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Networking Exchange : Authors : Jim Saum

Jim Saum

Lead Product Marketing Manager, AT&T Small Business

Jim Saum

As a Product Marketing Manager at AT&T, Jim Saum trains, coaches, and provides support to small business sales personnel who use his products, and he has quite a diverse list of product types:

  • Customer equipment  (phone systems and data equipment)
  • Security (firewalls, email/web virus and malware scanning)
  • Internet content delivery services (CDN, content delivery networks)
  • Audio and web conferencing (AT&T Connect)

Although AT&T Connect and the use of web conferencing is becoming his focus, the other products Jim is responsible for cross the lines between mobility, cloud computing, and security. With such in-depth knowledge, he considers his specialty to be product marketing?determining whether a product is a good fit for the business and communicating its benefits and use to sales people. Jim understands, “the speed that our sales people must work is faster than in any other sales channel, and my products must be easy to sell, easy to order, and easy to implement, or sales people will not sell them, and customers, will not buy them.”

Jim’s favorite tech gadget is his iPhone, but sometimes he misses his 90’s era hand-held phone that was the size of a brick!…think Steve Butabi in Night at the Roxbury. The movie brings back memories for Jim, but he is very forward thinking and foresees a time in the not-so-distant future when telepresence video in the home and small business will be affordable.  As for the next technical innovation that will change how companies do business, Jim believes it is Unified Communications (UC). Imagine “a single interface that you can control your communication from, with improved capabilities. So, all your calls will include video and all your interactions will be collaborative using multiple means of communication at the same time.”

That vision of the future is related to the changes Jim predicts for AT&T Connect. According to Mr. Saum, “AT&T Connect will evolve to be part of Unified Communications, so I see it taking less of a primary role and being part of the bigger picture. The UC desktop or mobile client will be the starting point for communications. We won’t call it web conferencing any longer because it will be so easily accessible and commonplace to share applications and video across PCs or mobile handsets.”

Sounds like a bright future! What do you think? Let Jim know.
Jim Saum

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