Cisco purchases Viptela as part of SD-WAN strategy
Cisco completed its $610 million acquisition of Viptela Inc., a privately held software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) company, Tuesday, hastening the company’s Network Intuitive initiative launched in June.
Software-defined networking (SDN) is a developing architecture that decouples network control and forwarding functions; and SD-WAN is a technology that enables companies to create and optimize WAN connections. Cisco’s Network Intuitive is a networking platform designed for the digital age, consisting of catalyst switches, IOS software and now Viptela’s SD-WAN solutions.
“The intuitive network is an intelligent, highly secure platform — powered by intent and informed by context and Viptela’s solution is perfectly aligned with that vision,” wrote Scott Harrell, senior vice president of product management for Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Group, in a company blog post. “The Viptela team will be joining our enterprise networking engineering and sales teams to begin extending Cisco’s vision for intent-based networking across the WAN, campus and branch.”
Reasons for the acquisition
Cisco announced last May it would acquire Viptela for $610 million, a conservative purchase given Viptela was valued at $875 million the year before. Given the company already had two SD-WAN solutions, Intelligent WAN (IWAN) and Meraki SD-WAN, industry experts questioned why the technology conglomerate would seek another SD-WAN platform. When Cisco originally announced it would acquire Viptela, some analysts said the company was seeking a SD-WAN product that could provide faster return on investment than its IWAN solution; whereas others purported it was a way for CISCO to eliminate competitive market share.
Another reason for the acquisition is to provide customers with more options. Cisco recommends the SD-WAN solution based on Viptela for customers seeking cloud-first SD-WAN solutions; and Cisco Meraki for customers seeking unified threat management with SD-WAN. Customers of an IWAN bent will be able to switch to Viptela’s technology as new unified options are made available if they so choose.
What makes Viptela unique is it is an open software-based solution that can be deployed as an on-premises workload or in the cloud. The solution is commonly deployed as an Amazon Web Services workload and managed by a Viptela console. It may be possible to deploy and run Viptela on the Cisco ISR, providing a cloud-managed SD-WAN solution that utilizes conventional hardware.
Cisco said 75 global enterprises have started conducting early field trials with its Network Intuitive solutions, including Jade University of Applied Sciences, NASA and Wipro, to name just a few. A survey conducted by market research firm IDC found 70% of customers said they would review or use SD-WAN by the end of 2017; and more than 40% of enterprise respondents said they intend to implement integrated SD-WAN solutions acquired by communications service providers. The Viptela SD-WAN team will join Cisco’s Routing team within the Networking and Security Business Unit headed by Senior Vice President David Goeckeler.
