Partner Spotlight: CompuNet and Gigamon Engineer IT Solutions That Help Businesses Succeed

CompuNet, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, offers engineering solutions for customers, delivered on time and on budget. Darrin Good, CompuNet’s Director of Business Development, Enterprise Networking, and Security, says the company was “founded by engineers for engineers.”

CompuNet has been a Gigamon partner for five years and was named Gigamon Top Americas Regional Partner of the Year in 2020. We sat down for a Q&A with Darrin to find out more about how CompuNet is using Gigamon solutions to produce measurable business results for its customers.

Gigamon: Who is CompuNet, and what is the company history?

Darrin: CompuNet is an engineering-led, national IT solution provider that offers consulting, design, and implementation services built either on-premises or in the cloud. We were founded in Grangeville, Idaho, and our offices are primarily located in the western United States. Our engineering-led approach is to understand our clients’ business needs, engineer IT solutions that solve those needs, and then deploy them on time and on budget. In other words, we architect technology solutions that solve business problems. 

At CompuNet, we are passionate about technology. Our team believes in the power and benefit of IT. We are always exploring new technologies and how they can help our customers succeed, and we put the customer at the center of every engagement.

All CompuNet regional offices have a local, dedicated engineering team committed to delivering personalized service and an exceptional experience — every time. No matter how complex a project is, we always have one simple goal: to support our customers on their journey to lasting success.

Gigamon: What does your company name stand for?

Darrin: Engineering-led.

Gigamon: When and how did you become a Gigamon partner?

Darrin: We became a Gigamon partner in 2016. Our engineers decided to become partners after researching manufacturers who could provide visibility to network and security tools our customers were beginning to consume. CompuNet believes that our engineers should lead the conversation when it comes to acquiring new solutions for our customers.

Gigamon: If you had to describe Gigamon with just one word, what would it be?

Darrin: Flexibility.

Gigamon: What are some of your market’s specifics, advantages, and challenges when it comes to network security and visibility?

Darrin: CompuNet supports a wide array of customer sizes, with varied solution needs. The vast diversity of our customer base requires our engineers to develop unique solutions that directly meet the customer’s needs while adapting to different deployment models, budgets, and data locations.

Gigamon: Which Gigamon features stand out the most and make the product outstrip its competitors?

Darrin: Gigamon has many individual features that our engineers use when designing solutions. What makes Gigamon unique is the way these features can be used together to ensure that the right data gets to the right tool at the right data rate.

Some tools may require de-duplication and packet slicing, while others need metadata and NetFlow generation. These features are all available in the Gigamon solution with the flexibility to deploy them in the right place at the right time.

Gigamon: Where do you see trends in network security and visibility in three years?

Darrin: I believe we will continue to see a large shift to distributed workloads that are hybrid in nature. Customers will continue to expand their cloud presence across multi-cloud, and this will lead to more difficulty monitoring threats across the organization. Tools will be stretched beyond their limits as the coverage area grows and security budgets struggle to keep up.

Gigamon: What is the most memorable moment associated with Gigamon as a partner?

Darrin: Probably being awarded Gigamon 2020 Top Americas Regional Partner of the Year. The award verified that our teams are doing the right things for our customers and for our Gigamon partnership.

Gigamon: What are some of the new challenges in the market that your partnership with Gigamon can solve?

Darrin: Security tools that are deployed in a single area of an organization and monitor only the traffic in that area are completely blind to the many threats that initiate in edges of customer networks. Threats are initiated at the client, remote worker, and cloud workload levels and are often not discovered in a timely manner. With Gigamon solutions, threats can’t hide in dark places of the network, because many different deployment methods can provide complete network visibility no matter where those threats begin.

Gigamon: What are the positive business outcomes as a Gigamon partner?

Darrin: Being a Gigamon partner allows us access to some of the most reliable solution enhancers available in the market today. Many vendor solutions are enhanced by Gigamon offerings. Customers who require multiple tools to improve their network and security monitoring solutions might be unable to afford implementing redundant solutions without the addition of Gigamon solutions.

Gigamon: What unique capabilities does this partnership bring to your business?

Darrin: Many of our partners offer a solution to one or two specific customer issues, but Gigamon does not fit into only one scenario. The Gigamon solution can be used on-premises, in the cloud, and anywhere in combination.

Gigamon: Thank you, Darrin, for making time for us and for being such a wonderful partner.