The time is now for SD-WAN

This post is the last in a six-part series, summarising the key takeaways you need to know about SD-WAN. Read the first post about the SD-WAN opportunity here.

The SD-WAN market has been in the early adopter stage in the UK for several years and is quickly moving to the mainstream, showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. In the first quarter of 2019, SD-WAN revenues grew by 8% followed by 23% in Q2, according to IHS Markit.

As a result, there’s a wealth of opportunities for reseller partners but they need to be fully prepared to deliver, implement and support customers’ SD-WAN solutions in order to add real value and reap the rewards.

So, for channel partners seeking to capitalise on the popularity of SD-WAN, it’s important to firstly understand the ins and outs of the technology. Our previous blog post goes into more detail but essentially, it decouples network software from the underlying hardware, providing a central control function to intelligently and securely direct traffic across the WAN. This results in: greater network visibility, connection flexibility, centralised management and traffic control.

The next step is understanding the wide range of potential SD-WAN customers and the challenges they might be looking to resolve with the technology. This might include a lack of visibility across the network, access issues at branch offices or complexities in rolling out changes. Being ready to identify and unearth opportunities from the challenges customers are facing will set resellers apart.

However, the channel faces the challenge that there’s a huge lack of expertise, training and knowledge to deploy and manage the technology. It goes without saying that having the right expertise is key to ensure the solutions deliver the benefits they promise.  So, resellers need to engage a strategic service partner who can fill gaps in their portfolio and provide specialist expertise to deliver quality solutions that meet customers’ unique needs.

So there you have it – a whistle-stop tour of the SD-WAN opportunity and the key priorities for channel partners to overcome. It’s very much a race to own the customer’s SD-WAN platform and the time is now for channel partners to build their capabilities and offerings.

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