Converging on the offensive

Resellers can use the networking opportunities that convergence presents to generate more business and higher margin, writes Mike Morford

Convergence is enjoying a lot of end-user uptake. However, although this long-awaited concept is becoming a reality, the associated networking headaches continue to plague end-users.

VARs are in a prime position to help end-users deal with these issues by allowing them to gain control of the applications running over the WAN. This can also then open up new opportunities for resellers.

With businesses numbering their program applications in the hundreds, it is to be expected that non-business critical programs are going to push more important applications to the back of the queue. This will cost businesses money. For example, half of all companies typically spend between a fifth and a half of the WAN budget on supporting unsanctioned use. On converged networks, it is essential to protect and prioritise mission-critical applications, or they simply won’t work effectively.

Effective management of applications running across the WAN can overcome the networking challenges, while enabling VARs to boost their convergence-related business. For example, in the past, voice over IP (VoIP) was often installed on a private network that carried only voice traffic. Or it was installed on a data network where it was the only application.

Today, many companies opt to run VoIP on multi-service WAN lines that are shared with other business-critical applications. End-users will therefore require sophisticated QoS solutions to protect both the data and the VoIP traffic. This multi-service WAN concept is a subtle but important shift that can really give a VAR a major competitive advantage.

Another service VARs can offer is to assess the impact that a new VoIP deployment will have on the network. This can be done by analysing how the existing traffic will impact the new VoIP traffic, and how the new VoIP traffic will impact the business traffic that is already there. The results can be used by the customer to determine how much additional bandwidth is required for the new VoIP deployment.

By providing this kind of expertise and ensuring applications work on converged networks, VARs can achieve higher margins and gain a serious edge over competitors that take a voice-only or data-only approach. This will also see them generate more business.

Mike Morford is chief technology officer at Packeteer.