Thought-leaders on Emerging Technologies – Silver Peak

Fortnightly interviews where thought-leaders share their expertise on emerging technologies in the networking industry. Every fortnight there will be a new interview with a leader in the networking sector.

First up, The global leader in SD-WAN, Silver Peak. We spoke to Simon Pamplin, EMEA Technical Sales Director for Silver Peak and a regular speaker at events, where he speaks about topics ranging from the latest storage technologies and server virtualisation to the current shift in data networking towards SD-WAN.

Silver Peak is an organisation that focuses 100% on SD-WAN and is the Global Leader in Broadband and Hybrid WAN Solutions serving more than 2,000 customers around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What did you do prior to Silver Peak?

Before I joined Silver Peak I worked at Brocade for a number of years in their Pre-sales / SE team manage teams in the UK and Ireland. I then worked at Dell/ EMC leading a Pre-sales team in EMEA focusing on All Flash Storage, a high-performance storage system.

Why did you join Silver Peak?

I joined Silver Peak because SD-WAN really interested me. I worked in both data and storage networking for many years and SD-WAN seemed like an extremely interesting technology to move into.

What do you love most about the company?

I would say that what I like most about Silver Peak is our product. We are selling a solution for a problem that has always existed. It’s a refreshing change because it’s not a solution looking for a problem, it actually fixes something the customer is having problems with.
Company wise I like Silver Peak because it’s a small agile company in an interesting industry with good technology.

What is the company culture like at Silver Peak?

At Silver Peak we have a very open culture with a flat organisational structure. It’s a small company with less than 300 people globally. We are present in the US, EMEA and APAC regions.

When did you first hear about SDN/SD-WAN?

SDN I worked in for many years, because I used to work at Brocade. We would work with SDN and orchestration often but this is quite a few years back now.

SD-WAN is still very new, I would say that I heard about SD-WAN for the first time about 2.5 years ago.

What were your first thoughts?

It’s a very interesting technology. SD-WAN uses technologies that have been around for some time and combines them into one capability. this was something I haven’t seen before.

Also for our end-users SD-WAN was a lightbulb moment, as it answered the questions that they had such as; how can I do this cheaper and better? How can this be application focused rather than network focused?

Strengths and weaknesses of SD-WAN?

The major strengths in the space are that it answers the problem the customer has. SD-WAN improves customer network productivity and usage. Most customers have little or no visibility what’s actually going on in the Network. Networking has become very complicated and SD-WAN makes it simpler.

Simple and better end-user experience on a potentially lower cost is something that is of interest to most customers and this makes it interesting to discuss with them.

At the moment I don’t really see any threats. SD-WAN products will sit over the top of existing technologies. It’s a young technology and industry so there are no threats to it when it comes to alternative solutions.

What do you like the most about the industry?

I like all the new technology and innovations that are happening and what benefits these bring to end-users and end-user experience.

Who do you see as the biggest innovators in the SDN space?

Silver Peak of course. All biased to one side – we are recognised by Gartner as Market Leaders in the SD-WAN space. In our space there is no one that is near as good as we are. But there are complimentary businesses that are starting to get interesting.

Who do you see as the biggest adaptors?

This has changed a lot over the past 12 months!

12 months ago it were the 5-10 site companies who were dipping their toe into it. Now we have Fortune100 companies and it is becoming something companies are beginning to take real advantage of.

Someone had to start and take the leap and now other big companies have begun to follow.

Where do you see the future of networking going?

Legacy networking will always be the fundamental requirement.

LAN networking will remain very similar but with lesser numbers. I think the amount of devices in remote locations will be rationalised. Rather than having 5 firewalls or a number of different WAN Optimizers.

Tell us a little bit more around the Silver Peak Certification track

We offer free training ranging from initial device deployment and understanding what SD-WAN is all the way through to advanced deployment training around architecture. This is all available through our website. This will be in the form of Virtual Instructors or live Webinars.

Why is it free?

From our perspective we want people to get comfortable with SD-WAN and our products. Our product stands on its own and we want to be 100% transparent throughout when it comes to costing.

There are other vendor certification tracks that has a number of unwarranted fees whereas we want our customers to be able to use our product. We shouldn’t charge for that.

Nothing is hidden including the training we offer to the end-user.

What implications does SD-WAN have on our modern day “Network Engineers” and do you think the need will go away?

No way! The classic question I have at a seminar is from a CCIE with his arms crossed, stern face on the front row accusing me of putting him out of a job…

That is not what we do.

What we do with SD-WAN is save them time doing mundane repetitive tasks such as plugging in network cables or configurating the very basic stuff again and again and allow them to focus on network design and architecture. The interesting things that their CCIE warrants.

The question is; Would you rather jump in your car at 2am and drive 200 miles to a remote site to type in a command string or would you rather manage it from a central location where it is monitored and managed remotely and where everything is exactly controlled from one piece of orchestration. The usual answer is; yes, that actually makes sense.

Would you say it is better to be a generalist than an expert?

Even though SD-WAN is simple it does not degrade the knowledge required by Network Engineers. SD-WAN simplifies the whole management and implementation of a solution.

There will always be a need for deep networking skills! At the moment SD-WAN is involved in much more complex networks and peering ISP networks. From a simple flat network connectivity through to having to know how to integrate p2p. You still need a highly skilled Network Engineer here!

Just that when you are building a network from the ground up you won’t need an army of Network Engineers to carry out all the mundane repetitive tasks.

What is your biggest difficulty when recruiting for Silver Peak?

A very unique skillset is required when working in the SD-WAN space. It’s a very consultative job. You need to understand the customers’ NEEDS and their business solutions. You can’t be a techy.

It is important you understand more than networking! You need to understand the applications that sit within the network and it is important to have a broader skillset of other areas.

If you could give 1 piece of advice to a Network Engineer what would it be?

Get an appreciation of the application requirements.

At the end of the day the end-user doesn’t care what network it comes over, if the application is performing badly then that is the problem, not the network.

Silver Peak

Silver Peak offers a high-performance SD-WAN solution that provides secure and reliable virtual overlays to connect users to applications with the flexibility to use any combination of underlying transport without compromising network or application performance. This results in greater business agility and lower costs.

 

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SNEAK PEAK
In the next thought-leaders on emerging networking technologies we spoke to a leading provider of Network Management designed to automate and orchestrate network operations and leverage the power of Software Defined Networking (SDN).

 

Interview by: James Dean
James is a Senior Network Consultant at Hamilton Barnes and specializes in Networking, LAN & WAN, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and predominantly focuses on the ISP market space.

Phone: 0203 762 2480 | Email: [email protected]