Masergy SD-WAN Portfolio Expanded As Firm Backs Service Via Aggressive New SLA

Masergy‘s SD-WAN portfolio just got more flexible with the launch of a co-managed offering and the firm is backing its powerful SD-WAN solution with an 100 percent guaranteed uptime SD-WAN SLA.

Hybrid networking provider Masergy Communications is expanding the reach and flexibility of its SD-WAN with the introduction of a co-managed offering for partners and customers. And it‘s standing behind its services with a brand-new, 100 percent cloud and network availability SD-WAN SLA that partners can hang their hat on, the firm announced on Tuesday.

Masergy‘s new co-managed SD-WAN option lets customers customize their configurations and make changes through the SD-WAN Orchestrator while Masergy monitors and reports on performance. While Masergy’s SD-WAN service always brought in security features, the service is now taking more of a Secure Access Security Edge (SASE) approach, with built-in unified threat management and threat monitoring and response, the company said.

“For 20 years, Masergy has been focused on fully-managed services and we got feedback from partners that we weren‘t flexible enough, so we saw this opportunity for us to deploy a new service model that allows our customers to have a lot more control over the technology platform, while we can still deploy it for them and provide the deep analytics,” Masergy CEO Chris MacFarland told CRN.

[Related: Masergy CEO: SD-WAN 'Only In Second Inning’ As Opportunities Peak During COVID-19]

The co-managed option is a “significant” enhancement to the flexibility of the SD-WAN offering, MacFarland said. Another feature that boosts the agility of the offering is its network-agnostic nature. Businesses can now run Masergy SD-WAN over any connectivity or private networks they have in place, adding security, analytics, and AIops to any existing environment, he said.

Behind Every Cloud (BEC), a U.K.-based IT consultancy firm and longtime Masergy partner, serves mid-sized clients -- many of which are in the financial services space. Masergy‘s SD-WAN is one of the few in the market that has embedded encryption and security to the edge of the network, said Ray Bricknell, managing director of BEC.

“The new SD-WAN expansion is powerful,” Bricknell said. ”SD-WAN has been a hot topic and there‘s no question that particularly the edge compute element of SD-WAN has become a much more critical element of enterprise architecture.”

The enhancements to the SD-WAN portfolio not only will help partners better serve their clients in a post-COVID word, but it also widens the pool of customers that Masergy and its partners can go after, including the midmarket and customers located in any geography, MacFarland said.

“Given the change because of COVID-19, being nimble and flexible with a hybrid solution is the game that has to be played today,” said Ted Schuman, founder and CEO of Scottsdale, Arizona-based PlanetOne, a master agent and Masergy partner. ”Offering different sizes, flavors, and models of [SD-WAN] is an absolute must if you‘re going to compete and thrive in the market -- it’s not an option anymore.”

Masergy‘s new SLA, also introduced on Tuesday, gives customers 100 percent visibility into the network and cloud connections and promises performance of less than one millisecond of jitter. The company is going to proactively give customers credits if the SLA is not met to further enhance trust, Masergy’s MacFarland said.

“The magic with Masergy all along has been that they really put their money where their mouth is,” Schuman said. Masergy‘s SD-WAN product has always been disruptive, but now having it backed with a strong SLA is one of Masergy’s greatest strengths in the crowded market, he added.

Channel partners can expect up to three times the monthly recurring revenue commissions for qualified SD-WAN and UCaaS sales through Dec. 31, Masergy said.

Alongside the SD-WAN portfolio expansion and SLA, Masergy on Tuesday also introduced its new Zenith Partner Program for master agents, telecom agents, MSPs, and VARs. Masergy does about 80 percent of its business through partners today.

“The channel is our principle route to market,” MacFarland said. ”We value these relationships and we absolutely feel like this is the most important handful of years because every enterprise and midmarket business is going to go through a significant refresh as they journey to the cloud. The network is more important now than it has ever been, especially as you think about the fact that traffic flows have shifted so dramatically at this point in time.”