 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcast, the newsroom for Tata Center and telecom professionals. I'm Jamie Scott-Okitaya. We're coming to you live from the floor of ITW 2022. This is an exciting year here at ITW. They're celebrating their 15-year anniversary. Kudos to them, big year. But it's also a big year for news. Joining me now to prove my point further, we have George Reese, Chief Strategy Officer of Vertec. George, welcome to JSA TV. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you for having me. And we are so excited you're here. There's so much news, but let's just set the table, if you will. Can you tell our viewers a little bit about Vertec if they don't already know? Absolutely. Well, Vertec is an innovative services and technology company, and we focus on three main areas. Telecom operations, managed cybersecurity, and custom software development. We were founded in 1988. And Vertec also, as we mentioned, here at ITW has big news because you have a telecom operation service that I think we should let our viewers and ITW know about. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely. Well, we've been a trusted partner for a lot of different market segments, including carriers, MSPs, enterprise, and channel partner customers. Our telecom operation services consists of several things. One is network quoting, order handling, service assurance, and telecom expense management. We feel that in order for customers to scale and accelerate their speed to market, you need to have a single platform that allows you to do all of them. Our network quoting platform, powered by ConnectBase, is a real-time serviceability, real-time quoting platform. It integrates well with our order handling system that takes that quote, enriches it, and places the orders directly with the carriers. As part of that service, we also offer an SD-WAN service and product that allows us to do all the technical data gathering, design, build, and operate for our customers. That then transitions that information to our service assurance platform. That service assurance platform ensures that all the services are optimized, reliable, and viable around the clock. And to bring it all together, our telecom expense management platform makes sure that we digitize all of the invoicing, cost management, billing disputes, and reconciliation for all telecom services. We feel it's very important to ensure that all the data is stored in one location. And that's why we incorporate our service directly to customers' CRM, operations, and financial platforms. Having access to your data is critical for any presales and post-sales organization. Absolutely. I could not agree with you more. And either could our industry. We are all so inundated with so much data and no way to really bring it in, make sense of it all, analyze it, and put it to good use, put it to good work. And surely the visibility that your platform offers is so critical, especially right now when demand is so high and there's so much going on. We're all got very busy to-do lists and to keep it all into one platform. And you mentioned ConnectBase a little bit earlier that that platform is sort of powered by ConnectBase. I know big news, of course, on the floor here at ITW this week is your partnership with ConnectBase. Can you give us a little bit more about that? Absolutely. Well, Ben Edmond and team have done a great job in building capability for real-time quoting. They offer serviceability and quoting for hundreds of carriers, not only in the US, but around the world. And we figured it's a perfect complement to what Vertec orders offers in terms of platform for order handling and service assurance. And we just felt there was a perfect match for customers to go quote, order, and activate all under one platform. We feel that the combination of both companies' automation and experience really will bring something to the market in order to enhance the customer experience. Yeah, and we love Ben and his team there, ConnectBase, formerly connected to Fiber, now ConnectBase and a name that we so know here on the floor of ITW. Another name we know, of course, George Reese. You have a very wonderful telecom industry career now. You're home here at Vertec as Chief Strategy Officer. So tell us a little bit about your role and how you will help drive the company's growth. Absolutely. Well, I've known Vertec for a long time and I was really excited to join them. We have a very ambitious growth plan. I was a previous customer at Vertec, so I know the value and the benefits that Vertec brings to any organization. And our growth strategy is really going to revolve around three areas. One is going to be around unlocking new growth and that's going to be expanding our brand, making sure we're having more conversations and demonstrating our platform capability with our customers, as well as expanding our partnership community. We feel that like-minded companies that can add to our platform will only make the marketplace better for those types of services. We also want to continue to evolve our product set. So like I mentioned, we have an SD-WAN, a fully managed, multi-product SD-WAN offering, and we also have a managed cybersecurity offering. We feel that there's a unique opportunity for us to combine both and offer something unique to the market. The third is going to be around continuing to invest in our scalable platform. So with our experience and the number of orders that we touch and the industry that we're in, we feel that we can continue to optimize our automated platform to make everything easier for customers to deliver services. And I love that tune and what a wonderful thing to say about a brand too. A former customer, now the chief strategy officer, you bought it, you loved it, you're all in and I love that, I love that. So okay, for our viewers and also of course our ITW attendees here walking the floor behind us, what is their one takeaway that you'd like them to remember about Vertec? So for our customers, if you're having trouble delivering services and need to improve your performance and visibility of order details, Vertec is here to help you. And for our partner community, if you have a synergistic capability to ours, we'd love to sit down and have a conversation with you in order to enhance the overall customer experience. Well said, well said. And for our viewers who want to learn more and I'm sure they do, where can they go? They can go to www.vertec.com to learn more about us. Amazing, yes, Vertec.com, V-E-R-T-E-K.com. George, it is a pleasure having you and honor having you here on JSA TV and JSA Podcast. Thank you so much for your time and leadership and support. Thank you, Jamie. It's been a pleasure to be here with you. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcast. As always guys, think green and happy networking.