With a glut of SD-WAN vendors crowding the market, it can often be difficult for enterprises, especially smaller ones, to choose the best vendor for their needs.

However, MNJ Technologies, a Buffalo Grove, Illinois-based managed service provider (MSP), is attempting to make that decision a little easier. In early 2019, the company launched a proof of concept (PoC) demo lab in the Chicago suburbs where customers can see how seven of the leading SD-WAN vendors fair under different scenarios. Sort of like speed dating for SD-WAN.

"Not all SD-WAN is created equal," said Ben Niernberg, EVP at MNJ Technologies in an interview with SDxCentral. "They are all very different how they handle traffic and the way they work."

Not everything that vendors say about their products proves to be true in the real world, and these claims further muddy an already crowded market, Niernberg explained.

So, in an effort to differentiate from the rest of the MSPs out there, the company decided to make it easier for customers to try before they buy.

"What we decided to do was create this agnostic SD-WAN testing ground, where a customer could come in and they can agnostically test all of the different products," said Niernberg.

According to MNJ, the facility allows customers to see how any of the SD-WAN vendors in its portfolio — Fortinet, Cisco Viptela and Meraki, Oracle Talari, Silver Peak, Versa, and CloudGenix — handle security, latency, jitter, WAN optimization, failover, or any combination thereof.

"You can have a customer on a live call from their cellphone and literally watch the plug get pulled and see how the different products operate, how quickly they get back up and running, and the way that they work," Niernberg said.

Since launching the lab in early 2019, the results have been dramatic, according to Niernberg. He says roughly 70% of customers are coming into the lab with one or two SD-WAN vendors in mind and leaving with another vendor.

MNJ also claims that the lab has eliminated the need for costly and time-consuming, on-premises PoCs for many customers. It also speeds up the decision timeline for those that move forward with a PoC from up to nine months to 90 days.

The benefits extend to MNJ as well, which is able to provide better customer experiences and eliminate troubleshooting that is common with other MSPs, especially those that haven't been able to identify potential problems with a customer's deployment ahead of time. Niernberg said it's not uncommon for MNJ to realize there is a problem with a customer's network and start taking action to resolve it before the customer even knows there is a problem.

"Everyone can talk the talk," he said. "I think the ability to demonstrate and walk the walk, and the ability to physically show them that not only do we say it but we live it, breathe it, and practice it —we can demonstrate that, that's a game changer."