Under the new leadership of Matt Cook, Ericsson’s enterprise 5G strategy is leveraging the large partner channel obtained in the Vonage, Cradlepoint and Ericom acquisitions, as well as the enterprise-focused solutions they sold, to boost their enterprise sales.
Matt Cook, Head of Global Channels, Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions
Ericsson has named Matt Cook as the new Head of Global Channels for Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions. He will lead the global channel and distribution strategy for the enterprise. It will make extensive use of the company’s recent acquisitions of Vonage, Cradlepoint and Ericom, and the many thousands of enterprise-focused partners who have been working with them.
Ericsson has always had its main focus on the carrier market, but they have always had a presence in the enterprise space. Now, they have reshaped their strategy for that space to significantly increase their presence.
“While we were carrier before, our new strategy is not about reshaping our product line for the enterprise,” Cook told ChannelBuzz. “We spent billions of dollars in the acquisition of Vonage, Ericom and Cradlepoint, and increased our presence in neutral host 5G solutions. Those acquisitions, reflecting a pledge in real dollars, have become the foundation of our enterprise strategy. We see it as a sleeping multi-billion dollar market for us.”
Ericsson’s Enterprise 5G strategy includes both Private 5G and neutral host 5G solutions, designed to deliver business-critical connectivity across operational and public-facing enterprise environments. These include Enterprise 5G, Wireless WAN, and SASE solutions, and are managed through NetCloud Manager, a comprehensive cloud management and orchestration platform which came to Ericsson with Cradlepoint.
“The assets from the Vonage, Cradlepoint and Ericom acquisitions definitely take our enterprise strategy to a whole new level,” Cook said. “They have particularly strengthened our presence in the IT space because a lot of channel partners were focused on IT before.”
Cook estimated that of the thousands of new partners that came to Ericsson through the Vonage, Ericom and Cradlepoint acquisitions, 60% were traditional resellers with an IT focus and 40% were focused more on the OT side.
“We now have a large SI presence, including the marketplace with AWS, where they work with us to sell directly into the IT space,” he noted.
A key change in the new strategy was harmonizing all of the acquired channel programs into one.
“Merging the programs into one was the first phase of our strategy, and that step is done,” Cook said. “When you bring together three or four groups, they all have their own channel program. The goal here was simplification. We also wanted to encourage crosstalk around our different product offerings. There was also too much complexity around incentives. We want to get them more aligned on the front end. Back-end incentives only help partners after they have won.
The second phase of the strategy is merging the tools from the different companies, something that Cook indicated was something that they are still working on.
“The third phase will be a new partner program,” he stated. By March 1, we plan to release a simplified program, in which we give access to new products, like providing PCN partners with access to wireless WAN. We received strong advisory council feedback on this. There was a sense of urgency to get it done and in a way that makes it easy for partners to do business with us.”
Distribution, on the other hand, will remain substantially the way that partners are used to.
“Distribution in the different companies has taken different paths,” Cook indicated. “Anixter and Graybar are common for OT. With IT, we do a lot of business with TD SYNNEX and Ingram Micro, as well as regional distributors. Our distribution channel will become harmonized but we will make sure that our community buys from the disties where they are used to buying.”
Looking ahead, Cook said to expect more emphasis on wireless in the year ahead.
“People tend to look at the shiny objects like AI, while at the same time, networks are not just a hard wire choice,” he added. “Wireless will become more pervasive in 2025. A lot of this requires an element of mobility, and wi-fi doesn’t do it. We also expect to see a growth of neutral hosts in the partner community. This will be widespread, and won’t be niche, because it is very verticalized.”
