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.

“If ever there was a time when you need to be outward-looking and putting an emphasis on helping your customer-facing people build a relationship with your customers, it’s now. There is a lot of opportunity out there, but you’re not going to know about it unless you’ve got those conversations going. It is amazing how bad most providers are at doing that”

Partners need to position themselves as trusted advisors so that when customers are thinking of adopting new technologies, the partner is their first port of call, Thomas advised.

The most important thing a partner can do is to maintain a good relationship with the customer and if they currently do not have a strong relationship, they should start working on that now, he added.

“If you want to help your customers, don’t go ramming new homeworking technology down their throats; start by improving the relationship you have with them,” he said.

“So, when things settle down over the next two or three years, you’ll be in a better position to help them adjust. [Channel partners should] not panic over their product set, but try to improve the relationships they have with customers so that as the market changes and customers realise how their business is going to look, you are their first port of call.

“In chaos there is opportunity, but it’s only an opportunity if you have those relationships.”

 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/3bTGKQi