NaaS Specialist Meter CEO On Getting Hardware, Software 'Right' For The Future Of Networking

"The next 1,000 days are probably going to forge the networking company that will be around for the next decade. The work we've done over the past decade has put us in a great position, but there's a tremendous amount of work we have to do to actually achieve [that]," said Meter co-founder and CEO Anil Varanasi.

Meter is on a mission to build autonomous networks, starting with both great hardware and great software that don't hold each other back, according to the company's co-founder and CEO Anil Varanasi.

Since its inception ten years ago the network-as-a-service (NaaS) specialist has been disrupting the "stagnant" networking industry with its cohesive and homegrown hardware and software, Varanasi said. Meter offers a unique NaaS business model where channel partners generate high-value recurring revenue, without having to shoulder upfront capex expenses associated with traditional networking.

To that end, at the company's MeterUp 2025 event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Meter unveiled nine new hardware platforms and major updates to Meter Command, the company's generative AI interface for network management to help enterprises meet the new enterprise network moment, according to Varanasi.

[Related: Meter CEO On Microsoft Partnership And Disrupting The Legacy Networking Market Through NaaS]

"The next 1,000 days are probably going to forge the networking company that will be around for the next decade," he said. "The work we've done over the past decade has put us in a great position, but there's a tremendous amount of work we have to do to actually achieve [that].”

Starting with "getting the basics right," added Varanasi (pictured at The Channel Company’s recent XChange Best of Breed event).

Meter Command Upgrade

Meter Command is now directly integrated into Meter Support and Operations, which the company said means that the offering can now automate issue resolution and support beginning when a customer or partner opens a ticket. Command, which is trained on Meter’s infrastructure and telemetry data, can analyze that data in real time, run model jobs, and recommend actions to Meter's team for faster incident resolution, the company said.

San Francisco-based Meter said that currently 85 percent of tickets now include model-generated insights or actions, with the remaining 15 percent reserved by Meter for control. Human operators provide structured feedback that trains Meter's models for future deployments, the company said.

Meter Command now automates the entire network design and configuration process, from the initial call to final wired and wireless design, the company said. Meter executives said that as a result, its networks deploy two times faster when compared to legacy networking vendors.

The Hardware

Meter on Tuesday unveiled a heavy payload of new networking gear that included two Wi-Fi 7 access points, three security appliances—including what the company is calling an industry-first, dual, high availability 20 Gbps unit and a 50 Gbps WAN firewall—three multi-gig switches with intelligent PoE design, and one external, IP67 and extended temperature rated 5G gateway with LTE resilience.

The company said the new hardware has been designed, built, and tested to deliver enterprise-grade reliability, performance, and security.

"We want every single one of our products to be compared with their peers and be better," said Joshua Markell, vice president of hardware engineering for Meter.

The company said that all Meter customers will be upgraded to the latest generation hardware by early 2026 at no additional cost.

Meter, according to Varanasi, aims to be 100 percent channel-fulfilled by year-end.