Meter CEO On Microsoft Relationship: We Expect It To Be ‘The Biggest Channel We Have’

‘What this partnership enables everyone to do, especially partners, is [to] be able to sell Meter through that marketplace, and customers get to deprecate that cost from their agreement. That hasn’t been available for networking before on the Azure Marketplace,’ Meter’s Co-Founder and CEO Anil Varanasi said of his company’s unique relationship with Microsoft after Meter caught the attention of tech titan Satya Nadella earlier this year.

Meter has attracted backers like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and VMware Founder Diane Green. Now, the innovative network-as-a-service specialist has attracted the attention of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

The company is disrupting the networking industry with its cohesive hardware and software and offers a unique NaaS business model where channel partners are paid high-value recurring revenue, without having to shoulder upfront capex expenses associated with traditional networking. But perhaps most notable is Meter’s partnership with Microsoft that allows customers to deprecate costs from their Microsoft Azure agreements, which will potentially drive hundreds of millions in new revenue for Meter and its channel partners in the next few years, according to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Anil Varanasi.

“We anticipate it will be the biggest channel we have over the next few years. We’re already seeing tremendous amount of progress with deals and with the amount of deals we have in the pipeline, [just] how many have a Microsoft agreement — I hadn’t appreciated until I looked at our pipeline in the last few months,” Varanasi told attendees at CRN parent The Channel Company’s 2025 XChange Best of Breed event in Atlanta this week on the economic impact of Meter’s burgeoning relationship with Microsoft.

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Meter was co-founded by Varanasi and his brother and CTO, Sunil Varanasi. The two entrepreneurs saw some things that they “entirely disagreed” with in the networking industry that felt ripe for change, Varanasi said.

“First, vendors kept saying: ‘Hardware is commoditized.’ Second, the way that [networking vendors] were building products was mainly through acquisitions, rather than building them together with cohesive software and operating systems. Third was the pricing model. They were trying to make hardware as cheaply as possible and sell it as expensive as possible,” he said. “We disagreed with all of those things.”

Meter believes that building an entire networking solution from the ground up offers better outcomes for customers. It’s what the company has done with its Command offering, Varanasi said.

“Why can’t it be that you build the hardware, the operating systems, the applications all together for power, routing, switching, security, [and] wireless,” he said.

At a time when “everything else” was moving toward a model in which the vendor would only get paid if they continuously provide value, the same couldn’t be said for networking, Varanasi said.

“[Networking vendors] made a box, sold the box, then washed their hands of it. We thought that was wrong,” he said.

Taking away the capital expenditures associated with networking deployments is key to Meter’s approach to the market. It removes risk for both the partner and end customer, Varanasi said.

“When customers have existing hardware, we’ll buy that so there’s no sunk cost. We’ll install our racks entirely free of cost, which we take on the risk of everything from power, routing [and] switching, and then when new hardware is built because of new technologies that come out, or specifications, or anything like that, we will upgrade our customers as well,” he said. “The underlying model is: We believe that people that build the hardware and software should be the ones responsible for it and should be the ones taking on risk, so we take on all the capital [expenditures].”

Partners are compensated with reoccurring “high quality” revenue on a yearly or monthly cadence, Varanasi said.

“Having much better hardware, much better software … means [partners] have to spend less time designing, configuring and maintaining networks. That means they can take on more customers and have happier customers,” he said.

Meter does about 95 percent of its business through the channel today and all new business and renewals ae 100 percent channel fulfilled, the company said.

Making Waves In The Networking Market

The company’s novel approach to networking gained the attention of OpenAI’s Altman and VMware’s Greene in the “small community” that is Silicon Valley, and later, Microsoft’s Nadella came knocking.

“They all saw the value in building better networks,” Varanasi said.

Microsoft took part in Meter’s most recent $170 million Series C funding round in June. The company in February announced a multi-year, strategic relationship with Microsoft that opened the door for Microsoft partners to sell Meter’s NaaS with no upfront cost through the Azure Marketplace.

“I didn’t understand it at first when [Nadella] said: ‘This will be great,’ I was like: ‘Ah, that sounds fine.’ But then, as I learned about it, I think it’s one of the most remarkable things they’ve done,” Varanasi said .

Varanasi called the partnership a “tremendous opportunity” for partners.

“Most of the enterprises in the world have some sort of agreement with Microsoft to buy their services, and they have this thing called MACC [Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment], which is this minimum spend with Microsoft. What this partnership enables everyone to do, especially partners, is [to] be able to sell Meter through that marketplace, and customers get to deprecate that cost from their agreement. That hasn’t been available for networking before on the Azure Marketplace,” he said.

Today, 10-year-old Meter’s customers include large, global enterprises in the retail, healthcare, manufacturing, financial and education verticals. The pipeline, Varanasi said, is “growing on itself,” especially over the last two years.

Partners, said Varanasi, have been an “incredible” part of Meter’s growth story.

Meter is seeing two kinds of deals. Microsoft sellers are bringing Meter into their deals, and Meter is also bringing in partners to help facilitate those deals. On the other hand, Meter’s channel partners are bringing the company deals in which Meter will bring in a Microsoft seller.

“We’ll say: ‘Hey, this customer has this agreement of a cloud commit that will go down and they can buy Meter through it,’ so then, the deals are further accelerated. I think generally what we want in a business is bigger pipeline and faster close, and that’s what the partnership is enabling us to do,” he said.

US itek, a Buffalo, N.Y.-based solution provider, has been shifting its focus to more as-a-service sales. NaaS is the next step in that plan, said David Stinner, president and founder of the firm who was in the audience during Varanasi’s keynote.

The capital expenditures for new hardware and installation that come along with network upgrades can be “dangerous” for MSPs once customers feel the sticker shock associated with new equipment, Stinner said.

“Our goal for years now has been to move to [opex], and being able to bundle this with no capex [expenses]? This is really interesting,” he said.

Moving to an opex model from the traditional capex model associated with networking is the next natural progression, Stinner said. He added that Meter having a relationship with Microsoft makes it even more appealing for MSPs, since many end customers already have Microsoft in their environments.

“I love the fact that Microsoft has invested in [Meter], and if we’re going to be able to sell this in the marketplace and tie it to Azure, I think this is a no-brainer,” Stinner said.