The cyber threat landscape is more treacherous than ever before, and the years ahead will only bring new challenges, with the global cost of attacks predicted to hit $10.2 trillion by 2025[1]. From global leaders to the latest start-ups, all organisations must not only be aware of the range of potential attack vectors utilised by bad actors, but accept that with the ever-growing scale, complexity, and aggressiveness of attacks, a breach is inevitable.

The demand for highly secure, high-performance connectivity is at an all-time high. With organisations across the public and private sectors having largely embraced hybrid working, with their employees connecting, communicating, and collaborating from virtually anywhere. As a result, technology providers are increasingly challenged to deliver enterprise-grade connectivity that not only provides the performance and availability their customers have come to expect, but provides leading-edge cyber security, suitable for highly dispersed end users, and seamless access to the Cloud-based applications that many organisations depend on.

Yes, you read that right. As technology becomes increasingly accessible to consumers, many businesses are feeling the pressure to differentiate themselves among their competitors and provide added value beyond simply selling products. Amid this landscape shift, Channel partners find themselves right at the centre of this paradigm shift; facing the difficult challenge of remaining competitive and profitable in an industry where traditional solutions are becoming commoditised.

For a number of years now, Public Cloud solutions have been widely used by technology providers across our Channel Partner ecosystem. It's not hard to see why. The unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and agility offered by Public Cloud makes it a highly attractive platform from which to deliver critical, always-on services to customers and end users, while retaining full control of costs and minimising the need to invest in and maintain on-premises infrastructure.

Organisations of all sizes, across all industries, have had short- and long-term digital transformation processes in place for some time now. With cumbersome legacy systems continuing to show their limitations and ongoing drives for new efficiencies and cost savings, the path to the Cloud is simply a logical one, helping organisations develop the flexibility, scalability, and operational resilience required to navigate the shifting digital landscape.

There's no doubt that Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) is changing the way we think about connectivity, but at the same time, it's important that we as technology providers do not become overly fixated on the hype and retain our focus on delivering ideal customer outcomes. This means developing a keen understanding of SD-WAN's capabilities and how it fits into your customers' wider digital transformation strategies.