 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for tech, telecom, and data center professionals. I'm Buffy Harakitas, coming to you live from Channel Partners 2022 in fabulous Las Vegas. And joining me today is Mario DiRigi, Chief Revenue Officer for Fusion Connect. Mario, welcome to JSA TV. Great to see you again, Buffy. So great to see you. Thank you for having us. Yes, yes. Mario, recently Fusion Connect announced a $55 million round. Can you give us a little more information about that? Sure. So back in mid-January, we made an announcement that the company went through a restructure led by Morgan Stanley, private equity, and some of their affiliated funds. And really what this did to us, it was a recapitalization of our balance sheet. We had a reduction on our debt by around 80%, which allowed us to invest more in a business. And they also gave us a $55 million cash infusion to help us fully fund our entire five-year growth plan. But the most important part about that cash infusion was we had 17 senior officers of the company also invest their own personal funds as part of that investment. And why is that important is because there is a strong belief in what we're doing, what we're building, and more importantly, in the ability to go out and exceed our business plan for the next five years. So really, really exciting times. I mean, we have so many great things that we are going to be working on. A lot of it is going to be on product development, right? So we are really transforming the company to a managed security service provider. So a ton of product development. But the biggest thing, I am the recipient of most of that funding because we are doing a massive expansion of our sales, both direct channel, account management, our marketing, and also our support functions for our partners. So for me, this is us getting closer to our partners, closer to our customers, and really going out and building that exceptional. And I mean, we really want that exceptional experience for our partners who also want that for their customers as well. Thanks, Mario. And recently, you just announced the channel alliances. Can you give us a little more information about that? Sure. So we promoted Diane Frazetta to our vice president of channel alliances. So Diane has been with the company for a little over a year. She came in and she really ran the eastern part of the country. She did a phenomenal job of rebuilding and getting it really to the point where it is far exceeding objectives. She has been a long time in the industry, a lot of time on the actual suppliers, on the partner side. So she has a great mix of understanding what the partners want, as well as what we need to do to deliver to drive a better experience for them. So yeah, so she was promoted to our VP of channel and alliances, just really, really, really excited for her. She is just going to be a great asset not only for the company, but more importantly for the partner community. That's wonderful, Mario. And with so much going on in the digital workforce today, can you tell us a little bit more about how Fusion Connect is empowering the digital workforce? So if we speak about digital workforce, I really want to focus more on the hybrid workforce. So what this pandemic has told us is people want flexibility to work from anywhere on any device. So a hybrid workforce is here to stay. It is not going away. And those companies need to now adjust their policies for the ability to go out and give that flexibility to employees because they are competing against other organizations that are offering the flexible workplace. We did a workplace study. Over 30% of the companies out there said that they are going to stick with the hybrid workforce full-time. I think that number is going to continue to grow. But there are certain things, when you have that hybrid, that you need to make sure. Some of the risks there is how are you insuring the productivity of those employees when they're home? So security, access, collaboration, messaging, how are you giving them all the tools you need, they need, excuse me, to really be effective and optimize their work experience from any place, any time, any device. Any place, any time, any device. Got it. Well, Mario, it was such a pleasure to have you here at JSA TV today, live from Channel Partners 2022. Fusion Connect has been a leader in the channel for so many years. It was such a pleasure having you. Can you tell our viewers where they can go to find more? So we are in our booth. So we're right on the front row coming in. So please stop by there. We have a plexiglass room right in front there that we are doing some meetings. And we're also in the Versace 2403 meeting room. Stop by. Come see us. We'd love to get to know each other. How about for those viewers that are not here at Channel Partners? So if you go to our website, we have a channel coverage map with all the contact information for who covers your territory or your geographic region. You can click on it. Contact numbers will come up and do it. Or more importantly, Mario D'Riggi, 516-924-0070, Mario.D'Riggi at FusionConnect.com. The hottest email in the channel. Mario, thank you so much for joining us today on JSA TV and JSA Podcast. And viewers, thank you for tuning in to another episode here at Channel Partners 2022. Be sure to follow JSA on LinkedIn and Twitter and at hashtag GreenerData for all you need to know about the launch of our book and our movement, GreenerData on Earth Day, April 22. Happy channel networking.