How to quickly capture share of the SD-WAN Managed Services market

Early in the 21^st century, the subject of applications being delivered across the WAN was being researched.  It took more than 10 years for computing power to increase sufficiently to support analysis of the network traffic in order to make informed decisions in real-time.  This increase enables support of an overlay network that could function as traditional WAN did – but at a much lower cost. In 2014, the term software-defined WAN, or SD-WAN, was being used to describe this overlay network.

The benefits to customers of SD-WAN are significant, but the opportunity for solution partners of all types is vast and profitable. For some partners, providing a managed service for SD-WAN is new territory and they currently don’t have the depth of knowledge on SD-WAN implementations –  and customers may select competing partners that tout more expertise in the service.  A lost opportunity isn’t just the SD-WAN service, it’s also complementary services that can be provided by the service provider.

Just having enough expertise to implement an SD-WAN infrastructure for a customer is not enough.  You need the capacity to deliver and maintain connectivity to applications over the WAN – often to one or more clouds.  With Over-the-Top (OTT) services consuming greater bandwidth, adjusting for the ebbs and flows of business can become a challenge in providing the Application Quality of Experience (AppQoE) your customers need in a multicloud world.

SD-WAN Delivery Models

There are 4 main delivery models for SD-WAN:

1. Re-sell – it’s still the most common in the market. However, the market is changing from large Enterprises buying SD-WAN appliances using CapEx funds and attempting to implement it themselves to one that extends down-market, uses an OpEx model and is managed by a service provider.

Managed Services Practice Models

2. Build – Offering SD-WAN bundled with additional professional services and network connectivity options. The service providers build the SD-WAN infrastructure to a customer’s requirements and provides services for that customer.  This option has the longest ‘time to market’.
3. Co-deliver – This model involves a partner working with an SD-WAN vendor. Partnering with Cisco expands the technical workforce capabilities.  It has a slightly faster time to market than the ‘Build’ model.
4. “As A Service” – This model is based on consumption and addresses the complete lifecycle of deployment. A service provider or system integrator engages a company such as ngena (net) who offers the complete SD-WAN infrastructure, full lifecycle expertise, and flexible options to ensure successful deployments.  This model has some unique benefits for both customers and partners and is our focus for the rest of this discussion.

Let’s say you are a strictly SD-WAN resell partner today and want to take advantage of profitable opportunities delivering managed services for SD-WAN.  You’ll need a Business and Go-to-market plan, you need SD-WAN expertise and the understanding of how OTT services will impact the customer. You need to build out capacity to deliver and support the infrastructure, you will need new billing models, and you will need to implement consumption tracking.  In this fast-moving market, the service offering build-out time could negatively impact your market share, ability to expand service offerings and capture new recurring revenue streams.  Creating new services requires a significant investment in time and resources to develop and can be fraught with risks.

 

Working with an “As A Service” Partner

Providers can partner with ngena for faster design and implementation, ability to leverage a scalable portfolio of solutions built on Cisco’s SD-WAN products, have confidence in a future proof delivery model, and leverage white label deployments.

Here’s an analogy: You are building a home for a client.  You are the general contractor.  Maybe you have some skills in electrical work too – maybe enough to do the work yourself, but that will take time from you overseeing the rest of the project and keeping to a delivery date.  As the general contractor, you hire an electrician to wire everything up.  The electrician is ngena.  You get expertise and confidence the work will be done correctly – and you save time and get to focus on what you need to focus on.

Partnering with ngena, you are ready to sell now, and it provides the consumption model that allows you to build Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) streams.  ngena offers wholesale prices to partners with zero CapEx investment which provides an incremental margin opportunity.  The ngena offering is a Cisco SD-WAN solution which provides a predictable application experience (AppQoE), and security that is built-in to provide secure segmentation across the entire network stack.  Cisco’s SD-WAN is enterprise-grade and provides intent-based networking with multi-domain policy.  CRN honored Cisco SD-WAN with the SD-WAN Product of the Year award for 2019.

ngena delivers the service through a single portal with worldwide orchestrated operations featuring pre-defined services, intelligent automation and predictive analytics, and is DevOps ready.  They offer a global presence through dedicated global infrastructure, backbone and the ability to take care of local loop connectivity as well.  Full lifecycle management enables scalability to address the needs of any migration.

 

Interested in quick GTM and expanding your service offerings?  ngena provides a global end-to-end managed platform that is truly unique in the industry – delivering secure SD-WANaaS for any category of partner.  Regardless if your scope is just your domestic market or serving international markets, ngena provides that coverage.

For more information on ngena, tune in to our 11/10/20 Podcast: S7|E43 Cisco SD-WAN Managed Services with Ngena.

To get started, send an email to connect@ngena.net