SD-WAN Roundup: Comcast, Open Systems, Ecessa Court Partners

Written by James Anderson
April 19, 2019

It's clear to vendors that partners are demanding the technology, and the vendors are responding.

… several new VNFs in 2019, including security, routing, voice and Wi-Fi.

The company has also revamped its go-to-market angle.

Comcast has hired new personnel – including marketing, sales and operations – dedicated exclusively to SD-WAN. Hagemann said the ability to send solution architects on site to explore a customer’s WAN architecture is huge. She said an opportunity exists for the provider that gives customers information they’ve sorely lacked about their network.

Comcast Business’ Jody Hagemann

“Customers have not touched their WAN infrastructure in 10-15 years,” she said. “So now SD-WAN comes in, and the big pain point is not so much selling it and selling the value of it; it is now implementation.”

Comcast Business executives have embarked on a marketing and education road show in multiple key cities, where they’ll speak to local partners about the solution. Most importantly, Comcast has increased compensations for the partners that sell SD-WAN.

“We’ve gone beyond our normal standard compensation to a higher residual component, as well as upfront elements that allow the partner to earn more,” Schlagbaum said.

Schlagbaum and Hagemann served up a particular juicy observation about their SD-WAN customers. In contrast to studies by Avant and protestations by experts, businesses aren’t taking a hybrid approach with MPLS and SD-WAN. That was a surprise to Schlagbaum, who said he expected a mix of the two.

“Instead we’re seeing more of a rip-and-replace situation where people are just taking out MPLS. Unlike the carriers, we have no legacy MPLS network because we never used an MPLS solution,” he said. “We’re sort of unconflicted that way, where we can go after those kinds of customers and not worry about eroding our revenue base. If you’re one of the ILECs, you don’t want to necessarily get rid of one revenue stream unless you’re increasing the other one to the same equivalent amount.”

There’s a caveat to that. Comcast Business primarily serves the midmarket, although it has been landing some larger customers. Hagemann noted that attendees of the recent WAN Summit – which is geared toward the enterprise – tended to say that they are keeping their MPLS for now.

“We’re seeing patterns emerge, and I think enterprise will get there,” Hagemann said. “They’re obviously a little more cautious than a midmarket customer might be.”

Steve Garson of NetworkWorld compiled a lengthy recap of those enterprise at last year’s WAN Summit.