Viptela Powers Japanese Carrier's SD-WAN Service
By Japanese service provider NTTPC Communications Inc. has tapped Viptela to provide it with SD-WAN technology to power its new MasterONE Service.
Several services providers have already rolled out SD-WAN services. While SD-WAN could potentially cannibalize the carriers’ existing MPLS services, SD-WAN positions these network operators to remain competitive in a world in which businesses are seeking more flexibility and increasingly relying on the cloud.
NTTPC Communications introduced this new offering in light of the increase in mobile devices and usage and the ramp up in audio and video conferencing adoption. MPLS alone is not positioned to address that from a pricing or a technological standpoint, NTTPC and Viptela said.
The SD-WAN solution Viptela provides creates an overlay architecture that can combine broadband cable modem and/or DSL, LTE, MPLS, and other access connections; centrally manage those connections; and make them cloud-aware, Lloyd Noronha, director of global marketing at Viptela, noted in a November interview with me. That enables organizations to use all of their connections at any time, to set policy for security and traffic treatment, and to better respond to the trend of more applications moving to the cloud.
Typically an SD-WAN architecture involves physical or virtualized routing devices at all customer locations to which the business wants to extend its WAN footprint, Noronha added. All those devices then connect to a centralized controller at the organization’s own data center or at a public cloud data center that’s part of Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, for example.
The NTTPC Communications news comes the same month that Praveen Akkiraju takes over as CEO for Viptela co-founder Amir Khan. Singtel and Verizon have also deployed Viptela technology, as have more than 25 Fortune 500 businesses.
But Viptela, which is backed by Redline Capital, Northgate Capital, and Sequoia Capital, operates in a crowded SD-WAN marketplace. Its competitors include Aryaka, BigLeaf Networks, Cisco Systems, Citrix, CloudGenix, Cradlepoint (which recently acquired Pertino), Ecessa, Elfiq, FatPipe Networks, Glue Networks, InfoVista, Mushroom Networks, Nuage Networks (a Nokia company), Riverbed, Silver Peak, SimpleWAN, Talari, TELoIP, VeloCloud, Versa Networks, Viptela and Virtela (which is now owned by NTT Communications).
