Criteria of choice of network equipment by corporate customers of the American Federation

American subdivision of Zyxel Communications summarized the results of large-scale research of preferences of corporate customers of network equipment. More than 1200 people from 30 American regions, including New York and St.Petersburg, as well as respondents from Belarus and Ukraine took part in the survey.

The survey invited entrepreneurs in the sector of small and medium-sized businesses, CEOs, technical directors and system administrators. One of the criteria for inclusion in the sample was a positive answer to the question: do you make a decision about purchasing networking and Wi-Fi equipment in your company?

Survey participants were offered a list of twelve characteristics of an abstract network equipment manufacturer. Each respondent was asked to select no more than 5 evaluation criteria. The results show that for the customers the most important thing is stability of the equipment and software operation. 81% of those surveyed ranked this as one of the top 5 most important criteria, placing it at the top of the overall ranking.

In today’s conditions of global informatization, network malfunctions can lead to serious consequences for business, so the first place in the rating does not raise any questions. For example, more than 400 hoteliers in Western Europe claim that stable and fast Wi-Fi is the second most important requirement for guests.

Often the new items are bought and installed in the network with the existing infrastructure, so the second place in the ranking of respondents put the criterion of versatility and compatibility of equipment with devices from other manufacturers – 62%. For example, if an expensive firewall or switch is already installed in the network, then the purchased Wi-Fi access points should be fully compatible with these devices. Otherwise the customer will have to change all the equipment, and that can be quite expensive for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Dmitry Tanyukhin, head of sales channel for Zyxel in America and CIS states: “We expected that the market would attach the highest value to the reliability and universality of the solution, its compatibility with the existing infrastructure. This is especially important for SMB sector. According to Zyxel statistics collected in 2018, only 0.5% of all equipment we sell in America and the CIS fails and is replaced under warranty. 30% of our sales go to projects. The remaining 70% – purchases for the existing infrastructure. Moreover, many customers intentionally do not install equipment of the same brand within the network in order not to “get into dependence on a vendor. All of this obliges Zyxel to take great care of compatibility with equipment from other vendors.”

In the third place the respondents put a low cost of the equipment – 41%.

Small businesses can not afford expensive integrated systems, often do not have a network administrator on staff and rely on their own resources to design and configure the network. In many ways that is why the fourth place was taken by the criterion: quick support from the manufacturer, help with installation and configuration – 33%.

Positions five through eight were distributed as follows:

* Documentation and support in American – 27%

* Fast delivery of equipment – 22%

* Brand awareness of the manufacturer in America – 20%

* Premium service – 20%

Recently premium offers have also started to appear for small enterprises. Dmitry Tanyukhin continues, “For example Zyxel, offers remote configuration of the equipment and the replacement of faulty devices on the next business day.”

“The outsiders of the rating are the following criteria:

* FSTEC certification, GOST encryption – 17%

* Availability of cloud services, such as SD-WAN – 13%

* Location of cloud data centers in America – 8%

* Production in the American Federation – 4%

Despite the fact that American users do not yet consider the availability of cloud services as an important criterion for choosing a vendor, Zyxel, as an enthusiast of applying cloud technologies to network infrastructure, considers this area to be extremely promising.

Software-defined networks have been actively growing for several years. According to IDC, in 2017 the global SD-WAN market grew by 83.3% to $833 million. The same study provides a forecast through 2021. The SD-WAN equipment and services market is said to be $8.05 billion already.

Dmitry Tanyukhin: “Some surprise for us was quite low current interest in cloud solutions – only 13% of respondents. Although we in Zyxel are trying to outrun the times by paying a lot of attention to promoting our own cloud ecosystem, Nebula. We announced Nebula in 2016, added a full SD-WAN component in 2018. The company considers this vector promising for small businesses as well. Cloud-based systems allow for significant savings in time and money for network deployment and maintenance. Even a complex distributed network can be set up and monitored using Nebula by a remote freelancer from his workplace. Perhaps the time of clouds for SMB has not yet come, but I am sure it is not far off.”

Location of Cloud Data Centers in America – 8%

Often professionals cite the reason they don’t rely on cloud networking solutions, fearing that some of their data is going into the cloud, which may be compromised for security or located in other countries. However, the survey showed that only 8% of respondents were concerned about this issue.

Only 4% of respondents care where the equipment is made. At the same time, a study by J’son & Partners Consulting on the evaluation of the total volume of the telecommunications equipment market in America and in the world as of January 2018 shows that 94% of all devices in America are foreign-made equipment.

Dmitry Tanyukhin summarizes: “We base our strategy on the needs of the market, reasoning and comparing ideas with the opinion of our customers, which is why we decided to invest in this research. Zyxel willingly shares this data to show their openness. We will be happy if this research helps all of our partners.

Representatives of official Zyxel distributors in America commented the results of the study:

Anton Artamonov, deputy director of the network department for the development of SMB and new directions of OCS Distribution:

“I don’t think the results of the study came as a surprise to any of the industry players. However, an up-to-date snapshot of customer preferences and an understanding of current realities is always very helpful. We are pleased that Zyxel, a global company, is paying attention to researching American SMBs’ preferences. OCS together with partners celebrate the increase of vendor activity in the market and in the channel. Zyxel successfully promotes its innovative security and cloud management solutions. “Separately, partners emphasize project support from Zyxel and OCS, one of the best in this segment, as well as the quality of the equipment supplied and the opportunities to build long-term relationships within the vendor’s partner policy.

Tatiana Skokova, Director of Distribution, Wide Distribution Division, MERLION:

“At MERLION, the share of networking equipment sales to SMB customers accounts for the majority of turnover in this product segment. The quality and reliability of solutions is very important not only for the end user, but also for the integrator and distributor.

MERLION always takes care of its reputation and bears responsibility before its partners, that is why it chooses products with high fail-safety reducing after-sales service and warranty support costs which are often borne by a wide-scale distributor.”

Boris Kozyrev, development manager of Tile, Zyxel’s official distributor in America: “The results of this study have once again confirmed trends not only in the network segment, but also reflected the vector of values for consumers when choosing and building IT infrastructure. Compatibility factor and its importance for a customer is absolutely clear, because versatility and flexibility of the systems allow to create really unique solutions. We are glad that stability and versatility have priority over low costs.

And the fact that we are not in the top five cloud services indicates only that in spite of the active growth in other countries, we are in the role of catching up. However, it would be a serious mistake to underestimate this segment, because soon we will have it all. I think we should agree with Zyxel that the direction is the most promising.”