FEATURE NETWORKING
NETWORKING FROM THE
12 www.technologybusinesstoday.com April 2019 SMB TO THE ENTERPRISE
Disruptive technologies like SDN and NFV are leading the charge in networking,
so what’s the channel opportunity? BY CHRISTINE HORTON
There has been much talk around
the opportunities that exist
for the channel around digital
transformation.
At the heart of your customers’
transformation efforts is their network,
an area where a wave of disruptive
technologies is harnessing the power
of software to reduce costs, increase
flexibility and remove management
complexity.
The innovation in the space is
evident, with technologies like
network functions virtualisation (NFV)
and software-defined networking
(SDN) leading the charge. Both
continue to build momentum among
enterprises with their promises of
greater operational efficiency, easier
provisioning and automation of network
services to support business-essential
but bandwidth-hungry applications.
“SDN is critical to an organisation’s
digital transformation journey, as it’s
the only network technology which can
deliver the promise of elastic scaling,
agile provisioning and disaggregation
which is key to delivering the multicloud
environments which underpin
digital businesses,” Bruce Hockin,
partner development director at Cloud
Distribution, tells TBT.
Alongside this, organisations are
seeking out these software-based
solutions to minimise both capital
expenditure and operational costs
as part of their transformation
plans. By abstracting features and
management and coupling that with the
infrastructure services already being
delivered, organisations can achieve
significant business benefits such as
lower operating costs, reduced capital
expenditures and enabling a faster time
to market with new services.
TRANSFORMATION AS A MARKET DRIVER
Outside of SDN, the networking space
itself has witnessed “substantial
changes” over the last 12 months.
According to Neil Wilson, head of
products & marketing at wholesale
carrier network, Virtual1, customers’
demands for greater bandwidth mean
that more than half of all the fibre
products that the company supplies
to the channel are now 1Gb capable
services.
“Twelve months ago, they made up
less than quarter and 100Mb services
were dominant,” he says. “Whilst 1Gb
services offer the majority of businesses
sufficient headroom for the current
rates of growth, interest in 10Gb capable
services is on the rise, especially in
those businesses leading the digital
transformation revolution.”
In addition, both staff and customers
are relying on connectivity to access
critical systems and data. This is great
news for the channel, says Wilson, as
it means “double the circuit orders to
deliver degrees of resiliency, either
using diverse carriers, technologies, or
the more advanced and sophisticated
single network resilience solutions.”
“The dramatic advances in, and
adoption of, consumer technology in
the last decade means that the desire
for digital transformation can be
seen across all verticals and scales of
business,” David Anthony, technology
solutions evangelist at distributor
Westcoast, tells TBT.
“What digital transformation
means for customers differs wildly
from organisation to organisation,
but everyone has the same desire for
accessibility to ‘can do’ technology
in their business as they do at home.
Vendors are having to provide both cost
and feature flexibility in order to serve
this need.”
THE PARTNER OPPORTUNITY
As with any new or disruptive
technology, there is an opportunity for
the channel to help their customers
navigate this new, software-defined
world. A 2018 survey commissioned by
Teneo into SD-WAN deployment shows
that 50 percent of global companies
say that deploying and managing
networking infrastructure is timeconsuming.
Respondents estimate that
these upkeep tasks take up 36 percent
of their overall IT budget, with a third
admitting that they had used ‘as a
Service’ models from external providers
to keep on top of maintenance tasks.
In addition, the channel can help
customers achieve the competitive
advantages they seek. “If the SDN
system needs to be run on-prem,
BURSTING THE
HYPE BUBBLE
It is important to separate the hype
from reality when it comes to any
emerging technology.
For example, software-defined
wide area networking (SDNWAN)
has been touted as a way
to use software- and cloud-based
technologies to simplify the secure
delivery of WAN services to the
branch office, at a lower cost than
traditional WAN infrastructure.
However, some of the
messaging around SD-WAN’s
potential cost savings isn’t quite
living up to early expectations,
says Virtual1’s Wilson. “For
starters SD-WAN isn’t cheap,
especially when managed, so the
removal of additional MPLS costs
are only replaced elsewhere by
SD-WAN costs,” he notes.
“Secondly, the other big
appeal that you can take cheap
connectivity technologies and
SD-WAN will make it outperform
haven’t quite come true either.
They certainly can help to
maximise the experience, but
contented copper-based services
are still exactly that.”
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