A Time to Xcelerate

Part of Infinera’s series of 2023 kick-off events, our Global Partner Conference was held virtually on February 1 and 2. The main theme of this year’s event was “A Time to Xcelerate,” and it targeted executives and sales representatives from Infinera’s global PartnerPlus community. The event was a great success, attracting hundreds of participants from all regions. Our executive leadership team shared market and solution evolution information and strategy throughout the event’s two days.

One of my favorite parts of these events is getting to hear about new wins and applications from around the world that were successfully led and closed by our partners. There are growing partner-led opportunities in an extensive range of market segments beyond just communications service providers, including research and education, broadband transport, utilities, finance, and media.

Key Market Trends

Success in these areas is a reflection of the growing capabilities of our strategic partner base in leveraging Infinera’s product differentiation and industry-leading solutions. After sharing Infinera’s progress in vertical integration and customer experience metrics, CEO David Heard reiterated that now is the time to put the pedal to the metal and Xcelerate. We have Xtraordinary demand, Xceptional products, and the right focus and tools to Xceed expectations in 2023.

Bringing ICE-X to market in 2023, which expands our portfolio from transport platforms to intelligent pluggable optics that can be hosted in third-party devices, contributes greatly to the growth opportunity in partner-led activity. This bolsters the importance of the Infinera PartnerPlus community as our partners are in a prime position to capitalize on the expanded opportunity with their broad experience and portfolios of multi-vendor solutions.

Recognizing the importance of our partners, Infinera continues to increase our investment into our PartnerPlus program. An important aspect of this program is highlighting the key contributors to our 2022 achievements via a series of year-end awards.

Awards

Six partners – two per region – received awards for outstanding contributions in 2022. I always find these awards interesting as they present an opportunity to see how our solutions and partnerships come together to help network operators succeed. The first two awards were APAC Partner of the Year awards, which went to SVTECH in Vietnam and LANCS in Indonesia. Both awards were announced in November at our APAC Partner Xchange in Tokyo. For details on these two awards, check out our blog, The Power of Partnerships, from December.

The additional four awards that were presented at the Global Partner Conference were:

EMEA Partner of the Year – nLogic

nLogic works with market-leading technology partners such as Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks and Nutanix, all of which are companies providing complementary solutions to the Infinera optical portfolio, thus creating a complete portfolio of products and services to attract new customers! Over many years, nLogic has invested in Infinera by certifying multiple engineers, arranging customer events, and opening up new regions, resulting in a doubling of the business in 2022 with over 100% year-over-year growth. The nLogic team is a great example of partner-led sales, with much of that activity driving new wins across a range of diverse sectors such as regional carriers, utilities, IT, and government. Last year they landed several new customers, including a utility and two different government agencies.

EMEA Best New Win – Beyond Technology

Beyond Technology was a new partner to the EMEA region in 2022 as an expansion of an established partner relationship with Infinera in the Americas region. Beyond Technology got off to a flying start with a highly collaborative approach and a keen focus on driving Infinera solutions into their key markets across EMEA. We have high expectations that this partnership will thrive and grow, and we are very excited about the joint possibilities beyond our first win – a joint project for a Tier 1 service provider in the Middle East and one of the world’s largest content providers. The project utilized our ICE6 technology and was delivered in record time, creating an end-to-end network in the region to support the FIFA World Cup!​

Americas Partner of the Year – BlueAlly

BlueAlly has only been an Infinera partner for a little more than two years, but has now captured four utility customers and two regional telco service providers, all six wins addressing the rural broadband market in the U.S. BlueAlly has focused solution practices in various markets, including media, finance, government, education, energy and utilities, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and small business, providing cloud, infrastructure, and managed security solutions along with professional services. Infinera is one of many vendor relationships that BlueAlly has to support their solution approach and positioning, bringing a wealth of knowledge and value to our channel partnership and end customers. Recently, the BlueAlly team closed a rural broadband deployment with a large utility co-operative, which purchased a substantial next-generation optical transport networking solution from Infinera. BlueAlly has a great funnel of opportunities for 2023 and beyond and is proving to be a valued channel partner for Infinera.

Americas Best New Win – Logicalis

Logicalis secured a great win for a state-owned national telecommunications company in South America. This deal was won due to the excellent alignment between Infinera, Logicalis, and ultimately the customer, from the technical to the executive level. This is a great example of a partner-led project win that demonstrates how a collaborative vendor/partner relationship can compete effectively. This win has strengthened Infinera’s relationship with this partner and will lead to growth in the end customer’s network. We are now fully engaged and strategically aligned to attack similar customers across the LATAM region.

Congratulations to all six winners!

If you are looking for a vendor partner that offers differentiated and industry-leading optical products, services, and opportunities, we welcome your application to the Infinera PartnerPlus program. You can contact us at partnerplus@infinera.com.