WWT will help Meter bring its unified, subscription-based wired, wireless, and cellular networking offering to more enterprises that are increasingly interested in the NaaS model, the company’s VP of sales, Adam Ulfers, tells CRN.
Network-as-a-service specialist Meter is joining forces with one of the largest solution providers in the country, World Wide Technology (WWT), to put its unified, subscription-based wired, wireless, and cellular networking offerings into the hands of more enterprises.
The collaboration will bring together Meter’s full-stack hardware, software, and network support with WWT’s global reach, deployment capabilities, and value-added services, Adam Ulfers, Meter’s vice president of sales, told CRN.
“We think that we can supercharge [WWT’s] Network as a Service [NaaS] division with our full stack approach that is one of a kind in the industry … With this partnership, we can take all the benefits that we’re providing and pair that with the scale and capability that WWT brings nationwide and worldwide for customers that have hundreds and thousands of locations,” Ulfers said about the newly forged partnership.
St. Louis-based WWT has its own NaaS practice and has been investing in the NaaS space with a number of players, including Meter, especially as interest grows around new consumption models, according to Neil Anderson, vice president of cloud, infrastructure and AI solutions for WWT.
“We expect this model will be even more attractive to the customer segments Softchoice has focused on. While this is a relatively small portion of WWT revenue in the networking space today, we believe this will grow,” Anderson said in an email to CRN.
WWT plans to “wrap NaaS offers like Meter in a WWT turn-key solution where the resulting offer is a superset of what Meter provides, delivering a comprehensive product and services solution for our clients,” Anderson said.
Meter’s networking stack has been purpose-built for NaaS and is “complete,” unlike many competing NaaS offerings on the market today, Meter’s Ulfers said.
“There are a number of options out there that only include parts of the network stack. What Meter has done is build the entire stack, top to bottom, including power switching, security appliance and access points on a single, unified platform that helps WWT deliver the outcomes to their customers,” he said.
WWT, in turn, is helping Meter scale in the delivery of those outcomes, Ulfers said.
“We want to be the de facto network as a service offer for WWT and deliver tremendous wireless and cellular outcomes for hundreds of customers and make it the fastest growing and most profitable division within WWT in the next 12 to 18 months,” he said.
The nine-year old company last year launched its first partner program for VARs, consultants, MSPs, distributors and ISPs. The company now has channel involvement on 100 percent of its business opportunities, Meter’s executives told CRN exclusively in March 2024.
Meter has “come a long way” in the last year by bringing a fully packaged NaaS offering to the channel, Ulfers said.
“[We’re] helping partners to deliver an OPEX model in an industry that has forever been nearly 100 percent CAPEX, and we are making investments in customer spaces on behalf of customers and partners, which enables customers to enjoy fantastic wireless and cellular connectivity outcomes on Day One, and for partners to enjoy high quality recurring revenue profits on Day One as well,” he said.
The company now has a large pool of channel partners of all “shapes and sizes,” including agent partners via Meter’s relationship with Bridgepoint and Avant, as well as large VARs, including the addition of WWT, as Meter works its way up into larger customer environments, Ulfers said.
“We are now reaching a number of large enterprises looking at Meter’s value proposition with regard to predictable economics and the technology stack that’s bringing greater simplicity, visibility, control and scalability, and looking to pair that with some of the best in the business from an advanced services standpoint, and that’s really where WWT comes in,” he said.
Meter currently powers tens of millions of square feet across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and is beginning to expand into additional international markets. The company today has 300 customers spanning more than 200 cities, and “hundreds” of signed partners, the company said.
