Cradlepoint nudges partners towards ‘services rich’ opportunities

Eric Purcell (Cradlepoint)

Wireless networking vendor Cradlepoint has seen its growth continue to accelerate across Asia Pacific, abound in 4G and 5G as more points of connection take place, and partners are coming along for the investment ride. 

Speaking to ARN Cradlepoint senior vice president of global partner sales, Eric Purcell discussed where it's pointing its investments with partners in tow.

“Like many when the pandemic started we were thinking we were going to have to buckle down, but our growth and use cases accelerated. If you look at markets like retail or hospitality, the ability for them to have flexible networks drew a lot of growth and momentum for us,” Purcell said. “We grew at over 50 per cent year-over-year in our first quarter.”

Purcell highlighted a lot of growth was abound in 4G and 5G as more points of connection take place - from WiFi on public transport to connecting electric vehicle charging stations. 

A recently example was when managed service provider Australian Sentinel secured Australian 5G Innovation Initiative grant funding that was used towards the Transdev Sydney Ferries 5G project rollout, using Cradlepoint technology.

In terms of handling its supply chain, Purcell said that was actually one of its competitive differentiators. 

“We have availability and our standard SLAs in terms of turnaround time,” he said. “We have a few products that may ebb and flow a little bit with the lead times that may get pushed out, but our partners are bringing Cradlepoint into opportunities where perhaps one of their customers may be looking at another vendor, which is not available for 12 or 18 months, and it's introducing new opportunities for Cradlepoint.”

Purcell spied the next big opportunity for partners resides in private cellular networking. 

“They need to be securely connected and they need to have one management platform,” he said.

In terms of the investment landscape for partners, Purcell indicated it was continuing to invest in hiring what he terms as “the best of the best” adding resources across partner managers, partner engineers and marketing resources. 

In the past year, Cradlepoint hired  APAC vice president for partner sales John Boladian and brought Nathan McGregor as senior vice president of sales across APAC. 

Purcell said it was committed to its partner ecosystem and part of that is not having its own services organisation, therefore opening up a service-rich opportunity for partners. 

“It’s a services-rich opportunity for partners right from the start of a consulting engagement all the way through to the lifecycle of implementation. Our offerings are a subscription based - one, three or five year - the annuity model also aligns to them," he said. 

 In terms of cementing its investment, Purcell said it did through launching the industry's first 5G for enterprise specialisation a couple of years ago, which has been well received globally.

“Our focus is to make sure what we do is relevant and and having an impact on the partner so they can build a sustainable and profitable practice around wireless,” he said. 

Part of Cradlepoint’s partner program features a user group and beta testing proportion used to help launch new products and solutions in the market.

“We're constantly getting their feedback right now they're helping us shape the evolution of our managed services program. It’s a constant collaborative interaction,” he said. “Our tight relationship with Ericsson is going to continue to accelerate our success with partners.”