Comcast Business has joined forced with Cisco to provide an enhanced software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution. By integrating Cisco’s technology into its SD-WAN portfolio, Comcast aims to expand its security offerings for enterprises.
Cisco’s SD-WAN is powered by Viptela, an IT service company owned by Cisco. It touts features like identity-based policy management, extended end-to-end visibility into network health and performance as well as integrated 4G LTE and 5G connectivity functionality.
Amit Verma, VP of solutions engineering and technology at Comcast Business, said in a statement the partnership will provide Comcast’s enterprise customers “secure network solutions aligned to their unique needs and infrastructure requirements.”
SD-WAN is especially vital for hybrid work models to ensure consistent application delivery, according to J.L. Valente, VP of product management, enterprise routing and SD-WAN at Cisco.
“Working with Comcast Business to offer advanced managed SD-WAN services based on Cisco technology demonstrates our continued commitment to help customers simplify their goal of providing secure access and the best user experience when connecting to cloud applications,” he said.
Masergy moves
Securing Cisco is but one of Comcast Business’ wins this week. The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) today hired Comcast Business to provide fiber and broadband for public entities throughout the state. Comcast’s Masergy announced yesterday a partnership with Fortinet and Ingram Micro to provide an all-in-one SD-WAN solution for managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs).
Roy Chua, founder and principal with research firm AvidThink, told Fierce Masergy’s move leverages the close relationship it’s had with Fortinet for some time now, and it’s a unique opportunity to expand the SD-WAN market to smaller customers.
“While the larger MSPs have had success in providing SD-WAN services, this route to market via Ingram and Masergy's willingness to take on either fully-managed or backend higher tier support can provide smaller MSPs and even VARs with SD-WAN services they can directly sell to their customers,” he said.
Chua added he’s not yet certain how many businesses would go to smaller MSPs or VARs to purchase their SD-WAN offering, what with larger cloud solutions providers already pushing SD-WAN service bundles to their fixed line and mobile business customer base. But it’s a route to market that has been underexplored so far.
Comcast has made plenty of headway in the SD-WAN sector. It nabbed the second-place spot in Vertical System Group’s U.S. Carrier Managed SD-WAN Leaderboard in 2021, just below AT&T. Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group, told Fierce he expects the next couple of years to be “very robust” for SD-WAN as enterprises look to upgrade their networks with SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) capabilities.
The global SD-WAN market expanded by 35% in 2021, a Dell’Oro Group report noted. Cybersecurity risks, along with a growing shift to remote work, have augmented enterprise adoption of SD-WAN and its cloud counterpart SASE.
SASE particularly represents a convergence of networking and security technologies, as Futuriom founder Scott Raynovich pointed out in a Fierce Telecom article earlier this month. As new network services are deployed using SD-WAN tools, he said it makes sense to use application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect to a wide variety of cloud-based security, like secure web gateways (SWG) or zero trust network access (ZTNA).