'7 Minutes' with Teridion VP of Global Sales Morgan Closson

**Editor’s Note: “7 Minutes” is a feature where we ask channel executives from startups – or companies that may be new to the Channel Partners audience – a series of quick questions about their businesses and channel programs.**

Teridion is tackling a unique angle of the wide-area network (WAN) market and inviting partners to come along.

The San Francisco-based company on Tuesday unveiled its Teridion for Enterprise Channel Partner Program aimed at a wide variety of partners.

The company’s premise is using public cloud to give WANs “SLA-backed performance.” Teridion helps companies get the best out of their cloud applications as they evolve their networks.The company calls the cloud-based optimization “SaaS acceleration.”

Two stated targets of Teridion are VARs and master agents who provide SD-WAN and other networking services. That doesn’t mean Teridion is strictly an SD-WAN company.

Teridion’s Morgan Closson

Morgan Closson, the company’s vice president of global sales, tells Channel Partners that some of Teridion’s biggest partners provide SD-WAN. Teridion already has integrated with Cisco Meraki, Citrix, VeloCloud and Silver Peak.

“You put the two of us together, and you have something that’s optimized all the way through,” Closson said.

Closson answered questions about Teridion and its new channel program.

CP: Describe your channel program — metal levels, heavy on certifications, open or selective, unique features? Do you work with masters and/or distributors?

Morgan Closson: Teridion’s brand new partner program is a multi-tier program that rewards reseller and referral partners with increasing levels of benefits based on revenue, new account recruitment and customer satisfaction.

The program is open to value-added resellers, distributors, master agents, system integrators and service providers that would like to deliver a carrier-grade, cloud-based WAN service to their customers — complete with global reach, dynamic scalability, site-to-site and site-to-SaaS acceleration, and a carrier-grade SLA. We’re looking for partners with networking and SD-WAN practices that are focused on helping their customers deploy or upgrade their WANs, including replacing legacy, expensive MPLS networks, and accelerating access to SaaS applications and cloud workloads with a simple-to-use and secure WAN service.

CP: Quick-hit answers: Percentage of sales through the channel, number of partners, average margin. Go.

MC: The Teridion Partner Program … is a Channel First program; 100 percent of sales will be driven through the channel. While we don’t have a specific limit in mind with the number of partners, we are focused on building geographic reach across North America, the U.K. and Europe, and [Australia-New Zealand] and Asia through value-driven partnerships. Channel margin has been market-tested to ensure we offer a competitive, benefit-rich program.

CP: Do you work with any master agents or distributors now? Is so, which ones, and if not, do you expect to establish these relationships?

MC: Today, early entrants to this brand new program include Concierge Core Services, a leading communications master agent, and Wanify, a full-service VAR and leading VeloCloud reseller.

With the launch of the brand-new Teridion Partner Program, our goals are to expand our geographic reach and coverage with proven enterprise and service-provider focused channel partners (including distribution and master agents) with deep networking and SD-WAN experience and resources. These partners will leverage Teridion’s cloud-based WAN as a superior alternative to current network-connectivity solutions and/or as a “premium add-on” to enhance existing customer deployments with an adjacent, as-a-service offering. This allows our partners to re-engage their install base, provides differentiation against other SD-WAN offerings, and importantly adds a recurring-revenue stream. For new opportunities, Teridion for Enterprise provides differentiation in the market.

CP: Who are your main competitors, and what makes your offering better?

MC: We expect to compete with network-based SD-WAN offerings or private network service offerings, with the likely vendors including …

… Aryaka and Cato Networks.

Our differentiation is twofold:

CP: How do you think your technology portfolio will change in the next three years?

MC: Our initial intent is to make the service available broadly. This is focused on expanding support for SD-WAN integrations (we support VeloCloud, Cisco Meraki, Silver Peak, and Citrix now, with more to come), branch office routers/WAN gateway support, and edge security appliances — and making deployment as simple as a few basic configuration parameters.

One of our innovations is how we harvest raw performance data, that when fed into our deep-learning management system can produce actionable insights and more accurate and timely automation. We have been using the actionable insights to drive greater network performance and reliability (that is how we deliver carrier grade SLAs and such high acceleration multiples), and the next step is to provide deeper monitoring, visibility and control to our partners and enterprise customers.

CP: How do you expect your channel strategy to evolve over that time frame?

MC: Teridion is committed to driving 100 percent of our Teridion for Enterprise business through our partners. We intend to continue to add networking and SD-WAN focused partners to enhance our reach to new markets, penetrate new industries, and improve our approach to customer engagement.

The program is built to scale. We will look to continuously improve the value our partners see through our program — including discounts, sales and technical training, collaborative marketing, MDF, lead-sharing and joint selling. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen our program requirements to ensure our partner ecosystem is delivering the highest quality solutions and customer experience.

CP: What didn’t we ask that partners should know?

MC: By adding Teridion’s cloud-based WAN solution to their portfolio, partners now have a unique offering that is priced to win in the market. Teridion for Enterprise will enable partners to compete head-to-head for MPLS replacement, and to be both complementary and additive to SD-WAN offerings, all while positioning partners to add a recurring revenue stream with their install base and new opportunities alike.

Teridion for Enterprise is easy to deploy and secure, provides global reach, is dynamically scalable, and is backed with a carrier-grade SLA. Using standard, IPSec tunneling, Teridion for Enterprise is “plug-and-play” with almost any network device.