Verizon and Cisco have added three new SD-WAN managed services offerings
Verizon Business and Cisco have expanded their SD-WAN partnership, which began more than five years ago, with the addition of three new SD-WAN managed services. According to the companies, the expansion gives enterprises access to new solutions and capabilities and innovative management and policy administration models.
More specifically, the expansion includes two offerings supported by Viptela, the SD-WAN provider that Cisco acquired in 2017: The co-managed Cisco SD-WAN that allows for the control and self-management of SD-WAN security and application policies; and the managed SD-WAN for the Cisco ISR1100 Series platform that is designed for smaller branch office deployments.
With the ability to self-manage the security and application policies of the SD-WAN, IT staff can retain a significant level of control and flexibility over the SD-WAN, even as it leaves day-to-day SD-WAN fault, performance and configuration management to Verizon.
The expansion also introduced new managed service tiers for Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki, which the companies said complements Verizon’s complete Cisco Meraki cloud-first platform managed services to deliver seamless, secure connectivity, as well as global deployment support.
In addition, Verizon added a management capability that involves smart cameras to help enables the solution to be deployed faster and managed more easily from a single pane of glass.
SD-WAN is expected to emerge as a key technology as 5G adoption picks up, as it is already designed to support and manage these next-generation connections. SD-WAN solutions can also automatically determine the requirements needed to establish the appropriate connection for any given application or service. Regardless of the number of users making connections to different services, SD-WAN solutions can provide the flexibility needed to establish and change connections based on bandwidth requirements, cost and connection quality, making them particularly valuable as enterprises continue their journeys to digitization.
“Global enterprises are taking a hard look at their digital transformation agendas to find ways to win coming off one of the more challenging years in recent history,” said Aamir Hussain, senior vice president of Business Products at Verizon Business. “Working with Cisco, we continue to provide innovative solutions that can give customers the choice and tools they need to enhance efficiencies and grow.”
