Open Systems this week announced an alliance with Equinix under which it will become possible to manage the software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) platform from data centers operated by Equinix.
Via this alliance Open Systems partners will be able to centrally manage turnkey deployments of SD-WANs on a global basis, says Matt Krieg, chief revenue officer for Open Systems. Equinix operates more than 200 data centers worldwide that are typically located near a major Internet exchange.
That capability will make it simpler for Open Systems to deploy the control plane for its SD-WANs as close to where the end customer requires, says Krieg.
“It’s all about creating zero-friction for our customers,” says Krieg.
Unlike rivals that expect end customers to deploy and manage SD-WAN platforms on their own, the Open Systems SD-WAN platform is a managed service that can be deployed across any Internet connection. That approach differs from rival SD-WAN services from telecommunications carriers that are tied to the circuits they make available to their customers at price point they set, says Krieg.
The Open Systems approach benefits from buying access from multiple carriers in volume in a way that prevents customers from being locked into a specific carrier. Many customers are replacing legacy routers with SD-WANs for the express purpose of being able to route traffic away from expensive MPLS networks that are controlled by telecommunication carriers.
It’s unclear how much of the SD-WAN market will wind up being delivered as a service versus a set of boxes that need to be deployed by either internal IT teams or a solution provider they contract. In the case of Open Systems, the primary beneficiaries of the managed services provided by Open Systems are agents.
Regardless of the ultimate path any customer takes towards adopting SD-WANs, there’s a major networking transition underway that channel partners can’t afford to ignore.
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