ChannelVision Magazine

found that IT buyers are not yet search- ing for information on “finding an SD-WAN agent,” or “How do I buy SD- WAN?” Rather, they still predominantly are typing “What is SD-WAN?” into search engines, said Knight. “It’s a marketing term. They don’t un- derstand the value of it quite yet,” he said. “There are maybe 100 SD-WAN providers or more,” added Paul Crane, network solutions architect for Century- Link, who also points to the added con- fusion of ongoing consolidation within the market. “You have to be able to say, ‘I’ve already done the research, and here are the reasons why one is better than the other or why this one might be a better fit for your organization.” “Your customers are used to buying hardware from a distributor and software from a telecom agent,” said Knight. “This is a hardware and software play; the two models merge. It is a new world in which customer are not sure who to go to, so the most educated partners who present solutions are going to get the business going forward.” And make no mistake, any SD- WAN expertise had better include an understanding of the relation between deployments and security. After all, very little happens at the network level without deep consideration of how it impacts security, threat detection and mitigation, and SD-WAN is no excep- tion. Nearly nine out of 10 IT pros surveyed for Cato, for instance, said threat protection was very important (40 percent) or critical (47 percent) to the SD-WAN decision-making process. There’s good reason for the con- cern. In many cases, SD-WAN provid- ers are asking customer to replace firewalls with an SD-WAN box. “If your customer is not married to their firewall, they are comfortable with that change” explained Burchett. “But if you are dealing with a customer that has spent a significant amount of time and money on a given security structure and a given security provider, that is a very tough sell.” In other words, customer-facing salespeople need to be up to speed on both the security features that might be built into a box, as well as the ability for a solution to integrate with existing resources. Currently, it’s estimated that some- where between 10 and 20 percent of mid-sized to large companies have initi- ated an SD-WAN deployment. That’s probably somewhat generous, but large chunks in most surveys do have SD-WAN plans, or at least it’s on their radars. That includes the 73 percent of respondents in the Cato survey that claim to be planning or considering an SD-WAN purchase. And while the market may remain somewhat murky at this early stage, it’s pretty clear that the potential disrup- tion of so-called transformational tech- nologies, such as VoIP and SD-WAN, should never be underestimated. “If you are not talking to your cus- tomers about SD-WAN, somebody else is,” said Crane, “and they might not be your customer for long.” o virtual reality WE OFFER OUR PARTNERS: MEET WITH US DURING THE CHANNEL PARTNERS EXPO IN MEETING ROOM 4709 EXPAND YOUR PORTFOL IO WITH WAVE’S MASTER AGENT PROGRAM FIBER-FED BUILDINGS AND GROWING 10,500+ New access options to differentiate you and the Wave services you sell A full suite of commercial products Transparency in our designs with unmatched access to our routes and maps ROUTE MILES 22,000+ METRO FIBER OF Recent merger has increased our access to: WE ARE GROWING 10 STATES WA, OR, CA, TX, IL, VA, MD, PA, NY and MA 1-855-971-1358 wavebusiness.com/agent March - April, 2018 | Channel Vision 33

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