Fast-Growing SD-WAN Power InfoVista Adopts 'All Channel, All The Time' Strategy

InfoVista, a global 5G player and a top vendor in the red-hot market for software-defined wide-area network technology, has pushed all its go-to-market chips to the channel and hired a new channel leader.

The company, which was established in Paris, France, but is now based in Ashburn, Va., said it has adopted an "all channel, all the time" SD-WAN go-to-market strategy. It kicked off the new strategy by inking a North American distribution agreement with TELoIP and naming industry veteran Jon Howes as senior vice president of global channel sales.

Howes is a networking industry and channel stalwart and was general manager of global enterprise channels at Oracle before joining InfoVista. He's also done stints at Dell's Force10 networking business, Acme Packet, and Juniper Networks, where he was head of managed services for EMEA.

Tapping Howes to lead go-to-market strategy means InfoVista has a channel leader in place who can rebuild or make enhancements to several aspects of its channel program. The company now offers engineering support and product training through new online modules, as well as license fulfillment, and improved ordering and on-boarding processes, the company said in a statement.

"We have a commitment, and we live it, to be all channel, all the time in the SD-WAN enterprise space," Howes said in an interview with CRN. "I've been across the tech vendor space, and very few vendors actually live it in practice. Our management understands that we're entering many markets pretty much from the ground up. The only way we're going to get the traction we need and the speed we need is to commit to being an all-channel play."

Howes said the North American distribution agreement with TELoIP will be followed soon by several more similar agreements.

InfoVista has a strong focus on the 5G market and is among the top players in the global SD-WAN market. The private-equity-owned company's second-quarter SD-WAN revenue was $13.2 million, up nearly 40 percent year over year and placing it sixth on IHS Markit's list of the biggest global SD-WAN players behind VMware VeloCloud; Aryaka; Cisco Viptela; Silver Peak; and Nuage Networks.

Its strong showing put it ahead of well-known competitors like Citrix, Huawei and Riverbed.

Jeff Coke, president of VarData, a Rochester, N.Y., solution provider that works with InfoVista, said the vendor's approach to SD-WAN has sparked interest among customers, resulting in considerable market momentum for VarData.

"Application-aware SD-WAN is a logical next step for customers, and we've seen momentum building in the pipeline because of that approach to smarter SD-WAN and superior network and application performance," Coke said. "It's helped us have more meaningful conversations with customers about how SD-WAN and NFV can be transformative to the future of their customer-facing networks."