Verizon, Cisco Team To Expand Managed SD-WAN Options For Enterprises

The carrier and tech giant are expanding their existing relationship to add three new Cisco SD-WAN solutions to the Verizon Business portfolio.

Verizon Business is expanding its portfolio of managed SD-WAN offerings with the addition of three new Cisco SD-WAN products.

Verizon and Cisco Systems have been working together since last year to help businesses build out agile networking infrastructure in light of new IT demands due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The addition of Cisco SD-WAN solutions to Verizon’s portfolio will combine Cisco’s expertise in the SD-WAN space with Verizon’s global footprint and support, the companies said on Thursday.

The focus on managed SD-WAN from the carrier and tech giant speak to the demand that the industry is seeing for managed SD-WAN solutions, said Kent MacDonald, senior vice president of strategic alliances for Calgary, Alberta-based Long View Systems, a Cisco Gold partner.

“For me, this validates to managed service providers that [managed SD-WAN and software-defined services] are the right things to be leaning into,” MacDonald said.

Long View Systems offers a managed SD-WAN offering for its customers built on Cisco Meraki. The solution, called NextNet, also includes SD-Access, and software-defined data centers. “We can agree that a managed service helps customers get programmability and automation. Verizon building these offers with Cisco validates that this is a significant and growing market,” he said.

[Related: Verizon CEO Calls For Digital Inclusivity Through 5G]

The new portfolio will include a co-managed solution with Cisco SD-WAN powered by Viptela, which will give customers the option to control and self-manage SD-WAN security and application policies, while relying on Verizon’s managed service support for fault, performance, and configuration management. The two companies said that the co-managed option is available now to Verizon customers.

The second offering is managed SD-WAN powered by Viptela for the Cisco ISR1100 Series platform, a fit for smaller branch office deployments for customers looking for secure SD-WAN services on a high performance, low-cost branch appliance.

Lastly, the Verizon portfolio will now include managed services tiers for the Cisco SD-WAN offering powered by Meraki, which will complement Verizon’s Cisco Meraki cloud-first platform managed services. Verizon also can now manage Cisco’s Meraki MV smart cameras and can offer global deployment support including mainland China, the two companies said.

“Our strategic relationship with Verizon continues to create value for businesses supporting a growing distributed mobile workforce and the accelerated adoption of cloud services,” said Scott Harrell, senior vice president of Cisco’s Intent-Based Networking Group, in a statement on the news. ”As businesses modernize their networks to enable the best user application experiences, Verizon’s new Cisco SD-WAN managed services can help them quickly and easily transition to SD-WAN with flexible option.”

The combination of Verizon and Cisco SD-WAN will give businesses enhanced levels of application visibility when compared to traditional managed router services, according to the Basking Ridge, N.J.-based carrier.

The two companies also built on their existing relationship last June when Verizon Business announced it was growing its Virtualized Network Services (VNS) portfolio with the addition of Cisco’s Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS) to its existing catalog of compute devices. Via the extended partnership, Cisco’s ENCS platform is included within Verizon’s catalog of virtual network functions and service chains available to its customers, according to the Basking Ridge, N.J.-based carrier.

Verizon was named by research firm IDC as a leader in its 2020 Managed SD-WAN services. San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco was listed as a leader in Gartner’s 2020 WAN Edge Infrastructure report.