Playbook Volume 10 - ChannelVision Magazine

That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone is happy with MPLS, though. In fact, according to Dave Greenfield, a secure networking evangelist at Cato and longtime in- dustry veteran, most businesses are looking for other options — despite the fact they are continuing to invest in MPLS. “Every organization today that runs a major MPLS deployment is looking for an alternative,” he said. “Or they are at least open to an al- ternative. This is different from 12 to 24 months ago when SD-WAN was still a novelty. We’re still in the early days of SD-WAN. “There has been a lot of interest in moving off of MPLS or augment- ing it in one way or another,” Green- field continued. “[In the report] we took a deeper look at that and honed in on the area of simplification. With wide area networking, enterprises often complain about the complexity of running their networks.” In the Cato study, which focused on organizations with MPLS as their backbone, nearly 50 percent of re- spondents said that simplifying net- work or security architectures will be a primary focus during the next 12 months — making it the most popular use case for SD-WAN in 2018. At the same time, 32 percent still see SD-WAN appliances as too complex, while 25 percent see SD- WAN services as too complex. As Greenfield pointed out, cus- tomers won’t always voice complexity concerns directly in conversation, but these concerns are very real. Cus- tomers may, for instance, mention pet peeves such as having to open trouble tickets with carriers instead of troubleshooting errors themselves. Or, they may balk at the thought of having to move from a centralized, secure architecture with a single in- ternet connection to one where every office has a unique one. “The complexity of today’s net- work, and the push for a simpler one, expresses itself in many ways,” the Cato report continues. “At times, Primary networking challenges facing your IT organization Bandwidth costs 42% Equipment maintenance and updates 39% Performance between locations 38% Managing the network 35% Performance to the cloud 25% Providing and managing secure mobile/remote access 23% Last-mile availability 21% Finding and retaining skilled networking personnel 19% Time to deploy new locations 17% Source: Cato Networks 2600Hz is transforming unified communications with KAZOO, our next-gen UX driven platform. Our endless innovation sets your business up for rapid growth now and in the future. Future-proof your business with KAZOO Get your demo today at info.2600Hz.com/demo 415-886-7900 / sales@2600Hz.com Partner benefits include: Upfront and residual commissions Freedom to do business your way Marketing resources to help you succeed Staying ahead of your competition Standing out in a competitive market 16 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK