Netgear Bets On MSPs, AI, Security To Expand Its Small And Midsize Enterprise Reach
Netgear is sharpening its enterprise focus with the release of version 10.0 of its Insight cloud network management platform, targeting MSPs serving small and medium enterprises with integrated networking, security, cloud management and AI capabilities to simplify operations and reduce support costs.
Intelligent networking technology developer Netgear Tuesday unveiled Netgear Insight 10.0, the latest generation of its cloud network management platform aimed at helping MSPs bring AI-powered network operations to their small and medium enterprise customers.
Netgear Enterprise President and General Manager Pramod Badjate told CRN that the San Jose, Calif.-based company is working to sharpen its identity as more than a consumer networking brand, with enterprise now driving the majority of the company’s revenue and growth. While Netgear remains well known for consumer products such as Orbi, Badjate said the company has made significant investments to build a distinct enterprise business focused heavily on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the MSPs that serve them.
Badjate said enterprise now represents roughly 55 percent to 60 percent of Netgear’s revenue, and that the lingering perception of Netgear as primarily a consumer or SOHO company is partly a result of the brand’s success in the home networking market. The Netgear Enterprise business was created to signal a more aggressive focus on business customers.
“Enterprise is an area where Netgear is focused,” Badjate said. “This is an area where there’s a lot of investment, a lot of interest, a lot of our revenue is coming from, a lot of our growth is coming from.”
Netgear’s biggest opportunity, Badjate said, is serving SMEs and their MSPs with networking, security, cloud management and support that are easier to deploy and manage than systems built for large enterprises. He described SMEs as an underserved market that often must choose between overly complex enterprise platforms or pieced-together products from multiple vendors. Netgear’s answer is Insight 10.0, a multi-tenant platform that integrates Wi-Fi, switching, routing and security with APIs designed for MSP workflow automation.
Badjate said the company is not targeting large enterprises as its primary go-to-market focus, even though its technology can support larger deployments. Instead, Netgear is concentrating on companies with fewer than 500 employees and channel partners that manage many such customers because of the limited IT resources those companies often have.
AI is a big part of Netgear Enterprise’s road map. Badjate said AI will be used inside products to optimize Wi-Fi performance, automate switching configurations, detect issues and simplify troubleshooting. Longer term, he said Netgear wants AI agents to interact directly with its systems, identify known bugs or vulnerabilities, file trouble tickets and automate upgrades. For MSPs, that could reduce support costs and make it easier to manage growing SME customer bases.
“We are purpose-building our solutions for the needs of these customers, which I think is a huge opportunity, especially as agentic AI and other trends impact this customer base,” Badjate said.
There’s a lot going on with Netgear and the SME networking and security market. Here is more of CRN’s conversation with Badjate.
How do you define Netgear?
Netgear is a company which innovates intelligent solutions for connectivity, and it’s addressing both the consumer side as well as the enterprise side. Less than half [of our revenue] now is from the consumer side, and slightly more than half is from the enterprise side. But at a broad level, we see our mission as providing intelligent connectivity, whether it’s for home or for the enterprise. That does create a little bit of confusion about whether Netgear is doing enterprise or not. Frankly, before I came to Netgear in 2024 from the enterprise networking business, when they first reached out to me, I was thinking Netgear is a consumer company and wasn’t sure this was relevant. But what I realized is the board and the CEO were really investing in wanting to grow this part of the business, and I saw the potential. And so we started Netgear Enterprise as a distinct brand to emphasize the fact that we are selling to that segment of the market as well.
Why is that perception of Netgear being focused on the consumer and SOHO business still lingering?
I think partly it’s a result of our success on the consumer side. Netgear Orbi and other Netgear brands have been successful with consumer home routers and drive the perception, and we recognize that that’s an opportunity. We did a survey last year on this, and there is a recognition of the brand because of that. But we get associated too much with consumers, so that’s what we are looking at with Netgear Enterprise and a few other things we’re doing. Today, about 55 [percent] to 60 percent of the revenue, and the faster-growing and the more-higher-margin products, are all coming from Netgear Enterprise, from my side of the business. Some of our products are growing at about 30 percent CAGR [compound annual growth rate]. In some brands like Netgear AV, we are seen as the leader in that space, and in others we are the emerging leaders.
What are you doing to try to change their perception?
We are coming out with innovations and new products. Think of it this way. The thing which excited me about what Netgear ... is is the fact that when it comes to small and medium enterprises, and I define that as companies with less than 500 employees, we see that segment of the market as underserved when it comes to networking because you either have solutions which were built for large enterprises—I built many of these in my previous work at Cisco, Ruckus and Arista—or you have solutions that customers have to put together using security from here, Wi-Fi from here, and a switch from here. You don’t have a well-integrated solution, or in some cases you’re buying together things that compromise on reliability and support. The opportunity we see, and what’s resonating with partners in many parts of our businesses, is to provide enterprise-level support and reliability but which is meant for this segment of the market. This segment of the customer base has low IT skills. They depend on their partners, on MSPs, to provide solutions to them. So it has to be a multi-tenant solution, something which can be served by MSPs. You don’t need some of the network complexity built for large enterprises which, frankly, gets in the way.
That’s what excited me to come to Netgear, and what we are building with Insight 10.0 is a software platform which is unique for this space which has Wi-Fi, switching, routing and security all integrated into one multi-tenant platform based on APIs for integration with MSPs with a much more simplified interface than what was available. That’s where we set our baseline, allowing MSPs to integrate and automate their workflows using AI or otherwise using this platform. And as we talk about it with our customers, as we take it to MSPs through word of mouth, more people than when I joined two years back recognize that we have these solutions on the enterprise side. We’re going to focus our marketing efforts on solutions that help change that perception.
So is this focused primarily on the MSP side of the business?
It is focused on small and medium enterprises. If somebody wanted to manage it themselves, they can. It has all the things needed to provide wireless switching security for a small and medium enterprise with cloud management and a very easy-to-use interface. But if a channel partner wanted to manage hundreds and thousands of different end customers on their behalf, we make the integration such that it’s very easy for them to manage and automate their workflows at scale. I was recently at a conference just earlier this week talking to MSPs. They deal with customers with up to 500 employees but have less than 50 employees themselves who are managing these customers. Insight 10.0 is geared toward that.
When you say Netgear has shifted its focus more toward the enterprise business, you mean the small and medium enterprise business, right?
Small and medium enterprise. On the AV side, we have some large customers. So it depends on the type of business. Think of it as I have two businesses. One is AV where we handle the full spectrum of businesses. And then I have small and medium enterprises where we provide full networking solutions, cloud management, everything needed to more easily consume and deploy and manage their networks.
In the small and medium enterprise space, who are some of your competitors?
It’s the usual. All the networking vendors you’ve heard of. Obviously, there’s going to be Cisco Meraki, Juniper, HPE. But if your question is, when people really look for a solution which is right-sized for them with the right complexity the way we are addressing it, others are not. That’s my contention. And that’s why I feel we have an opportunity here because businesses are using solutions which were built not for them but for a higher level of complexity versus what we are building, which is purpose-built for this segment. And that’s the difference. I wouldn’t have been excited about this opportunity if I didn't feel there was an opportunity for someone to come in with a more integrated solution.
Does Netgear have any plans to bring its networking security technology into the large enterprise space, or is that something you’d rather not do?
That is not a focus area for us now. We have some solutions which are targeted at customers with more than 500 endpoints. We have a large university with 2,000 endpoints. So will the solution work? Yes, it will. But in terms of focusing our solution and our go-to market, we are focused on small and medium enterprises.
What are some other things Netgear is working on in terms of addressing the small and medium enterprise space?
If you look at the difference in the needs and requirements of small and medium enterprises versus large enterprises, No. 1, a large enterprise has a large IT department whereas a small enterprise often relies on their partner. No. 2, for small and medium enterprises, the impact of a network going down is more catastrophic than for large enterprises. No. 3, when we think of ransomware attacks, we think of the big names that come out in the media, but it’s a big issue for small and medium enterprises today. They need cyber insurance and stuff like that to keep their businesses running, and to get cyber insurance they have to prove they have the right security measures. So security, reliability and support matters to the small and medium enterprise. We are focused on making sure that that is done right in our products.
The other thing is they are not managing it themselves. They’re relying on their partners to support it, and their partners have their own workflows, so whatever solution we have has to be available. It has to be multi-tenanted; it has to have the right APIs so it can get integrated into the workflows of those MSPs who are doing it. [With] the way small and medium enterprises are evolving with AI and agentic AI, small and medium enterprises to the outside world will look like large enterprises. You will have $1 billion enterprises with 50 employees and a small site, so they are small and medium in terms of their networking needs and number of endpoints, but not small and medium enterprise in terms of revenue. So there’s going to be a lot of transformation happening, which I think creates an opportunity for us because we are focused on the space. We have built a system which is all integrated. We are now implementing an MCP server for this system so it can integrate with other systems and agentic systems without having to use the AI at all. So if you are an MSP with your own automated workflow and ticketing system, you can write an agent to automate how you’re troubleshooting it and that can access the data coming into our systems automatically. The power is you get the data not only for one part of the network but for all parts of your network, and everything is secure in a cohesive way from one server. So the goal is to be able to integrate this with the workflows of MSPs to reduce their costs so they can manage this growing base of SME customers in an efficient way compared to what they’re able to do today with current solutions.
What else is Netgear doing in terms of being ready to meet workflows related to AI for SMEs?
There are two parts to it. One is AI being used within the product itself. We are using AI as an example to be able to automatically come up with how to optimize the network, how to make the network heal itself when something goes wrong. For example, if there is interference detected on the network, how do we make sure we optimize the channel allocation? How do we make sure the power level coming in from Wi-Fi is the best power allocation? How do we make sure the configuration of the switching network is automated so there are no loops in the network? AI is used within the product. It won’t be seen by the customer, but the intent is to make it plug-and-play so people don’t have to worry about coming up with the right configuration. It just works out of the box. You can troubleshoot it easily because it uses AI to correlate.
And then as the product is used, we want to make it so that customers don’t even have to use the UI. Instead of having to go to the user screen, you can have your AI agents go in and ask why is a certain employee not able to connect to the network and then interact with our system and have all the data available to make the analysis and find he or she is not able to connect because they don’t have the right PSK [private shared key] or they don’t have the right settings. Whatever needs to be changed can be automatically done. Second, the way the customer will interact with our systems will be automated. This is not there today, but it’s there in the road map coming in the next two quarters so that when there’s an issue with a customer’s system, there will automatically be an agent on our system to file a trouble ticket on our side, check to see if this is a known bug and a known software that exists for it so the user does not even have to troubleshoot it. The system just says this is a known issue, this is a known security vulnerability, there's an upgrade available, do you want to upgrade it? It can be set to do it automatically if needed. Think of it as you’re shipping an IT agent that understands our system along with our system that knows how to interact with us to get the work done for the MSP.
Is there anything else that you think we need to know about Netgear?
The key takeaways I hope you get from this is, first, enterprise is an area where Netgear is focused. This is an area where there’s a lot of investment, a lot of interest, a lot of our revenue is coming from, a lot of our growth is coming from. Second, we feel there’s an opportunity to serve a segment of the market which, frankly, accounts for over 50 percent of the world’s GDP, the small and medium enterprises. We feel it is underserved today because those businesses have to choose between solutions which are not built for them. I built those solutions in my previous companies, and I know that they were not built with small and medium customers in mind. We are purpose-building our solutions for the needs of these customers, which I think is a huge opportunity, especially as agentic AI and other trends impact this customer base. We want to make sure their solutions are as reliable and as supportable as for the Fortune 500s because the network is just as important to these customers. We want to make sure security is part of the network and not bolted on from outside. And we don’t want to take away from the importance of making it easy to manage for the partners who are managing it for these customers. That’s the opportunity we see.