CHANNEL PARTNERS EVOLUTION — Innovation is moving rapidly, so it’s important to educate yourself and understand all of the latest technologies, such as software-centric networking and network virtualization, to take advantage of the many opportunities presented by it.

That’s according to Rupesh Chokshi, associate vice president of AT&T Business Solutions and International. He gave a keynote presentation titled “The Evolving Network and How It’s Propelling Innovation” during a Wednesday sassion at Channel Partners Evolution.

He talked about new partner opportunities created by AT&T’s Flexware platform aimed at simplifying the delivery and deployment of software-based network functions.

“Understanding what SDN is all about, understanding what virtualization can do, understanding how these capabilities can be brought forward for customer use cases is very important and we need to do that as an industry,” he said. “From an AT&T perspective, we are rapidly deploying these capabilities in the marketplace. We have a platform that is SDN-enabled … that is delivering software-centric services. So we will continue to bring innovative capabilities onto that platform. And we believe that we have market leadership in the space because we’ve been at it for a number of years, we’ve made the pivot, the investments are there and we have live customers on our platform that are consuming these services today.”

For partners, the customer base is “very ripe” as customers need to update their technology to stay competitive, Chokshi said.

“You have to modernize those networks, you have to make that journey in terms of new application, new ways of doing new productivity, whether it is a medical company, whether it is a lawyers’ office, whatever that customer is, they’re all going to look for what’s my next technology innovation that leads productivity, that leads the business outcomes that they’re looking for,” he said. “This platform and what we have done allows the service providers or the solution providers, and the partners that we have to take that message to those customers, but also have managed services, also have innovation that they can provide in terms of design, in terms of use cases that we provide.”

AT&T can educate the channel and share what it has from a product offering perspective, the capabilities, the use cases that it sees in the industry that are prevalent, “and we can demonstrate how some of these technologies work, so you have a deeper understanding of the value proposition behind it,” Chokshi said.