Gartner last month released its first-ever Magic Quadrant for WAN edge infrastructure. The complicated named belied the focus of the “MQ” on SD-WAN. VMware, Cisco and Silver Peak were named to the “Leaders” category.
Silver Peak, in the press release announcing its selection, pointed out how its EdgeConnect was designed to unify SD-WAN, firewall, segmentation, routing, WAN optimization, and application visibility and control in a single platform. The NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud focuses provides a real-time network overlay with the deployment speed, scale, and automation of cloud-delivered services, VMware said in a press release. In a blog on being named as a Leader, Prashanth Shenoy, Cisco’s Vice President of Marketing for Enterprise Networking and Mobility, said that its SD-WAN offerings now have fully integrated the Viptela technology it acquired. Shenoy pointed out that its customers’ networking topology and security architecture has been “totally disrupted by multi-cloud adoption.”
Fortinet, Aryaka, Citrix, Huawei, and Riverbed were named “Challengers,” according to CRN. Versa, CloudGenix and Cato Networks were named to the “Visionaries” and Fat Pipe, Nuage Networks, Barracuda Networks, Talari Networks, Juniper Networks, Teldat, Cradlepoint, Peplink and Forcepoint are “Niche Players” in Gartner’s rankings.
Teridion Offers a Cloud Approach to SD-WAN Integration: Teridion has announced Teridion for Enterprise, a cloud-based SD-WAN that it claims combines the performance and reliability of legacy WANs with the “agility, elastic scale, and global reach of the public cloud.”
The company says that Teridion for Enterprise integrates with available branch office gateways and SD-WAN platforms. It provides “snap-on” connectivity from vendors including Cisco Meraki, Citrix and Silver Peak. Its capacity is not fixed and throughput scales on demand, the company says. In many ways, Teridion has a similar story to Mode, which we’ve talked about in the past. It’ll be interesting to see how the two play out. We’ll be getting more details for our clients and readers.
SD-WAN Participation, Drivers Vary: A survey conducted by Sapio Research on behalf of tech integrator Teneo found a range of SD-WAN goals and development strategies among multinational companies. The survey found that only 20% of respondents had an ongoing project and 48% of those have less than a full deployment underway.
The rationales for deploying or exploring SD-WAN were equally varied among the 200 respondents. Thirty-six percent of respondents said that they are considering SD-WAN due to network complexity growth. The need to cut costs and improve management of infrastructure both were cited as drivers by 34% of respondents.
Citrix Beefs Up MSP Offerings: Citrix has expanded its offerings to managed service providers (MSPs). Citrix says that the platform offers the following:
- Flexible procurement and fulfillment options including opex friendly pre-paid and post-paid licensing for physical and virtual appliances.
- Access to Citrix SD-WAN orchestration service. The service Aimsto enables efficient deployment, optimization, monitoring and troubleshooting of Citrix SD-WAN services.
- Application reporting and analytics for SaaS, Web and on-premises applications, including Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
- Service integration of Citrix SD-WAN with Microsoft Azure vWAN and Office 365 cloud services and security partners such as Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks.
- Full REST API designed to integrate with service providers’ OSS/ BSS systems in-use and enable support for all aspects of configuration, management, deployment, and troubleshooting.
- Service and support programs coupled with partner-designed training and guidance on best practices will enable partners to build their own packaging and programs.
- Custom sales enablement.
Huawei, TIM Partner in Italy: TIM and Huawei are partnering to provide SD-WAN services to companies in Italy. The partnership, announced in Rome during Huawei Connect, will enable customers of the Italian carrier to manage their networks through a single console. They will be supported by TIM’s National Assistance Center.
