For this edition of SaaS Talk, Golub Capital Managing Director Peter Fair sat down with Silver Peak CFO, Eric Yeaman, to discuss the SD-WAN industry and the top IT challenges that enterprise businesses face today.
In today’s hyper-competitive market, business agility and speed fuels competitive advantage. Forward-thinking businesses have figured this out and are leveraging IT to drive cloud and digital transformation initiatives to gain those advantages. Put another way, cloud applications and services represent a new paradigm in driving business efficiency, while lowering cost and overhead.
Unlike traditional network approaches, Silver Peak helps businesses shift to a businessfirst networking model where the network enables the business, rather than the business having to conform to the constraints of the network. The results: users experience always consistent, always-available application performance, ultimately turning the network itself into a business accelerant.
Much like we’re seeing with the emergence of self-driving cars, we believe that the wide area network will also be self-driving. IT leaders that deploy the Silver Peak SD-WAN edge platform can essentially tell the network what the business wants and then use automation and machine learning to make it work. A self-driving wide area network is outcome-oriented, utilizing automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to get smarter every day.
It comes down to the business model, being able to articulate it and prove it. Can it drive rapid growth through new customer acquisition, and then retain and expand those same customers? These are questions of critical interest to investors looking to invest in a SaaS business–through equity or debt. And being able to show this is dependent on whether you’re fundamentally delivering business value to your customers through your product and service.
It’s critical to work with investors who understand the SaaS space and where you are in your business lifecycle. For example, during the TCV funding round, we had proven our model and that we were focused on growth, which aligned with our investor’s later stage growth investment profile. The same is true with Golub Capital’s Late Stage Lending team, who we view as a long-term partner. Our partners understand the SaaS space and the working capital requirements for growing a business and this alignment is key to identifying the right investors.
I believe that we have built the most robust SD-WAN technology available today. We intend to continue deepening our capabilities and realizing our vision for delivering a self-driving wide area network. From a business standpoint, we plan to accelerate our expansion into new channels–particularly in the service provider channels–as well as into new geographical markets.