INTELLIGENT CLOUD
help organisations focus their efforts by
understanding their customers’ business
strategies and proactively positioning
business-led propositions that
technically enable the desired outcomes.
centred discussions. By encouraging
their customers to take a business
performance first approach, channel
partners can propose distinctive,
value-add, application-enabling
propositions that put them ahead of
their technology focused competitors.
2. Integrating digital technologies to
transform how businesses work:
Research from MIT Sloan Management
and Deloitte University Press found
that less-mature digital companies
tend to take a tactical, piecemeal
approach as they solve discrete
business problems with individual
digital technologies. As a result, they
don’t fully integrate digital technologies
with their business operations, don’t
solve the underlying infrastructure
problems that cause frequent
application performance issues across
the enterprise and fail to deliver
the required technical capabilities
at scale. Successful trusted channel
partners will be those who are able to
challenge their customers’ thinking
and engage key business leaders with
alternative, business-led integrated
propositions. For example, they can
help organisations understand that
for networking infrastructures to work
optimally, application, compute and
storage must work together as a system.
Thus, a strategic architecture must
extend across the enterprise and unite
all the components into a seamless,
software-defined system delivering
high-performing applications, data
and services. Here SD-WAN forms an
integral part of the overall solution
that serves to address instances of poor
application performance in branch
networks. But this can only happen
successfully if set within an integrated
digital network architecture framework. 4. Closing the app performance gap:
According to a Riverbed survey (www.
riverbed.com/global-application-
performance-survey.html), 98
per cent of executives believe that
enterprise application performance is
critical to achieving optimal business
performance. However, 89 per cent
say poor app performance negatively
impacts their productivity on a regular
basis, resulting in contract delays,
missed deadlines and lost revenue.
Channel partners can help organisations
close this performance gap by helping
them build more capable and scalable
networks. SD-WAN can be critical when
it comes to expanding WAN capabilities
without compromising agility,
performance or visibility. SD-WAN can
offer IT a much more holistic approach
that makes orchestrating enterprise and
cloud connectivity easier and more cost-
effective. Rather than having to manage
thousands of manually configured
routers, management can be centralised
through the use of a single, easy-to-use,
intuitive command centre. At its core,
SD-WAN enables them to make on-the-
fly adjustments to network performance
and application delivery, to meet the
businesses ever-changing needs. All
in all, SD-WAN makes networks more
flexible and agile than ever which,
in turn, allows channel partners to
help customers meet business needs
efficiently and effectively.
3. Understanding that networks
are just the path towards
applications: Organisations rely
on their network because they need
ready access to business applications
that enable their businesses to excel.
While this states the obvious, this
fact can be easily lost in technology 5. Achieving application visibility,
performance, agility and security:
In today’s complex hybrid IT
environments where data, applications,
people and networks are everywhere,
the infrastructure challenges that
impact application performance are
ubiquitous. Only a holistic approach
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that brings visibility, performance,
agility and security to every aspect
and stage of application delivery can
provide an enterprise-grade solution
for the age of hybrid IT. Just as digital
transformation is an enterprise
business strategy, channel partners
need to help their customers develop
an architectural strategy that makes the
underpinning technology work the way
they expect.
However, although the role of channel
partners may be evolving, the one thing
that won’t change is the typical customer’s
lack of IT resources and expert personnel.
As a result, now more than ever, channel
partners have the opportunity to position
themselves as invaluable business advisers
about how customers can leverage IT to
drive their businesses better and disrupt
their competitors.
Enabling high-performing applications is
a top priority for many enterprise customers
and SD-WAN is the key to addressing their
concerns. Successful channel partners
will use this insight to differentiate their
conversations, elevate their customer
engagements and reinforce their trusted
partner status by putting forward creative,
value-added propositions thataddress
future enterprise application requirements
and existing performance issues.
As a result,
now more than
ever, channel
partners have
the opportunity
to position
themselves
as invaluable
business
advisers.
ssue 07
NTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS