Early in May, Cisco announced its latest decision to purchase Viptela, a privately-held solution for SD-WAN. The price for the software-defined WAN business was around $610 million in assumed equity awards and cash. The goal behind the purchase was that Cisco would be able to increase its cloud functionality solutions, and extend its SD-WAN portfolio.
The Viptela cloud-centric solution for overlay, orchestration, and network management will be combined with Cisco‘s routing platforms, SD-WAN capabilities and services. As SD-WAN emerges as a crucial topic within the enterprise, the acquisition is well-timed, according to UC analyst, Zeus Kerravala. Though deployments are limited, it seems that the market is ready to face some serious interest from customers of SD-WAN.
The Future of SD-WAN
Today’s customers require a stronger focus on easy deployment and simplicity, along with plenty of solutions for scaling, which are offered by Viptela. According to SVP of product management in Cisco, Scott Harrell, the communication between Cisco and Viptela will mean that the brand can offer a more comprehensive collection of Hybrid, on-premise, and cloud SD-WAN services.
According to VP of Business Development for Cisco, Rob Salvango, the company has been offering SD-WAN services for a number of years. The Cisco IWAN solution is an on-premise service for companies who need more complex routing features, and Meraki offers a cloud-based unified management functionality for dealing with threats. Thanks to the latest Viptela acquisition, Cisco will be able to offer more options for enterprise-level offices, so that it might better deal with the scaling and size requirements of businesses. What’s more, the upgraded SD-WAN capabilities will help the company move forward in its transformation to a software-first business model.
The Future for Cisco and Viptela
The open-platform and cloud-based solution that Viptela affords will be a great complement to the existing IWAN solution provided by Cisco. Over time, it makes sense that Cisco will integrate Meraki, IWAN, and Viptela to give customers a wider range of product solutions.
As Kerravala noted during the Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando, there are plenty of enterprise-level opportunities to be appreciated with SD-WAN, including cost-savings, protection against network failures, and more. With so many perceived benefits to enjoy, Cisco’s decision to enhance its position in the SD-WAN marketplace makes perfect sense.
As Cisco themselves have commented in the past, many new customers are beginning to turn towards SD-WAN solutions when orchestrating and managing WAN deployments for boosting access to corporate networks and cloud solutions, particularly as network management options continue to become more complex due to adaptations in IoT and mobility.
The Viptela acquisition should be completed by the second half of 2017.
