Education needed to spur SD-WAN spending

Awareness around SD-WAN is growing but there continues to be a need for the channel to educate customers about the technology and its benefits.

IDC has estimated that the global market is going to be worth $4.5bn by 2022, but resellers will have to work to unlock that opportunity.

Matt Carter, CEO of Aryaka Networks, said that SD-WAN played a major role in a digital transformation pitch, because of the flexibility it provided customers.

"There are still a lot of buzzwords in this industry and a lot of nuances so we have to continue to help sharpen the message," he added "How do we frame it that's around customer problems? We need to go to the customer and ask how we can help with productivity, with costs and it becomes that mindset working with customers."

An added issue is the popularity of the category with six SD-WAN vendors turning out for a WAN event in London yesterday providing both partners and users with plenty of choices. That has led to competition and some confusion with the channel not always certain about which vendor to back.

Ian McEwan, senior vice president and general manager at Aryaka Networks, said that it was at the early stage of building out its channel in the UK but wanted to reach a number of resellers that wanted to add its technology to a managed service offering.

He added that the competition helped because it focused the channel on looking critically at what it could deliver compared directly to rivals.

Echoing Carter he also highlighted the opportunity that was out in the market for those resellers that did add SD-WAN to their kit bag.

"Only about 25% of European customers have started some sort of journey with SD-WAN," he added "It can monetise another revenue stream for resellers."

Some of the resellers the firm has worked with have found that SD-WAN is a good pitch for those customers looking at unified comms issues and file sync and share.