This guest blog is from Ed Fox, CTO of MetTel, a NetBrain partner. MetTel is a leading global provider of integrated digital communications solutions for enterprise customers. MetTel uses NetBrain to optimize NetOps for its customers, as well as its internal network.
Nearly a decade ago, we recognized that a new Software-Defined WAN would be an integral part of all our customers’ digital transformation journey. We worked closely with partners and customers to develop and refine our WAN capabilities, even prior to the now ubiquitous term “SD-WAN”. While many of the bigger players in the industry failed to recognize the potential of SD-WAN, we saw the future—and mapped to it. Today, our SD-WAN customers look to us as a trusted advisor as we continue to help them future-proof their businesses with software-defined networks that sync and scale to meet increasing data demands and accommodate other advanced technologies such as 5G, IoT, Cloud, and artificial intelligence.
Our early adoption was most importantly validated by our major customers –we have three of the largest SD-WAN implementations in North America. And now MetTel has been named a leader by Gartner – this time in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Managed Network Services. You can view the full report here.
Achieving leadership in a Gartner Magic Quadrant is the goal of every IT company. What’s particularly satisfying is that we reached Leader status in our first appearance in a Magic Quadrant, which is very rare. In fact, MetTel is the only U.S.-based company to achieve this status in this Magic Quadrant.
Gartner placed MetTel furthest to the right in the Leader Quadrant, indicating we received the highest rating for “Completeness of Vision” and in the top three for “Ability to Execute.” Our leadership position in Completeness of Vision speaks to our early ‘all in’ commitment to SD-WAN and to make it a core focus for our customers. While many enterprises with legacy networks struggle to maintain the costly hardware and labor-intensive work required for their upkeep, SD-WAN enables networks to run faster, smoother, and more reliably. Today, our award-winning SD-WAN solutions are enabled with MetTel Intelligent Process Automation, a blend of AI and automation that removes much of the network babysitting from IT departments so they can focus on higher-value work while the business benefits from greater bandwidth and communications ROI.
Our industry-leading “completeness of vision” in this space is also a result of our AI and RPA environment that complements our employees and customers in real-time. In the telecom industry, perfection is unattainable but with our Intelligent Process Automation we can find and correct mistakes quickly and consistently navigate to positive outcomes quicker than standalone automation or AI.
A key partner in this effort is NetBrain. Automation is clearly the new standard for advanced network services. NetBrain is a valued ecosystem partner that provides automation and change management processes for our network backbone as well as managed customer devices. All while providing real time communication flow information from end to end, our AI engine uses this information to update incident tickets and take action in near real time.
I would like to thank key partners, such as NetBrain, and our enterprise customers who have invested in MetTel and given us the opportunity to help them build the network of the future. We invite our partners and customers to celebrate this Gartner Magic Quadrant achievement. It recognizes the “Leader” in all of us.