Meet the vendor that claims it invented SD-WAN

Channel VP highlights how it sets itself apart in a crowded field and why the UK is integral to its channel plans

Aryaka partners are likely to see a new go-to-market strategy launched in the first weeks of April, according to Olen Scott, SVP of worldwide channels.

The vendor was founded in 2009 and claims to be the pioneer in the SD-WAN space for businesses.

Scott has been in his role at the company for a little over a fortnight, but already has big plans to launch a new global channel go-to-market strategy to take full advantage of its partner relationships.

"If there is a gap in our strategy today, I would say that there is so much opportunity and growth that it hasn't been as opportunistic as it can be, nor our message as crisply defined, so I'm working on defining it," he told CRN.

Scott said that Aryaka sets itself apart in a crowded field by incorporating optimisation and acceleration into its WAN offering, along with its "global product core".

"We are the ones that ostensibly invented the SD-WAN space," he claimed.

"We are a nine-year-old company, built from the ground up as a connectivity-as-a-service provider.

"The global core allows customers to use the internet to access our network and we give them an express route through the internet to where their data is located, and this is fully managed.

"Another differentiator is the volume of install locations that we have; we have thousands of deployed customer sites."

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google are among Aryaka's cloud vendor partners, and it counts CDW among its reseller partners.

Scott said that a large part of the firm's EMEA business is concentrated in the UK and he is always looking to add to its partner roster.

He added that Aryaka makes regular appearances at its vendor partner events in order to garner interest among potential partners.

"If you're a Microsoft Azure partner, the chances are you're a partner of ours or we're working to make you one," he stated.

"I think there is an opportunity to be two or three times more productive than we are today.

My plan is to identify the most appropriate partners for us, going deep with them and that will result in the growth I expect."

The VP first encountered Aryaka during his stint as channel boss at EarthLink (later acquired by beleaguered US telecoms firm Windstream) and said he admired its offerings from afar.

"A lot of businesses out there are marketing something as SD-WAN, but there is no provider whose solution is as complete as Aryaka's," he explained.

"Some companies are putting SD-WAN on top of the internet so that their solution has some kind of private networking component to it. Our solution already includes that.

"We don't sell those a la carte, because then we are just another voice in a very noisy crowd. At this point, we have elected not to break those apart and to only sell as a complete managed service."

Scott foresees a busy future in the SD-WAN space, stating that as cloud adoption continues to grow, so too will the need for SD-WAN.

"Everything cloud is made better with SD-WAN," he said.

"But I also think we will see a lot of consolidation in the space, because there are a lot of companies in it already, with new ones coming into the market every day."