Cisco buys Viptel to expand SD-WAN offering

Cisco

Cisco is set to acquire United States-based Viptel to expand its portfolio of SD-WAN solutions.

The networking vendor will combine Viptela’s network management, orchestration and overlay technologies with its own routing platforms and capabilities.

Viptela’s cloud-based SD-WAN solution claims to simplify management and reduce the cost of interconnecting enterprise networks. Users can track the state of their network and improve connectivity through a real-time dashboard.

The technology will sit alongside the Cisco IWAN solution, an on-premises SD-WAN solution for customers needing advanced network services and Cisco Meraki, a cloud-based solution, which the vendor claims provides simplicity and unified threat management functionality.

Viptela will join Cisco’s Enterprise Routing team within the Networking and Security Group, led by Senior Vice President and General Manager David Goeckeler.

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Cisco is set to pay $610 million in cash and assumed equity awards with the acquisition set to be completed in the second half of this year. The acquisition of

Viptela is part of Cisco’s strategic transition towards software-centric solutions, which it expects will result in predictable, recurring revenue.

The vendor said that enterprises are increasingly needing SD-WAN to deal with the movement of applications to the cloud, a mobile workforce and the addition of IoT devices.

Scott Harrell, Senior Vice President of Product Management for the Cisco Enterprise Networking Group, said: “Viptela’s technology is cloud-first, with a focus on simplicity and ease of deployment while simultaneously providing a rich set of capabilities and scale. These principles are what today’s customers demand.

“With Viptela and Cisco, we will be able to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of comprehensive on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-based SD-WAN solutions.”

TIM recently announced it had completed a network functions virtualisation project for Poste Italiane, bringing voice over IP services to more than 13,000 post offices across Italy.