ChannelVision Playbook Volume 7

their age in a number of ways: • They suffer from performance problems for cloud-based applica- tions that are difficult to ignore, affecting both internal operations and customer experience; • They lead to frustratingly poor sound quality for VoIP phone calls; • They create delays and errors in data backups; • They are difficult and time-con- suming to expand in order to add more data capacity or connect out to new branches and offices; and • They have stunningly high mainte- nance costs, as well as the cost of supplemental connectivity servic- es to make up for shortcomings. Customers who are sick and tired of those problems quickly go through the five stages of grief and arrive at the decision that they need to upgrade to an SD-WAN, which is far better suit- ed to a cloud-based, mobile comput- ing world. Customers know they want an SD-WAN, but they don’t want it to be painful. And that is where oversim- plification becomes a temptation. That is a danger for channel companies but also an opportunity. Customers want SD-WAN to be simple, but as soon as they hear the words “one size fits all,” they know immediately that that is not the path they want to go down. Too many com- panies talk about SD-W AN as if it’s just one thing, but it isn’t. There are as many flavors of SD-W AN implementa- tions as there are companies that will use it. That is because every SD-WAN needs to be customized to match a long list of characteristics of the end- user company today, and be designed to adapt to how the company will grow over time. There are common ele- ments, of course, but SD-WAN imple- mentations are all unique, because they have to be. And customers will get that if you tell them and back it up with examples. Here are three quick examples to illustrate why one-size-fits-all doesn’t work when it comes to SD-WAN. Each of these is an actual, mid-sized customer their age i • They lems f that ar both i tomer • They l quality • They data b • They sumin more to ne • They nance suppl es to Custo of those pr the five sta decision th an SD-WA to a cloud- world. Cus SD-WAN, painful. An cation bec danger for an opportu Custo simple, bu words “on immediate they want companie it’s just on are as ma implement nies that every SD- ized to ma istics of th and be de company are comm but SD-W all unique, And custo them and Here ar illustrate w work when of these is Virtual realities Using multiple last-mike services (MPLS, broadband, 4G/LTE) 66% Link load balancing 61% Central network policy creation, deployment and enforcement 60% Policy-based routing by application type and link quality 54% SLA-backed guarantee for network latency 54% Packet loss elimination techniques such as forward error correction 54% Deduplication and compression 45% Source: Cato Networks; survey of 350 IT professionals Channel Vision | July - August, 2017 22 CREATE A NEVER DOWN ™ NETWORK WITH ECESSA SD-WAN Ecessa provides every customer full sales support and technical support before, during and after deployment. Contact us today to learn more about our line of SD-WAN Solutions. What Makes Ecessa Different? • Premises Based Solutions • Perfect for Regulated Industries (PCI, HIPAA) • No Need to Change IP Addresses • Supports Bandwidth up to 20Gbps • ISP Monitoring & Ticketing Service (Optional) www.ecessa.com · (800) 669-6242 21 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK