:: Partner delivered
Cisco Partners can host en sell their own SD-WAN infrastructure to customers as part of value added service. By utilizing their own compute environment they can host the SD-WAN solution for customers based on ESXi or KVM hypervisors. They can also connect their customers through via there own Azure or AWS connectors
Partner is responsible for own Automation for SD-WAN (DevOps environment) and how they deliver this to their customers. Cisco provides Cisco NSO, Cisco VMS as orchestration tools to partners to leverage the Automation part.
Partner staff is responsible for management of the IaaS and the health and scaling of the SD-WAN solution.
Is the customer lookout of the SD-WAN solution?
Partner can choose to expose vMANAGE as a frontend or can create an own frontend they want to expose to customers. vMANAGE contains RBAC and can control access for managing this solution.
Partner can also choose for SD-WAN Cisco Public Cloud and grow to their own SD-WAN self-hosting in a later stage when they are ready for it. This option is less popular and Cisco is exploring this option at this time of writing.
:: On Premises solution
SD-WAN controllers and vMANAGE is deployed on Customer premises (own Datacenter or CoLocation). The customer is fully responsible for managing and scaling the solution. They also need to consider DevOps to this solution themselves for fast deployment for the customer to shorten the time-to-service.
:: Conclusion
Choosing between these options and the Cisco Public Cloud is more or less moving around certain responsibilities, tasks and costs. Depending on the customer requirements, budget and the cost of hosting yourself or hiring from public cloud determines which choice is the best for that solution. The matureness of the partner’s environment and the way they deliver solutions from a compute perspective is an important factor to weigh in considerations. Is that partner evolved in automated delivery or do they need to configure the SD-WAN solution in their Datacenters themselves. This also determines how long it would take to scale and rollout services. The customer then can decide if they want a managed solution or just some rackspace and dedicated computing.
