an insufficient Internet connection. Jay Wilson, Sales Engineer for Tier 1 ISP, Cogent Communications, joins Mike to discuss ways to identify possible bandwidth problems and how to plan for them. Josh Chamois also pays us another visit to talk about a recent promotion that you don't want to miss, as well as the Smithsonian in D.C...

Did you know that Fixed Wireless has a great argument for being MORE reliable and secure than fiber? California Internet founder and CTO (and fixed wireless technical genius), Ryan Hauf joins Mike for a fascinating discussion on Fixed Wireless Internet access for business. They discuss the technical facts surrounding security, reliability, bandwidth capacity, distance vs. signal and more. AeroComInc.com's trusty salesperson Josh Chamois also pops into the show to tell you about a provider who's offering a promotional credit the size of your yearly salary! Then, Mike throws him a challenge in the City of Sin.

When you ordered that back-up Internet line for your company, did you ask your building management company for a map of how the cables are entering the building? Did you ask the provider for a map of the collapse points? If not, no worries. Listen to John Stephens conversation with Mike, take notes and use his tips when your next contract expires. During his 23 years at Time Warner Cable Business Class, John has held nearly every technical position at the company. He knows about diverse paths into buildings because he's actually built them, engineered them and done troubleshooting on them. Josh Chamois also makes his usual appearance to tell everyone about a price for a 100M Internet connection that you won't believe. After that, Mike asks him to find something outstanding in a building in NYC that everyone has heard of...

Putting your company's Internet service and phone service (and sometimes your MPLS service), on the same circuit can save a lot of money and allow you to get a faster Internet connection (by utilizing your unused voice capacity). But the downside is that it reduces you down to a single point of failure for all services, simultaneously. Windstream engineer, Jon Kawalec joins Mike to discuss fantastic DR strategies for converged services. He also has a great story for everyone to hear. Josh Chamois also makes an appearance to reveal the details of a current promotion where a provider is giving away 10M of Internet access for free. After he discusses the promo, Mike makes him jump through hoops to find something special at a famous location in Boulder, CO.

Jose DeHoyos has seen a lot of real-life scenarios of the good things that can happen with a fantastic business Internet connection. But he's also seen the bad. Jose joins Mike to give some tips on Dedicated Internet Access Security and Continuity. Basically... the art of keeping your connection safe and up. He also has a great story that you've gotta here. Josh Chamois makes his second appearance on the podcast to tell everyone about an Ethernet promotion that every small location should jump on. Then, Mike makes Josh pull up a famous site in Canton, OH. to see what we can find...

We know our mobile phones are getting fantastic Internet these days, so can we use 4G for business Internet? Broad Sky Networks' Maureen Donovan joins us to discuss 4G Wireless for business. She and Mike talk about everything from bandwidth maximums, to equipment, to cost, to bonding multiple connections and also what lies ahead for this technology. After a long discussion on 4G, Mike and Maureen exchange funny stories of salespeople gone haywire. AeroComInc.com's resident salesperson, Josh Chamois also debut's on the show to talk about a great promotion on 100M Fiber that one particular service provider is offering. Then, Mike challenges him to find something telecom related at a famous Boston landmark.

Jason Cutler from Microsoft's 2015 Partner of the Year, Sada Systems, joins Mike to review the essential items IT teams need to review before making the jump to Office 365. Using Jason's blueprint, IT professionals will be well prepared before shopping for Office 365 and will not have any surprises when it comes time to gather pricing. Mike and Jason also make a mistake toward the end of the podcast. Can you guess what it is? Last but not least, Mike gives away another free gift to our podcast listeners!

United Layer sales engineer, Saad Saleem tells Mike a customer story from six months ago, where an IT team became heroes by expanding their IT infrustructure without spending money. Mike also offers a huge time saving free gift to our podcast listeners.

Co-Host of the hit IT podcast, Packet Pushers, Ethan Banks, joins Mike to tell some fantastic stories about his journey in IT. From his haunting memory of the "Broadcast Storm" that took his credit card processing data center down, to how he used SharePoint to allow the higher-ups to see his work, to that time a boss told him he was too harsh on co-workers... Ethan shares the intimate stories that have molded his IT career. Plus (as usual), Mike has a cool free-bee for the listeners.... a quote template that will save you a ton of time when quoting DR.

If you are afraid of latency with your company's cloud applications, the easiest "first step" is to understand the possible causes within your own local environment. Matrix's Director of Sales Engineering, Rich Erickson, discusses the most common local culprits of cloud latency and how the IT Department can avoid them. Mike also has a special free gift for the podcast listeners that you definitely don't want to miss out on.

So your company is moving to SIP... but what about your fax machines? Long-time Level 3 sales engineer, Rich Prohaska, joins Mike to give us some great "best practices" for faxing (well) over SIP.

SIP? PRI? Hosted VoIP? We know you don't care about any of them but which should your company be using? Mike takes the mic and answers this question for IT Nation. Having worked with voice from every provider imaginable for 17 years, and a consumer of business voice for 13, Mike has strong opinions on this topic and let's 'em fly.

Long-time voice and data engineer and current sales engineer for Fusion, Roger Arnett shares 5 best practices for insatlling SIP trunking. Roger has engineered hundreds of SIP installations and has gathered a vast amount of wisdom on this topic. From how to evaluate your access method, to how to fill out porting paperwork properly, to how to set up test calls, Roger tells us several easy-to-understand methods to ensure your company has a flawless SIP installation.