BCN Teams with Cato Networks for Managed SASE

Managed network services provider and carrier aggregator BCN and secure access service edge (SASE) provider Cato Networks have both deepened their bench of technology partners with a managed SASE partnership.

The partnership lets BCN and its channel partners sell Cato SASE Cloud, which merges Cato’s service service edge (SSE) capabilities and software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) capabilities. The announcement brings BCN’s total number of SD-WAN/SASE overlay partners to four.

BCN’s Julian Jacquez

“Our sales partners and enterprise customers will benefit tremendously from the partnership BCN and Cato have forged,” BCN president and chief operating officer Julian Jacquez said. “Cato’s SASE technology platform, integrated with BCN’s robust connectivity services portfolio, means our partners and customers can address a host of security and networking challenges and take advantage of opportunities that yield cost-efficiency through our collaborative and transparent service delivery architecture.”

Other BCN SD-WAN/SASE partners include Cisco Meraki, VMware/VeloCloud, and most recently, Bigleaf Networks.

For Cato, the agreement represents a continued foray into the service provider community. While the provider offers its own global private backbone and initially marketed itself as a threat to the telcos, Cato in 2021 started forming partnerships with different service providers across the world. It recently partnered with U.S. ILEC/CLEC Windstream Enterprise.

Cato’s Frank Rauch

“We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with BCN,” Cato global channel chief Frank Rauch said. “The shift to hybrid work is proving challenging to enterprises everywhere. Effective network security is more challenging than ever. With BCN’s expertise and resourcefulness, enterprises will benefit strongly from this partnership.”

Rauch, who formerly led channels at Check Point, joined Cato earlier this year. At the time, he voiced a posture of openness toward working more with telcos.

“The market is really dynamic. If you look at Telefonica, if you look at Orange, BT, AT&T, Verizon, etc., what are they? Are they telcos, service providers or integrators? I would probably say all three. Technology is always disruptive. I don’t think we’re competing against MPLS directly. I think we’re offering a different path to be able to get there. It would be foolish for us to not be able to leverage people that really understand the last mile and understand some of that business,” Rauch told Channel Futures in January.

It’s a big day for SASE partnerships. Rival service provider Nitel announced that it is going global with its VMware managed SASE offering.

Top BCN Partners

It’s always interesting to take a look at which technology advisors, agents and resellers are performing best with a particular vendor. BCN on its website lists six tiers of its most prolific sales partners. Suppliers in the channel often hand out awards to their top sales-generating partners; the suppliers often only recognize the distributors whose contracts partners leverage. BCN, however, shows the partners at the subagent level that are performing well.

Of course, these lists are to be taken with a grain of salt, as they only reflect how partners are doing with one particular vendor. Nevertheless, this contains a who’s-who of sorts in the technology advisor channel.