The Canadian SD-WAN startup TELoIP differentiates itself from the field of SD-WAN vendors by selling its technology through channel partners.

Many SD-WAN vendors sell directly to enterprise customers. But TELoIP sells through managed service providers (MSPs). And it’s finding its alliances with MSPs to be advantageous when competing against other vendors.

“It’s warfare right now,” says TELoIP’s Founder and CTO Pat Saavedra, in regard to the hot competition among so many SD-WAN players.

Many of these players are approaching the customers of MSPs, directly. Conversely, TELoIP partners with MSPs, which Saavadra likens to the old saw: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The two work together, agreeing not to compete. And TELoIP can tap into the MSP’s existing relationships with enterprises.

TELoIP works with 10 channel partners, some of which count sales of over $1 billion per year, says Saavadra. He adds that "every single customer" of its MSP channel partners is asking about SD-WAN.

Toronto-headquartered TELoIP was formed by Saavadra in his basement in 2002. Since then, the company has raised about $35 million.

Saavadra’s vision was basically that of a service provider. He wanted to create technology to deliver voice, video, and data over the Internet. “It didn’t take long to recognize we needed multiple and diverse connections,” he says.

Over time, TELoIP developed its own operating system; it established points of presence (PoPs) across North America; and it sells consumer premise equipment (CPE) loaded with its own OS.

Overall, it sells a multi-tenant, multi-PoP overlay network. “We are a service provider,” he says.

TELoIP sells two services: SD-Internet and SD-WAN. The products are similar, except SD-WAN adds encryption to the data plane.

TELoIP executives have found that, on average at customer branch offices, 70 percent of the traffic traverses the public Internet, and 30 percent is over the wide area network (WAN).

For branch offices, TELoIP installs its CPE, which then creates a data plane to the controllers at TELoIP’s nearest PoP. Customers get the full speed of multiple links from any ISPs into one virtual connection.