September 29, 2008
By

Herman Mehling

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Large and mid-size companies face a growing list of disaster recovery and business continuity challenges, mostly comprising bandwidth-intensive applications such as data replication, disk mirroring and server virtualization. At the same time, they seek ways to curb the rising costs of maintaining and managing their networks. The solution for many is to turn to managed services from their channel partner.

Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest that managed services is one of the healthiest and sectors of IT for the channel

A recent market study, released by Ovum Research and commissioned by Cisco, projects that the global market for four managed services (metro Ethernet, IP VPNs, IP voice, and security) is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 18 percent. Ovum forecasts that the market will be worth $66 billion by 2012.

The proven success of the managed services model, now deployed by thousands of vendors and VARs across various industries, recently encouraged Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) to launch its own Managed Services Provider (MSP) partner initiative.

Ciena, a network specialist, said the initiative is an expansion of its existing BizConnect partner program. The vendor is offering managed services in four key markets: wavelengths, sub-wavelengths, WAN optimization, and Ethernet services.

 “We designed the MSP initiative to give our existing partners a competitive edge by enabling them to deliver differentiated managed services in high-growth markets,” said Theresa Caragol, vice president, global alliances  and partners at Ciena. “We see the MSP structure as the best means to maximize the channel efforts of our partners,” she said.

Caragol added that Ciena offers its MSP partners the support needed to achieve business growth and market success based on a framework that consists of service development, service deployment and service velocity.

“Our MSPs will enjoy all the same benefits of BizConnect, including margins of 15 points or more, depending on the volume of sales,” she said. Through BizConnect, Caragol said partners can tailors every aspect of their relationship with Ciena, including portfolio offerings, promotions, training, incentives and more, customizing participation based on their unique business strategy and revenue objectives.

TAGS: virtualization, managed services, channel partners, Ciena

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