New Windstream LAN Suite Complements SD-WAN, UCaaS Services

Windstream Enterprise has unveiled a collection of local area network (LAN) services to address major customer pain points.

LAN Services has three main components: Wi-Fi and analytics, cloud-managed switches and intelligent IP cameras. Windstream executives boast that the suite improves business analytics, customer experience and layer 7 visibility, but most importantly, provides those benefits through a single source.

That’s important for customers who are tired of aggregating services from multiple vendors.

Windstream’s Mike Frane

“Businesses tell us that innovation is hindered when their resources are bound to do-it-yourself solutions or complex multivendor environments for managing their LAN services,” said Mike Frane, Windstream Enterprise’s vice president of product management. “We work with businesses to find, deploy and maintain the right solutions to solve their unique challenges, despite limited IT resources.”

Windstream, which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, is framing the LAN services as a “natural complement” to its UCaaS and SD-WAN offerings. Financial reports and executive statements indicate that Windstream is making an “aggressive” move toward the latter two technologies. It reached 500,000 cloud-based unified communications seats in December.

“Our focus has been on guiding our partners through the strategic shift taking place in the telco landscape, from a traditional POTS and T1 sales hierarchy to cloud-based solutions like UCaaS and SD-WAN,” Curt Allen, senior vice president of channel, told our Edward Gately. “Windstream Enterprise has made it a priority to educate and serve as the subject-matter experts for partners who are on this cloud-migration journey with us, and our partners are responding above and beyond our expectations.”

Windstream announced last week that its fixed wireless service now reaches 400,000 Ethernet locations.

Jeffrey Schwartz recently compiled seven predictions for wireless LAN in 2019.