The benefits of SD-WAN are now finally visible to customers, and so too is the opportunity for channel partners around the technology, according to Highlight CEO, Richard Thomas.
Although SD-WAN has been on the market for a number of years and has been the subject of much hype, enterprise customers are now finally adopting it partly because they want control over their own network and partly because some might be dissatisfied with their service provider, Thomas told UC Today.
“There was a big promise – partly implied but also partly explicit – from SD-WAN vendors to the enterprise saying ‘You won't need your service provider, imagine all the money you'll save, this SD-WAN technology comes with its own management tools, it's all centralised, just buy some cheap bandwidth, and think of the empowerment’,” he explained.
“That’s quite attractive to an enterprise that’s fed up with their service provider because they haven't made any effort to look after them. Over the last five years, that's caused a lot of people to at least experiment with SD-WAN, and I think the realisation now is that service providers and channel partners do have an important part to play but are failing to reach in and grab this opportunity”
The pandemic has encouraged many businesses to become more experimental with their IT strategies, and channel partners need to start having those conversations with clients and potential clients if they want to realise the value of that opportunity, Thomas continued.
“There are a lot of enterprises who are open to experimenting with this technology and open to using it, and possibly shifting the way they work a bit to take advantage of it,” he stated.
“Service providers and the channel have a window of opportunity here – two to three years would be my time frame – where they can get in and really become a significant part of that ecosystem and become the people who don't just provide bandwidth to their customers but actually help them build out, manage, and grow their networks."
Thomas is in a position where he is having conversations with both Highlight's service providers and large enterprises, and he can see how each side views the other which is why he is advising partners to make sure they have strong and healthy relationships with customers.
“It’s so easy to obsess about having the right product set, revenue growth, and margin and it makes partners inward-looking,” he said.
