Day: February 26, 2021

The Impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. WAN Market

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • SD-WAN improves network performance, saves costs, and helps organizations remain agile. Thus, adoption has increased, especially since the onset of COVID-19.
  • SD-WAN treats the home environment as a branch of the corporate network. For this reason, it will play a key role supporting the post-pandemic, remote workforce.

COVID-19 greatly disrupted the U.S. WAN market. Virtually overnight, the pandemic forced businesses to support a distributed, remote workforce while ensuring continuity. COVID-19 underscored the importance of agility and the need to carefully choose a WAN deployment model. Service providers have responded well to the crisis, but their ability to address long-term impacts is unclear. Continue reading “The Impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. WAN Market” →

IBM Pivots Toward Partner Ecosystem for Its Go-to-Market Strategy

by siowmeng, posted in Cloud Enable
S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

  • IBM has made a major change to its go-to-market strategy, focusing on developing its partner ecosystem and deploying its direct sales resources to engage the largest accounts looking for integrated solutions from IBM. 
  • This move is likely to result in more partners building specialization and expertise around IBM solutions. 

IBM held its Think Summit Australia & New Zealand in February 2021.  While hybrid cloud, AI, and digital transformation remained the key themes, the company also shed some light on the changes to its go-to-market strategy, particularly its investment in developing the partner ecosystem known as PartnerWorld.  IBM recently announced an investment of USD 1 billion in its partner ecosystem, with the aim of driving more sales through channel partners.  The investment is part of IBM’s new go-to-market strategy.  The company is simplifying its sales model by reducing the number of customer groups from 50 to just two.  IBM direct sales will utilize the IBM Garage to engage top-tier customers.  The rest of the IBM client base will be served by channel partners, which means significant opportunities for these partners. Continue reading “IBM Pivots Toward Partner Ecosystem for Its Go-to-Market Strategy” →