SaaS giant ServiceNow and its channel partners are converging on the trillion-dollar-plus telecom vertical market.
The company has intensified its collaboration with consultancies and service providers over the last two years, while also seeking to expand its presence within industries. Those two initiatives are now intersecting. This week, Elite-level ServiceNow partner Thirdera launched a service and order management offering built on the ServiceNow platform and designed for telecom customers. The industry accelerator includes a customer portal and assurance dashboard, which are available in the ServiceNow Store. Cloud consultants increasingly develop products such as software accelerators, frameworks and applications.
Other ServiceNow telecom moves in the partner ecosystem include NTT Ltd.'s alliance with ServiceNow to accelerate the adoption of private 5G. NTT, a technology services provider in London, said the alliance announced Feb. 9 aims to use an AI-based workflow automation platform to simplify customers' deployment and integration of the technology.
Fully Managed, an MSP specializing in ServiceNow, has been acquired by Canadian telecom company Telus. Fully Managed, based in Ottawa, is a ServiceNow Elite-level partner that focuses on verticals including telecom. Telus is a ServiceNow Specialist-level partner. The deal was disclosed Feb. 10.
ServiceNow's industry push
The telecom activity fits within ServiceNow's broader industry strategy. Bill McDermott, ServiceNow's CEO, cited telecom -- along with other verticals such as financial services, life sciences and government -- as a key source of the company's growth. Gartner estimates global telecom services spending to reach $1.5 trillion in 2022.
"All the businesses that we've chosen to focus on from an industry perspective are really scaling and doing so very, very quickly," McDermott said, speaking during the company's fourth-quarter 2021 earnings call in January. McDermott, previously CEO at SAP, joined ServiceNow in 2020 to push enterprise growth.
Targeting specific enterprise customers has boosted the number of ServiceNow customer wins generating more than $1 million in annual contract value, according to the company. ServiceNow closed 135 such deals in Q4, a year-over-year increase of more than 50%.
ServiceNow's pre-built assets help enterprises digitize workflows that are critical to private 5G deployment and adoption.
Parm SandhuVice president of enterprise 5G products and services, NTT
Telecom factors
Growth prospects specific to the telecom vertical stem from a couple of trends. One is the rapid expansion of emerging technologies such as 5G. Grand View Research pegs the global 5G services market at $47.3 billion for 2021 and forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 52% between 2022 and 2030.
ServiceNow's portfolio includes industry-specific telecom offerings that pave the way for 5G services, said Parm Sandhu, vice president of enterprise 5G products and services at NTT. "ServiceNow's pre-built assets help enterprises digitize workflows that are critical to private 5G deployment and adoption," he said.
Jason Wojahn
Another factor is the aging IT systems that telecom providers use to automate business-critical functions. Many companies employ outdated, disparate systems to run processes such as order management, according to Thirdera. Jason Wojahn, the Leesburg, Va., company's CEO, said Thirdera's ServiceNow-based order management offering "aims to address legacy system challenges."
The company plans to roll out additional industry accelerators along the lines of its telecom offering, with assets in insurance, health and financial services in the works.
Partner roster updates
Kyndryl, an IT infrastructure services provider based in New York, has added communications company Nokia to its list of partners. The companies aim to ramp up customers' digital transformation projects through LTE and 5G private wireless networking. Prior to the partnership, Kyndryl and Nokia created an offering that combined the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud application platform with Kyndryl's consulting, design, implementation and managed services. The companies have also collaborated on private LTE and 5G deployments and proof-of-concept projects for Dow Inc. Nokia is Kyndryl's latest alliance partner, the service provider having already inked partnerships with Microsoft, Google Cloud and VMware.
Ingram Micro Cloud has added Google Cloud Platform to its IaaS portfolio. The move makes GCP available to the distributor's resellers in the U.S., United Kingdom, France and Canada. Ingram Micro Cloud said it will help partners build GCP practices.
Accenture is collaborating with League, a PaaS company in the healthcare market. The relationship combines Accenture's data analytics and systems integration services with Toronto-based League's healthcare experience platform. The companies are working with Shoppers Drug Mart to expand the retail pharmacy chain's PC Health app, where customers can access to providers and other healthcare resources.
Rackspace Technology, a multi-cloud technology solutions provider, expanded its partnership with Cloudflare, a web performance and security company. Under the agreement, Rackspace will offer managed services for Cloudflare Zero Trust, a secure access service edge technology.
TD Synnex, a distributor based in Clearwater, Fla., has added security company Claroty to its product lineup. Claroty, which specializes in cyber-physical systems, will offer its Claroty Platform, geared to industrial cybersecurity, and Medigate by Claroty, a clinical device security offering, through TD Synnex and its channel partners.
Evoque, a Dallas-based connectivity, cloud and data center services provider, has teamed up with Telarus, a technology services broker based in Sandy, Utah. The partnership aims to bring Evoque's data center, colocation and hybrid cloud services to resellers partnered with Telarus.
HBR Consulting, a managed services and advisory firm based in Chicago, is partnering with LogicMonitor, offering the vendor's cloud-based observability and infrastructure monitoring products to legal industry clients. HBR Consulting specializes in the legal vertical.
Xebia, an IT consultancy headquartered in Atlanta, has partnered with Mendix, a Siemens business that provides a low-code application development product.
Channel program launches and updates
Managed detection and response provider Red Canary, with headquarters in Denver, launched Red Canary Partner Connect. The partner program provides its MSP partners with cybersecurity tools to identify and protect themselves from threats and breaches. The program has five categories: technology partners for integration with Red Canary's platform, incident response with MDR support, managed service providers to bring MDR services to customers, insurance and risk to offer referrals, and solution providers to resell Red Canary.
Axcient, a business availability software company in Denver, updated its partner program with silver, gold and platinum tiers. Partners can earn promotion to higher tiers through compliance with program requirements and business performance metrics such as monthly recurring revenue. Program benefits increase as partners ascend the tiers. The platinum tier, for example, offers marketing concierge services, a quarterly solutions operational audit and the ability to join Axcient's partner advisory committee.
Other news
Upstack, an online platform that sells cloud services through sales agents, has merged with RDS Solutions, an independent telecom agency in Clinton, N.J. RDS Solutions, which employs 30 people, provides connectivity, cloud and data center offerings. The company's managing partners, J.R. Vernick and Darren Jones, will join New York-based Upstack as partners and executive managing directors.
Thoughtworks, a technology consultancy in Chicago, has entered a multi-year agreement to co-create a digital marketplace for Ritchie Bros., a Vancouver company that sells new and used heavy equipment. Engineering teams from Thoughtworks and Ritchie Bros. will design and build the marketplace.
OpsRamp, an AIOps company based in San Jose, Calif., has added features for MSPs and systems integrators to its platform. The latest release lets service providers separate SaaS instances into tiers spanning their own IT environments, their customers' IT environments and customers' business units and regions. Other capabilities include the ability speed up customer onboarding and track customers' website and application availability and performance in real time, according to OpsRamp.
Equinix, a data center services and interconnection company in Redwood City, Calif., said channel partners accounted for 40% of its Q4 bookings and about 60% of its new-customer wins in the quarter.
Otava, a hybrid cloud solutions provider in Ann Arbor, Mich., has obtained VMware's validated status for its disaster-recovery-as-a-service offering.
Executive appointments
Checkmarx, an application security testing vendor, named Mark Osmond as vice president of worldwide channels and alliances. Osmond joined Checkmarx, headquartered in Ramat Gan, Israel, from Veeam Software, where he was director of the global cloud and service provider program.
Deep Instinct, a cybersecurity company in Tel Aviv, Israel, hired three channel executives. Mike Saletta, area vice president of Americas channels, and Joe Santamorena, area vice president of global managed security service provider programs, joined the company from SecurityScorecard. Phanneth Wood, director of global distribution, was previously with Okta.
NetFortris, a managed IT and cloud communications provider, has appointed Rich Gavaghen as senior vice president of sales. He was previously a sales executive with Digital Realty, ByteGrid and Zayo Group.
Jason Wojahn
