Nearly a decade ago, we recognized that a new software defined WAN would be an integral part of all our customers’ digital transformation journey. We worked closely with partners and customers to develop and refine our WAN capabilities, even prior to the now ubiquitous term “SD-WAN.” While many of the bigger players in the industry failed to recognize the potential of SD-WAN, we saw the future—and mapped to it. Today, our SD-WAN customers look to us as a trusted advisor as we continue to help them future-proof their businesses with software defined networks that sync and scale to meet increasing data demands and accommodate other advanced technologies such as 5G, IoT, cloud and artificial intelligence.
Much of our success is due to MetTel’s innovation ecosystem and our collaborative efforts with key partners such as VMware. Several years ago, we made the foundational decision to partner with Velocloud, now known as VMware SD-WAN. At the time, there were many pretenders in the marketplace for us to evaluate to support our customers’ WANs and underlying cloud infrastructure. We chose Velocloud/VMware SD-WAN because of their early commitment to virtual deployments as well as their technical ability to aggregate bandwidth and remediate performance issues in the access network. Our choice was most importantly validated by our major customers—we have three of the largest SD-WAN implementations in North America—and also by the fact that Velocloud/VMware SD-WAN has been a Leader in the annual Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure for the past three years.*
Now MetTel has also been named a Leader by Gartner—this time in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Managed Network Services.** You can view the full report here.
Achieving leadership in a Gartner Magic Quadrant is the goal of every IT company. What’s particularly satisfying is that we reached Leader status in our first appearance in a Magic Quadrant, which is very rare. In fact, MetTel is the only U.S.-based company to achieve this status in this Magic Quadrant.
MetTel received recognition for “ability to execute” and appears furthest to the right for “completeness of vision” in the Leader Quadrant. Our leadership position in “completeness of vision” speaks to our early “all in” commitment to SD-WAN and to making it a core focus for our customers. While many enterprises with legacy networks struggle to maintain the costly hardware and labor-intensive work required for their upkeep, SD-WAN enables networks to run faster, smoother and more reliably. Today, our award-winning SD-WAN solutions are enabled with MetTel Intelligent Process Automation, a blend of AI and automation that removes much of the network babysitting from IT departments so they can focus on higher value work while the business benefits from greater bandwidth and communications ROI.
Our industry leading “completeness of vision” in this space is also a result of collaboration with another key ecosystem partner. Intelygenz has worked in harmony with our operations and technology teams to help us tune an AI and RPA environment that complements our employees and customers in real-time. In the telecom industry, perfection is unattainable but with our Intelligent Process Automation we can make mistakes quickly and consistently navigate to positive outcomes quicker than standalone automation or AI.
Complementing Intelygenz’ capabilities is that of NetBrain’s. Automation is clearly the new standard for advanced network services. NetBrain is a valued ecosystem partner that provides automation and change management processes for our network backbone as well as managed customer devices. All while providing real time communication flow information from end to end, Intelygenz uses this information to update incident tickets and take action in near real time.
Taking a transformative solution like SD-WAN to market is another proposition and asking enterprises to invest in digital transformation requires a leap of faith, especially for businesses like banks. It helps when your partner is the largest fintech in the world and a trusted advisor to financial institutions. Fidelity Information Systems (FIS) is a key partner with MetTel in optimizing MetTel SD-WAN for the financial industry, maintaining all the requisite compliance protocols. FIS makes SD-WAN an easier decision for banks by providing a turnkey solution that’s fully managed and vetted by their trusted IT provider.
And of course, our channel partners have and will continue to play a key role in the success of our managed network services, especially SD-WAN. Our most strategic SD-WAN accounts a majority of our network business flow through our channel relationships. Their intricate knowledge of their clients’ business helps us deploy the right fit solution for the end users at the most economical price.
Finally, saving the best for last, I would like to thank our enterprise customers who have invested in MetTel and given us the opportunity to help them build the network of the future. We invite our partners and customers to celebrate this Gartner Magic Quadrant achievement. It recognizes the “Leader” in all of us.
*Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure, Jonathan Forest, Andrew Lerner, Naresh Singh, 23 September 2020.
**Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Network Services, Ted Corbett, Danellie Young, Lisa Pierce, 9 November 2020.
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