Monday Morning Impact – July 27

HPE Acquires Silver Peak to Strengthen its SD-WAN Position

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, of San Jose, California, has entered into an agreement to acquire SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak in a transaction valued at $925 million.

Silver Peak will be combined with HPE’s Aruba business unit to extend Aruba’s technology leadership in the SD-WAN space. By combining Silver Peak’s SD-WAN with Aruba’s SD-Branch solutions, partners are expected to be able to simplify branch office and WAN deployments to support remote workforces and enable cloud-connected distributed enterprises.

“HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “With this acquisition we are accelerating our edge-to-cloud strategy to provide a true distributed cloud model and cloud experience for all apps and data wherever they live.”

“Today’s announcement comes at a unique moment for our customers, who are grappling with business recovery in the wake of the pandemic,” said Keerti Melkote, president of Intelligent Edge for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and founder of Aruba Networks. “The need for edge-to-cloud architectures has never been more relevant as enterprises look to extend connectivity to branch locations and enable secure work-from-home experiences.”

Silver Peak claims more than 1,500 production SD-WAN customers around the world.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of HPE’s fiscal year 2020.

Channel Impact^®
The companies expect the combination to create opportunities for significant economic upside through enablement of integrated offerings that more effectively address customer needs.

Report: Customer Interest in UCaaS Nearly Doubled Amid Pandemic

Interest in Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) surged 86 percent during the Spring of this year, amid the global pandemic and its related shift toward work-from-home staffing models. That’s according to the latest “6-12 Report,” produced by Avant Research & Analytics, a division of Chicago-based master agent, Avant Communications.

“The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation plans, making business leaders more aware of any gaps in their legacy communications solutions,” said Ian Kieninger, CEO and co-founder of AVANT Communications. “Needs have changed amidst COVID-19, due to stay-at-home orders and remote work. This AVANT 6-12 Report is designed to inform readers how the UCaaS landscape is changing, facilitate an understanding of what to consider when looking at a unified communications solution and sustain a higher-level dialogue around the technology.”

The consensus of the analyst community points to continued rapid growth in the UCaaS space, although the growth curve is somewhat less sharp than it was when offices first began to close. Other market drivers for UCaaS include video, collaboration, and digital transformation.

This is the third installment in a series of 6-12 Reports designed to help business leaders assess whether the featured technology is a viable option for their companies over the next six to 12 months. The report leverages data collected by AVANT through the course of real-world engagements in solving customer technology needs. Insights are also based on customer surveys, external data, and extensive interviews with subject matter experts. The focus is on a sales and management-level discussion that is neither marketing-focused nor engineering-level. Previous reports focused on SD-WAN and IT security.

Channel Impact^®
This report is designed to be distributed by channel partners to enterprise end customers in order to help those customers better understand UCaaS, assess their options, and have a better overall experience.

Trustwave Launches New Global Channel Partner Program

Trustwave, a Chicago-based cybersecurity and managed security services provider, has unveiled “Trustwave PartnerOne,” the company’s new global partner program.

The strategy includes portfolio access, customized co-brandable marketing campaigns, sell-through of consulting and professional services, and a new partner portal providing a single view and self-manage capabilities to scale services and resources as needed, administer marketing campaigns, chart and report on performance metrics and link to third-party sales and customer resource management platforms.

“Cybersecurity remains a top market for the channel in terms of opportunity and potential growth as businesses across all industries grapple with cybercrime in the midst of digital transformation initiatives,” said Suzanne Swanson, vice president of global partners at Trustwave. “We have invested heavily and are committed to our global program to help ensure partners are well positioned to capitalize by delivering critical technologies and services, expertise and operational support as security threats and consequently customer needs evolve.”

Trustwave is a Singtel company and the global security arm of Singtel, Optus and NCS, with customers in 96 countries.

Channel Impact^®
Trustwave PartnerOne is intended to unify the company’s cybersecurity technologies and services with sales, marketing and operational support. The program is delivered through a new two-tier distribution and referral model.