Windstream Follows AT&T, EarthLink, Vonage With VeloCloud-Powered SD-WAN

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Windstream on Thursday rolled out its SD-WAN offering aimed at midmarket enterprises, and powered by VeloCloud.

Windstream’s SD-WAN offers businesses, including midmarket customers, a “more tailored, flexible and controllable WAN experience,” the company said. It is available nationally, and already has drawn interest from customers in the retail, banking, professional services, health care, manufacturing and financial-services industries, it said.

Michael Kozlowski, Windstream’s vice president of product management, tells Channel Partners his company’s focus on the midmarket means that “our solution has been engineered to best meet their needs, which should give channel partners the ability to offer a different and better solution than what they could offer before we announced.”

“SD-WAN gives our channel partners the ability to provide multiple services and build cost competitive solutions that leverage access diversity so they can provide proven, reliable, end-to-end solutions for their customers,” he said. “This solution makes our channel partners more competitive in markets where customers require both diversity and more cost-effective bandwidth options. And given the financial squeeze that many businesses are feeling right now, we expect the market for our channel partners to be considerable.”

Other service providers that have announced a VeloCloud-powered SD-WAN service include AT&T, Sprint, EarthLink, Mitel, TelePacific, Vonage, NewCloud Networks and MetTel.

“We chose to partner with VeloCloud because they are recognized as a leading provider in cloud networking services,” Kozlowski said. “The relationship with VeloCloud will be transparent to the customer, except for seeing the name VeloCloud on the CPE equipment. Windstream will provide the complete solution, including the SD-WAN consultation and networking expertise.”

According to Gartner, by the end of 2019, 30 percent of enterprises will have deployed SD-WAN technology in their branches, up from less than 1 percent today.

“SD-WAN is another example of Windstream partnering with enterprise customers to deliver reliable, secure communications solutions that fuel productivity and growth,” said Joe Harding, Windstream’s enterprise chief marketing officer. “By including SD-WAN as another solution in our portfolio of managed WAN services, Windstream offers mid-to large-size enterprise customers the same technology advantages that large enterprises enjoy, which include custom-designed networks and services, as well as a highly responsive support team.”