What do you see trending in SaaS? Any company in particular?

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has got some claim to a SaaS model. With the rise of cloud, it’s just the way I think a great many consumers of technology want to go these days.  IT is becoming more and more utility-based. Sure, I have friends who have their own water wells for their homes, but the mass majority of us have moved on to public works -- why? Because it’s cheaper, easier and less hassle.  I see the same happening in software consumption, but there’s still a way to go and we’re not 100 percent there yet.

What are the best ways VARs/solution providers can grow through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)?

If I was a VAR, I’d want a high value product that truly drives transformation for my customers.  If you’ve got that then the benefits are huge. It drives strong relationships, opens the door to the whole IT budget and consequently creates more opportunities for that VAR to sell into. 

Sure, you can make 3 percent on 100 Router quotes, but their ability to grow margin and really drag their own solutions to the customer is very limited.

What do you see trending in Unified Communications? Any company in particular?

So UC is clearly going to be a big play for every company.  The money that’s saved from these projects is enormous. We see huge, eight-figure ROIs calculated on keeping people in-office and out of trains, planes and cars.  However, that only happens if the UCC rollout is perfect, within budget, and well used and that’s a problem Ipanema is purpose built to solve. 

As for winners -- it’s a religious thing, in my opinion. People buy Cisco for the name. People buy Microsoft for the name. Why they buy them over each other or other solutions, I couldn’t say, but I’m not sure they could either.

What are the best ways VARs/solution providers can grow through Unified Communications?

No question, services are important, but from a product perspective Ipanema is a great fit. There’s a great opportunity for VARs to sell our solution alongside a Lync or an Office 365 implementation and say: “with this product not only can I guarantee your rollout will work and protect the ROI, but I can ensure your other applications are protected too”. That’s a win-win from my perspective.

What at Ipanema stood out to you to make you want to work there?

Firstly, as a sector, applications over the wide area network (WAN) is full of opportunity and really where the growth is.  I’ve built a solid career by riding the wave of consolidation of IT infrastructures, and when I looked at the WAN sector from an application protection, performance and hybrid network view, I saw that there was an opportunity for me.

There are a few companies out there trying to be one-hit wonders, trying to move forward with a non-integrated, multi-appliance black box.  Then there’s Ipanema, which has an integrated, OpenStack, cloud-ready software platform where everything is a feature of the platform as opposed to a new black box to add and learn. It’s that type of consolidation and flexibility that birthed the likes of VMware, x86 and Linux. Ipanema’s just a more exciting prospect.