VeloCloud Responds

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

VeloCloud Responds

After my latest SD-WAN article posted, I received an email from VeloCloud's VP of Marketing, Mike Wood. We jumped on a call to discuss his concerns.

Wood corrected that Velocloud decided not to sell direct but to use a variety of service providers as sales partners. These partners could be VARs or MSPs or LECs. Many providers formerly known as CLECs, like TelePacific, Mettel, EarthLink and Global Capacity, have chosen VeloCloud. So has AT&T.

Wood says each provider is rolling out SD-WAN by adding Velocloud to its own network sauce. Personally, I don't think that helps the SD-WAN term gain definition, but we'll see.

ITSPs (VoIP Providers) are also rolling out SD-WAN. Some are using Velocloud (Vonage and Mitel); others are using other vendors including SimpleWAN. It improves call quality measurably.

In the case of Vonage, they are using Velocloud technology to leave a box on-site to perform MOS scoring and monitor the call quality in the first month. Then Vonage can go back to the customer to say that the Internet performance is the issue and with SmartWAN (Vonage brand name) the call quality will improve starting now. (The white SDN box is already on-site doing monitoring and testing. Now it just gets turned up and billing begins.)

Quality + Transparency + Monitoring is what Velocloud is offering. Analytics will come later.

Velocloud has 600 customers through 150 partners, but not all providers are past the pilot stage, so Wood tells me it is more than 4 deals per partner.

Wood said that EarthLink is spinning the SD-WAN story different with its SD-WAN Concierge service.

The story of SD-WAN has to be more than spun. It needs clarity of value and differentiation. Wood pointed out that Cisco has moved into the space (iWAN) as a vendor to LECs and as a provider. Also, WAN Optimization specialists like Riverbed are spinning into the space - but without really evolving.

The benefits of SD-WAN extend from simple WAN management to zero touch provisioning to SaaS/App Performance. In between, there are features for remediation, leveraging economical broadband, and mu;ti-path/best link path determination (packet traffic cop). The MOS scoring agent is what the ITSPs like. The features don't change; it is all about how the provider packages the software (Velocloud or Broadsoft). The new year will bring more buzz and more spin. Stay tuned.



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