Network Connectivity Minute: The ActiveCore SD-WAN Partner Experience

Hear why Crystal Technologies partners with Comcast Business, and why the ActiveCore SDN Platform is an ideal SD-WAN solution for customers.

The demand for simplified network management and fast access to cloud applications is triggering a predicted 60 percent annual growth rate in the SD-WAN market over the next six years. Your customers will rely on you to update and expand their network connectivity in order to keep up.

Crystal Technologies has been helping businesses across the U.S. manage networks for 20 years and expect more than 60 percent of its enterprise clients to be using SD-WAN by 2024. “There’s a lot of advantages to the SD-WAN product, network redundancy, security, increased visibility and applications across all the networks, performance, the ability to manage bandwidth,” says Bill Thorpe, director of service delivery and quality assurance at Crystal Technologies.

Recently, Crystal Technologies had a large, multi-sight client looking to update its expensive legacy MPLS (Multiprotocol Switching Label) network with a more efficient and cost-effective SD-WAN solution. The company chose Comcast Business SD-WAN and the ActiveCore SDN platform. “Using this particular client as an example, they looked at multiple providers when they were choosing who to go with for this SD-WAN solution; and the combination of what Comcast offers, their product, their expertise, their pricing, that was all at the top of the list and led to the customer making the decision,” says Thorpe.

Comcast Business provided a team of experts including a channel manager, sales engineer, solutions architect and project manager to support Crystal Technologies through the entire implementation process. “Comcast continued to provide a high level of confidence and at the same time, put our minds at ease in terms of letting us know they’d be able to roll with whatever came up,” says Thorpe.

The ActiveCore SD-WAN platform also takes the guess work out of monitoring the health of a client’s network by being accessible on both a computer and a mobile app. “Comcast is advanced technologically but also simplified in its interface with its users,” says Thorpe. “So, it’s easy for the customers to understand and use the tools that you’re giving them.”

Comcast Business partners can also earn residual income for each customer network they manage for as long as they’re connected.