HALLOWEEN HOWLERS 2020

One dark and stormy night a perfectly normal company were all working late when suddenly the Vampires of Mean Manor descended upon them, feasting on their blood and sensible business practices. Now the company too had a taste for sucking the life blood from others, and so, they introduced a less than perfect partner process where partner companies are herded into the Maze of Meaninglessness, and repeatedly driven down blind alleys and dead ends, as they’re tortured with endless demands of product development qualifications, literally sapping them of the will to live and do business. But that is not the end to our frightening tale, dear reader, Oh no, far from it… The Vampires of Mean Manor infect every normal company they bite with the deadly sin of avarice, so not only does the company now insist upon partners running the gauntlet of pointless questions, they are also expected to pay Vampires of Mean Manner (ooops, typo) for the privilege too…. that’s if anyone can get them out of their coffin-like beds for the small fry!

The legend goes, that in Mirky Valley, California, lurks the giant gin-drinking SD-WANNABE Monster. The SD-WANNABE has long traded on its name and network credibility and sadly, many other network giants fell for the SD-WANNABE’s grandiose story after being persuaded with all kinds of free upgrades and incentives pulled from within his shaggy dog-like coat. This was great for the SD-WANNABE’s equally large telco giant friends, but not so great for customers as it was soon proved that the SD-WANNABE Monster had muddied the waters when it came to SD-WAN.  The monster soon realised the game was up and immediately went on a reputation management mission, hunting for true SD-WAN, gobbling up a much smaller, but better-skilled business in the process.  

We’ve yet to see how much the monster plans to integrate the new technology gorged on, with its previous technology; it might even copy the giant living in another Californian Valley and completely mess it up. But there is a moral of this sad tale, dear reader – there is a way out of this monstrous mess – SDWAN Solutions will easily banish the SD-WANNABE’s giant network demons without replacing the original hardware. Let us show you the way. 

Many years ago, an entity that had long been the Daddy of all salesmen was embalmed and wrapped in bandages and became a Mummy. But instead of roaming far and wide and frightening the wits out of all lesser salesmen, the Mummy of this tale stayed perfectly still in its sarcophagi, gathering dust and cobwebs. In fact, since our last Halloween post in 2019 there has been virtually no movement whatsoever. Not even one. A whole year later and there is still no innovative SD-WAN product for its loyal subjects.   

Have the mummy’s bandages stifled the spirit of invention? Was the embalming fluid too much for the R&D department? Or will 2021 be the year the Mummy will venture onto the continually innovating road of everlasting life; one it knows exists, but hasn’t quite realised is the only one worth roaming. 

On the strike of midnight the guests of Failover Hall are seated around the table, fingers linked in a circle, nervously waiting. The host that moonless night was the wayward child of a much-respected aristocrat who has been dabbling in the dark arts and now claims to be a medium with huge connection potential – her audience are eager to see a meracle… Oops, we mean miracle. 

Just as the medium begins to relay the message, everything goes deathly silent her main connection is severed and she is now conjuring up the back-up. The medium realises she’s losing her power along with her audience and fiddles under the table to physically reboot her crystal ball, (because that’s what she has to do when main and back-up links play up). 

“Is anybody there? Is anybody there?” The medium wails to distract attention, but of course there’s no reply. No one is there, there is NO connection. 

Every second feels like an hour. The faces around the table wait in anticipation for the fibre to light up on her Ouija Board again. Tick…. Tick…. Tick…. The seconds pass. All 300 of them (that’s right, dear reader, it takes a full FIVE minutes for the backup connection to appear). Now the séance can continue to the relief of the guests, who know not that their expectations should be greater, but the medium has narrowly escaped being outed as a Charlatan (this is the dreaded c-word) How much longer will she keep this up? Maybe she should revert back to her simpler Wi-Fi past. 

The Warlock of WAN has set a fiendishly difficult task for the two inhabitants of Sassy Island. They must seek the Cloud of all Cleverness to win the warlock’s favour. But these islanders are both very different beasts. 

The ancient haunted fortress is stalked by a two-headed apparition, a hybrid monster not out of place in Dr Frankenstein lab. One head a barely whimpering, sickly SD-WAN without the mental power to light its dull and lifeless eyes, the other head a roaring beast of security who takes on all-comers that try to breach the fortresses walls. The apparition knows it must find the Cloud of Cleverness for the Warlock of WAN, but it flounders around in circles looking for it, trying this and that, cobbling bits of fluff and dust together to make its own cloud. All the apparition achieves is total confusion between its two heads, who have a fearful row and refuse to work with each other at all. 

Meanwhile, at nearby Sassy Castle they’re wondering what all the fuss is about – they completed the Warlock of WAN’s task and delivered the Cloud of All Cleverness more then two-years ago – and have now thoroughly CHECKmated the Apparition of the Haunted Fortress by beating it on POINT with their own roaring, yet entirely tame and manageable but more than just a little bit sassy security beast. 

The Coven of Telco Witches have been about their foul, despicable business again. They’ve conjured and released an evil spell that renders businesses useless, unable to communicate or even access their own cloud data! Anyone hit with this communications curse of a spell will fall immediately into a deep and paralysing sleep, sometimes known as ‘entire network down’ or ‘completely stymied’. 

Major players both in UK and Belgium have succumbed to this dreaded telco curse, putting them entirely out of action for hours on end. Even those who had diverse provider connections fell comatose, as the evil yet cunning spell attacked shared infrastructure. Each time the businesses recovered they believed they had new immunity from future spells and so were protected from further outages, but alas it was not true and once more the spell wrought chaos and destruction. But again there is a happy ending to our nightmare tale – we have the antidote to the curse – SD-WAN. 

Get best of breed SD-WAN and world-class SaSe security from us. We tailor every solution to customer need. So why us? Well, here’s what we’ve achieved since our last Halloween blog in 2019 

• 2 MEF SD-WAN subject matter experts on board, the only company in the world to achieve this 
• Were voted in top ten of SD-WAN providers  
• Doubled our vendor certifications to over 30,  
• Released a complete SD-WAN product from under £100 per month,  
• Waited 24 months for the BIG BOYS to catch up to SDWAN Cloud and release similar products 
• Expanded our field engineer services to 190 countries globally 
• Released a best of breed SaSe offer, partnering with Check Point 
• Cornered the SD-WAN uCPE market with our VENA and VECTA ranges 
• Expanded from the UK and Europe into Africa… and soon beyond 
• onboarded two more SD-WAN vendors 

Contact us for your free consultation and take a take advantage of our equally free Proof of Concept offer and make sure you get the Dr Jekyll of SD-WAN solutions, not Mr Hyde!

Follow us on Twitter and our #SDWANGlovesAreOff hashtag for further insights into what is SD-WAN and what is just an SD-WANNABE.