Ipanema Makes Play for North American App Acceleration Market

Ipanema Technologies is recruiting VARs, network integrators and service providers to sell products and services based on Ipanema System, its application acceleration and WAN optimization platform for large enterprises and plans to sell 100 percent through the channel, said Vargha Moayed, executive vice president of Ipanema, which has established its North American headquarters in Concord, Mass.

The company’s Ipanema System includes two pieces: central management software and distributed hardware devices, which together help ensure the availability of important applications such as ERP and VoIP, Moayed said. The average partner equipment sales comes in at $200,000 per deal, he said.

“Our system at the end of the day guarantees the performance of critical applications, regardless of what’s going on in the network,” he said. Ipanema most directly competes with Packeteer, but also counts vendors such as Riverbed and Juniper Networks among its rivals, he said.

Ipanema has just begun its recruiting efforts and has not yet signed any North American partners, though it does have relationships overseas with partners that have a U.S. presence, such as Dimension Data and Getronics, he said.

But when it does sign on partners, its channel program is ready, he said. The company’s North American partner program includes three levels, Basic Partner, Business Partner and Premier Partner, which are differentiated by how many staff members have been trained and what level of competency the organization has achieved through certifications, Moayed said. Top-level Premier Partners are also qualified to provide managed services based on the Ipanema platform, he said.

Ipanema also offers 24-hour support services through NCR, which channel partners can resell if they choose.

Moayed said the timing is right to enter the North American market because it is now mature enough. In the past, customers sought application acceleration or WAN optimization products as point solutions to improve the performance a specific WAN link between two locations, he said.

“In the early days, customers were trying to solve a specific problem, like performance on the link from New York to Bombay. The market was really a smart substitute for more bandwidth,” he said. “People now want a global approach, not point to point, with a very direct link to application performance.”