 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcasts the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Al Bratz coming to you from ITW 2020. Joining me today is Ellen managing partner of Telexera. Ellen welcome to JSA TV. Thank you lovely to be here today. For those who don't already know could you tell our viewers about Telexera? Certainly as we are messaging platforms and solutions provider based in Zurich in Switzerland. So we focus quite predominantly on enterprise solutions not necessarily selling direct to enterprise but selling to other operators or carriers who want to enhance their messaging proposition to their enterprise groups. So we have a full reseller white label platform for them and we also a lot offer a lot of consultancy services around messaging. Oh great. So how about your personal move from voice to messaging? Why did you decide to make that jump? Absolutely so about I made the move about six years ago now. I felt like we were long past the heydays of voice maybe 15 18 20 years ago even when we were making a sentiment in Martin and we were all loving the business. It's got squeezed so incredibly since then and of course because of people's pressure on targets they've looked to gray and gray opportunities in voice and at the same time the messaging market was exploding it was full of opportunity and in my opinion still is. So I'm extremely happy that I made the move over to messaging and I've never looked back. Oh that's great. So I hear that at Zurich has a new project to interviews viewers to your messaging school. What is the messaging school and how can it help the market? As a what I missed when I first moved over from voice was somebody to go to to explain how I can relate what I'm doing in messaging to what I already know inside out backwards in voice. So what we decided to do was put together an A to Z of everything more or less that I wish I had known when I first started out. Instead of the years it took me to acquire that information and to learn we wanted to put everything into like a one-stop shop where people could go to for the information they need. So the site is quite focused at the moment at least in the initial phase for people who are moving over from voice to SMS as there is quite a substantial movement there at the moment. That sounds fantastic. So along those same lines since you and your team are experts in messaging could you tell us the latest in the space and where the big opportunities are or your thoughts on the wave of voice carriers that are just entering the messaging market right now. Lots of questions I know. As a let's take the wave of voice carriers moving into messaging first because that's obviously in an environment like ITW that's precisely who we're targeting both with platforms and with consultancy suggestions. So my advice to them would be be clear about what you want to achieve from messaging, why you want to go into messaging, what your sales point is. You needed a USP in voice. You needed to have niche routes or suppliers or customers and you need to have the same in SMS. I don't think it's simply enough to say oh voice is getting really tight let's just start trading in SMS and see what happens because there are some old timers around who have obviously have been doing it for 20 years. So anyone who doesn't have that information to hand or isn't exactly sure but would like to look into it then we're precisely here for that to help you understand exactly whether you do have a USB and to help you build a business case before you leave. So then I think we come to the second question and what you mentioned is where are the opportunities. Well there's opportunities everywhere. It's only a question of digging in and finding out where those opportunities are. They might be in your supplier base, they might be in your customer base. It could be that you have enterprise leads on the market. I mean for me one of the biggest opportunities is still with enterprise. The enterprise space is exploding with requirements at the moment and some they need people to help them find the right solutions. That doesn't necessarily have to be SMS. It can be any of the new channels that are out there, RCS, WhatsApp, Viber. It's all happening but it all needs somebody to guide them into helping them find the right solution that suits their needs the best. Makes sense. Thank you. So where can our viewers go to learn more? Well they're more than welcome to get in touch with me directly at ITW or through LinkedIn. I would be very happy to talk to anybody. Otherwise please go to our website, either my own company telexera.com or to the messaging school.com where you'll find a wealth of information that can help you get on the road. Perfect. Well thank you so much for your time here Ellen. We really appreciate it and thank you viewers for turning into JSA TV and JSA podcasts. Happy networking.