Granite Tackles ‘One Size Fits All’ SD-WAN Misconception

Granite Telecommunications just announced a multivendor SD-WAN solution for customers with multiple locations.

The “Built-to-Order” SD-WAN Solution uses appliances from multiple vendors to meet businesses’ customized requirements. Mark Palmer, Granite’s senior director of client development, said SD-WAN providers vary in terms of performance, security and price. This diversity, he said, should concern customers who entrust themselves to a single-product vendor.

Granite’s Mark Palmer

“The truth is there are a range of solutions on the market that meet a range of needs,” Palmer said. “Rarely are they matched up correctly; in fact, many companies need more than one solution.”

Palmer offered the example of a retailer with 90 stores, two distribution centers, a data center and a contact center. The network requirements vary from location to location. The retail stores may require low-cost broadband with 4G backup, while the contact center can’t afford to drop a call and the headquarters and data center need to perform data replication.

“At Granite, we will take each site’s needs into account and put the right box at each. For this example, we may use a VeloCloud appliance at all of the important locations, as that device has better packet-by-packet delivery than other solutions. We may use a Meraki device at all of the retail locations to give them what they need. We would then use Meraki as the firewall solution for the important sites to bring everything into the same network,” Palmer told Channel Partners.

Customers can buy the solution through Granite or one of its authorized partners. Granite unveiled the service at SD-WAN Expo East 2020, which is held in conjunction with the IT Expo in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

“Most people know that SD-WAN’s a game-changer, giving businesses redundancy and quality of service using widely available and low-cost broadband. What they might not know – and what vendors and providers don’t want to tell them – is SD-WAN isn’t one size fits all,” Palmer said.

Granite last year met its goal of earning $1.5 billion in revenue, with about $225 million coming from the channel.