There isn't a question as to why service providers should invest in WAN optimization as a service. The problems are time and money.

 

TMCnet recently sat down to discuss this topic with Adam Davison, Corporate VP of Sales and Marketing for Expand Networks (News - Alert). The company, which is headquartered in New Jersey, in June rolled out a unique pricing model to help service provides to provide the full benefits of WAN optimization technology to their customers.

 

The pricing model offered by Expand to service providers means they are no longer hamstrung by costly up-front capital expenditure. What's more, it allows them to invest in the things that are going to give them business revenue such as customer acquisition and service delivery.

 

The full exchange follows.

Adam Davison (News - Alert): Up until now, if a service provider wanted to invest in WAN optimization technology it has been a costly and time consuming process. A considerable amount of technical resource has been needed in order to design, specify, integrate, deploy and provision the solution.

 

Then there is the capital expenditure required to procure all the elements of the solution - appliances, licensing, maintenance and management. And all this has had to be paid for up front, ahead of any potential service revenues that might be realized from customers.

 

With Expand's virtualized WAN optimization approach, service providers now have a flexible and scalable deployment option, with centralized management and control, that means that deployment, configuration and service roll out is much less complex and time consuming, leading to reduced deployment costs and accelerated service delivery.

 

And what's more, with our unique pricing model, service providers are no longer hamstrung by costly, up front capital expenditure, allowing them to invest in the things that are going to give them business revenue such as customer acquisition and service delivery.

 

Only then does the service provider start paying for the solution based on a quarterly subscription, mirroring its revenue stream from customers. This is unique in the marketplace. Some other WAN optimization vendors offer a deferred payment model, whereby the up front infrastructure costs are only paid when the service goes live to customers, however, it is still paid in one lump some capital payment as opposed to on a subscription basis. Expand is the only vendor to offer this pricing structure.

 

 

 

 

TMCnet: What are the main advantages of the 'pay as you sell' model?

 

AD: The single biggest advantage is that it completely mirrors the service providers own commercial sell model into the marketplace. No up front CAPEX, as much infrastructure as you need, as much licensing, maintenance and management as required and the service provider only starts paying when it sells the service to customers. And then it's on a quarterly subscription basis as opposed to a single lump sum. The benefit of this is that it eases pressure on finances and conserves cash flow, giving an immediate and recurring return on investment.

 

Another advantage is that it gives service providers the ability to scale on demand without having to worry about costly upgrades. Just simply add more capacity and licensing when customer demand arises and then pay for it on subscription basis. The benefit of this is that service providers can scale dynamically as their revenues grow, accelerate additional service delivery and reduce time to revenue.

Service providers are now able to embark on service roll out on a much more cost effective and risk free basis thereby overcoming barriers to market entry and service deployment and accelerating speed to market with immediate profitable recurring revenue streams.

 

TMC: What are the advantages of Expand's end-to-end WAN Optimization offering?

 

AD: The end to end nature of Expand's product range enables service providers to provide the same seamless experience for users wherever they are in today's distributed enterprise environments, whether that be at headquarters, branch office, home office or even an airport. The commercial model, designed especially for the service provider marketplace, enables them to combine Expand Networks' Virtual Accelerators (VACC), Appliance Accelerators (ACC) and Mobile Accelerator Clients (MACC) to create this experience in their service environment.

 

Expand's suite of products provides a full service enablement model for Acceleration components inside the cloud, in the data center, in the Network Operations Centre (NOC (News - Alert)) in customer premises and at the customer's desktop. Service providers can download software for an 'as a Service' ready infrastructure with a simple monthly subscription model enabling tailored service provision to customers as and when they require it, all the while calling for minimal upfront investment and management complexity.

 

A key differentiator of the product suite is the ability for all of the Accelerators to communicate with one-another across mixed environments and be managed, maintained and controlled centrally. This overcomes the traditional challenges previously associated with installation, configuration and management presented by heterogeneous hardware environments and operating system configurations, allowing for rapid provisioning, large scale WAN optimization deployments and ease of management.

 

Expand Networks Virtual Accelerator (VACC) or Appliance Accelerator (ACC), is deployed at the data center or within the cloud as an image running on a virtual server. Sitting within the virtualized environment, the VACC utilizes existing hardware, shared storage, management, back up policies and configuration tools. At a customer site, the VACC can similarly be quickly deployed on a server as a virtual image.

 

Finally, for small remote offices and mobile users, service providers can deploy the Mobile Accelerator Client (MACC), downloaded from the cloud straight to desktops and laptops to deliver appliance like performance for small offices and mobile users.

 

Critically though, whichever combination is needed by a customer at any one time, all can be fully managed and controlled by the service provider by the same central management platform, ExpandView Virtual.

 

ExpandView Virtual is deployed as a virtual application within a virtualized IT infrastructure to deliver efficient and effective services to customers. The ExpandView Virtual management platform allows service providers to manage the WAN optimization needs of many different customer deployments without having to deploy dedicated systems. This unique level of procurement and technology flexibility and scalability means Expand can help deliver value added and differentiated revenue generating service opportunities, for a service provider offering managed WAN services, satellite services, hosted services or even public/private cloud services.