Unified Communications Featured Article

TMC Recognizes SD-WAN Leadership Award Winners

The rise of the cloud has prompted many businesses to rethink their WAN architectures. And many have discovered that SD-WAN is the answer.

SD-WAN enables them to support their cloud applications and strategies. It allows them to affordably connect branches and leverage all their underlying connectivity. It gives them control in the form of avoiding carrier lock-in, having greater visibility, and assuring application performance. And it can address security too.

A wide array of SD-WAN solutions providers, and other businesses, resellers, and service providers interested in this next-generation WAN technology, are gathered this week at SD-WAN Expo. This morning, Rich Tehrani, the leader of Technology Marketing Corp. and the conference leader of ITEXPO, recognized many of these companies with SD-WAN Leadership Awards.

The list of winners includes:

• AireSpring (News - Alert)

• Aryaka

• Barracuda

• Bigleaf Networks

• Citrix

• Comcast Business

• Expereo

• FatPipe Networks

• Fortinet

• Granite

• Hughes (News - Alert)

• MegaPath

• NetComp Communications Group Inc.

• Riverbed

• Silver Peak

• SimpleWAN

• Sproute Networks

• TBI

• Teloip

• TPx Communications

• Versa Networks

• Windstream

• XRoads Networks (News - Alert)/ZeroOutages

AireSpring provides cloud communications and managed connectivity solutions. SD-WAN is one of several services in its product portfolio.

Close to 800 global enterprises rely on the Aryaka Global SD-WAN to deliver faster and more consistent application performance from anywhere in the world and private network connectivity that can be deployed in days, not months compared to legacy solutions such as MPLS. Aryaka’s Director of Product Management Chandramouli Radhakrishnan gave yesterday’s SD-WAN Expo keynote speech.

Barracuda simplifies IT with cloud-enabled solutions that empower customers to protect their networks, applications and data, regardless of where they reside.

Bigleaf Networks provides cloud-first SD-WAN solutions. This week the company announced a successful round of funding with an influx of $4.9 million coming from GoAhead Ventures, Seattle Angel Fund, Oregon Angel Fund and Portland Seed Fund.

Citrix offers an SD-WAN solution called NetScaler. “As businesses shift to a hybrid, multi-cloud model, we’re seeing tremendous demand for our SD-WAN offerings to provide employees with seamless access to their applications, regardless of where they are working,” said Donna Johnson, director of NetScaler SD-WAN Product Marketing at Citrix. “SD-WAN Expo provides an excellent venue to showcase how NetScaler SD-WAN combines proactive application traffic management, end-to-end QoS, routing and WAN optimization. Visitors to our booth can learn about our unique SD-WAN combination that consistently delivers a superior branch office user experience for SaaS (News - Alert), enterprise, and virtual desktop applications and how we’re providing the tools for services providers to be able to offer SD-WAN as a service to their customers.”

Comcast Business unveiled its SD-WAN effort in September. This service is powered by Versa Networks technology.

Expereo is a managed SD-WAN, internet connectivity services, and cloud acceleration solutions provider. “We work with multiple SD-WAN vendors to design, source, deliver and support your SD-WAN network overlay, and provide the internet connectivity underlay. Optimal internet powering your SD-WAN underlay ensures you get the availability and performance you need for SD-WAN, IPSec, cloud and SaaS application access,” said Victor Hou, global channel director at Expereo. 

FatPipe Networks is an SD-WAN solution provider with many patents. It announced in November that it had been awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,775,235 for load balancing over disparate networks. “Having gone through the most rigorous evaluation, we now have the ability to protect the company's invention on WAN load balancing for VoIP, VPN and data traffic for corporate networks. Along with other FatPipe Networks' patents, this claim ensures that VoIP, Video, VPN and all data traffic can be load balanced and failed over without dropping sessions providing a superior SD-WAN product for customers. The benefits to customers are huge," said CEO Ragula Bhaskar.

Fortinet is a company that helps secure SD-WAN environments for companies such as MegaPath. “It’s imperative to support and protect essential new technologies like SD-WAN that are being adopted as part of today’s complex, elastic and highly distributed network environments,” said Matthew Pley of Fortinet.

“Granite has grown its revenues to $1.3B by supporting the needs of multi-location customers.  In that time, Granite has developed the most effective methods to successfully implement service rollouts and manage voice and data products to the decentralized business community.  Taking that expertise and marrying it with the best technology from Cisco (News - Alert), Meraki, VeloCloud and TeloIP, Granite has created a world class managed SD-WAN offering.  Add to that a U.S.-based NOC and customer contact center, along with the ability to provide access, voice, security and managed services, Granite becomes the gold standard for SD-WAN,” noted Mark Palmer, Granite Telecommunications Director of Relationship Development

Hughes, which has a strong history in the WAN optimization space, has developed its own SD-WAN technology. The company participated in the “Assuring SD-WAN Services to Deliver a Superior Customer Experience” panel at SD-WAN Expo.

MegaPath  launched its first SD-WAN solution, SD-WAN Pro, in early 2016. SD-WAN Pro capabilities include centralized network management and monitoring, QoS-based priority routing, session-level application performance monitoring and standard network security protocols including IPsec VPN, load balancing and failover (both wired and wireless).  Late last year it expanded the portfolio with the introduction of SD-WAN Enterprise, adding capabilities such as bi-directional priority routing, real-time application failover, packet-level application performance monitoring, bandwidth aggregation, complete network performance visibility, and additional security capabilities.

NetComp Communications Group Inc. is a master solution provider.

Riverbed’s CTO Brad Wood this week gave an address about how SD-WAN provides visibility. SD-WAN is all about leveraging policy control and orchestration to allow for guaranteed service, he said.

Silver Peak has more than 600 customers in production with its Unity EdgeConnect solution. The company is about 14 years old, having started out selling WAN optimization solutions. It came out with its first SD-WAN solution in 2015. Today SD-WAN is its focus.

SimpleWAN was early to the SD-WAN market. It has emphasized the security aspects of its solution.

Sproute Networks this week announced a partnership with Observables, which intends to provide complete end-to-end networking services for SMBs. Sproute Co-Founder Pradhosh Mahapatra was on a panel this week at SD-WAN Expo.

**

TBI is a technology distributor. It recently expanded its solution set through a partnership with Bigleaf.

TELoIP says it was an early mover in software-defined networks, and has been providing SDN/SD-WAN solutions for business since 2002.  

TPx Communications is a national managed services carrier formed from the merger of TelePacific and DSCI. It accepted its award by bringing seven enthusiastic employees to the stage.

Versa Networks offers SD-WAN and SD-Security solutions. Head of Product Marketing Robert McBride was on the SD-WAN Expo session “Network Evolution in the Cloud Age” on Wednesday.

Windstream is a service provider selling SD-WAN solutions. Earlier this week it took the wraps off its new Windstream Enterprise and Windstream Wholesale brands. This effort aims to reflect the company’s position as a digital transformation adopter and enabler.

XRoads Networks/ZeroOutages is an SD-WAN service provider that provides comprehensive WAN management and 24/7 monitoring. Daren French, the company’s vice president of business development, was a “Network Evolution in the Cloud Age” panelist.

Edited by Mandi Nowitz