Independent Service Providers Are The Future Of SD-WAN, Per Multapplied Networks

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Multapplied Networks is a Canadian, service-provider-focused SD-WAN platform vendor. The company began operations in 2012 as a link aggregation software vendor but their platform has evolved to focus more on Enterprise customers and their needs. They have nearly 100 channel partners around the world offering their platform alongside their networking expertise to thousands of customer sites. Below is our interview with Cam Couch, Vice President of Business Development at Multapplied Networks:

Q: You’ve recently launched your white-label SD-WAN platform for Internet Service Providers and Managed Service Providers; could you tell us something more?

A: We were always proud of our bonding efficiency – the total usable speed after combining multiple Internet connections – but we didn’t realize how valuable some of our other features were until the SD-WAN market started to emerge. We took note of the SD-WAN category growth in 2014 and as more and more players surfaced, we thought to ourselves: “Hey, we already do all of that.” So, now that we’ve proven out our business model and have a very solid customer-base, we’re ready to enter into the space ourselves and go toe-to-toe with some of the heavily venture-backed players. We’re not changing the product, really, but focusing more on integrations over the coming years to help our channel partners meet the many WAN-related demands of their customers.

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Q: Who are the primary users of Multapplied Networks and what are some of the key challenges you are helping them solve?

A: We’re still in the bandwidth game, so we’re always going to be helping end-customers achieve the WAN speeds they need, but we’re seeing a lot of changes in the make-up of our customer base. We started with link aggregation, to solve bandwidth deficiencies in the early days, then our customers were asking for uptime and seamless failover, so we focused on our support for 4G/LTE. Now, it’s all about policies, routing, and network visibility. Customers are demanding more functionality from a single provider, and we’re finding more and more partners are taking advantage of our open architecture – to add in VNFs and Gateways to give customers what they want in their WANs. It’s truly amazing to watch how customers are asking for their “best-case” WAN scenario – and they’re largely getting it from our partners. That’s, I think, the real power of SD-WAN that Enterprises aren’t hindered by legacy systems they want to work around – every feature can be had because the solution is so cost-effective.

Q: What are your plans for next six months?

A: Our next six months are busy. We’re focusing a lot of efforts on marketing starting with INCOMPAS San Francisco where I’ll participate in a panel discussion entitled “SD-WAN: Killer App in the Making”. We want to be involved in every Service Provider’s decision related to SD-WAN vendors. So, we’re hopeful that you’ll hear much more from us. While we’re doing that, there are some features and integrations we’re building to extend the product further. We’re of the belief that integrations are the key to SD-WAN’s success, so we’re working on integrations for more granular traffic visibility and control and adding more Virtual Network Functions to round-out the solution and make it more easily customized to suit customer needs.

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Q: SDxCentral has been reporting on IHS Markit’s quarterly research on the growth of the SD-WAN category; where do you place yourself in the industry?

A: It’s interesting you’re talking about the IHS report. We operate on a different plane than that report illustrates – as we’re not necessarily a vendor, but a platform licensor. We’re likely not going to show up in that report for a while, but we do have a goal to have three of our partners in the top-ten SD-WAN revenue generators by 2020. It’s an ambitious goal, sure, but we think there’s ample space for a player to emerge and capture a sizeable portion of the market. We’re comfortable being behind-the-scenes while our partners are out winning in the space.

Q: How do you see the SD-WAN category developing over the next handful of years?

A: There’s still a lot of maturing ahead for the SD-WAN category as a whole, which means it’s anyone’s game. It’s still very young, but it’s got a lot of promise. For the category to hit $1.25B per Gartner by 2020, we’re going to be seeing about 1 Million sites come online by then – which is over 800 sites every day. We feel like the ISPs and MSPs of the world are going to be adopting SD-WAN in very short order because SD-WAN gives them the ability to compete at this level, and there’s no reason they can’t get a piece of those 800 sites/day. And they’ll be able to deliver on competitive access pricing and, in the case of the MSPs, a true BYOB (Bring-your-own-Bandwidth) deployment model. If we’re right, the oft-overlooked, smaller, independent ISPs and MSPs are going to become very profitable entities, and we’ll start to see some serious consolidation in that market over the next few years – all triggered by this value-add solution called SD-WAN.