What advice would you give a solution provider who is interested in launching a telecom practice?

It starts with building the business case, and thinking about how carrier [services] can help the company address other challenges in the business. …

[Interested solution providers] have to build the financial model around the recurring revenue model. I think there is also a level of patience that someone moving into carrier services, or any type of recurring revenue business, has to have. It’s not top-line revenue; it's residual, so it takes time for you to break even in terms of investments you have made around staffing, etc., and you have to work through the financials to get comfortable with that. Think about the synergies between the products you're selling today and how carrier [services] complement those. But that's the easy part, because nothing works without carrier services. You can’t make a phone call, access the internet, or connect to the cloud with these services.

To me, it’s not a question of whether you should do it, it’s how you do it. There's so much opportunity.