Software-defined wide-area networking firm Aryaka Networks Inc. has made its first-ever acquisition as it bids to beef up the defensive capabilities of its platform.

The company said today that it has closed on a deal to buy German secure access service edge or SASE firm Secucloud GmbH. That company is now a fully owned subsidiary of Aryaka.

Aryaka competes with the much better-known VMware Inc. in the SD-WAN market. Its flagship SmartConnect platform is a globally distributed network offering built specifically to transport enterprises data traffic across long distances. The idea is to simplify the management of long-distance connections within an enterprise’s network while also providing faster and more reliable connectivity for applications, devices and public cloud infrastructure.

Aryaka’s network transports data through high-speed infrastructure that the company leases from carriers, rather than the public internet. It claims that by doing this, it can help boost application performance by as much as 40 times while simplifying network maintenance.

The SmartConnect platform offers other advantages too. For instance, data is automatically compressed and deduplicated before being sent across the network, helping reduce bandwidth.

Secucloud looks to be a good fit for Aryaka. The Hamburg-based firm sells a cloud-based firewall-as-a-service offering that provides a secure web gateway and offers advanced threat protection capabilities. Secucloud’s SASE offering is designed to protect every aspect of the network edge, covering wide area networks, clouds, mobile and “internet of things” devices.

Aryaka said that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, SASE has become more vital than ever as companies increasingly adopt cloud-first information technology architectures.

Aryaka co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Ashwath Nagaraj said that by combining Secucloud’s technologies with its own, it can offer a “truly converged network and network security-as-a-service offering” that will enable it to win much larger contracts with enterprises.

“We think this joint solution and Aryaka’s brand reputation of delivering the industry’s best customer experience, will create a highly differentiated offering for enterprise customers,” added Secucloud Chief Executive Dennis Monner.

The addition of Secucloud will also give customers more choice, Aryaka said, in addition to third-party security offerings from partners such as Palo Alto Networks Inc. and Check Point Software Inc.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that with software ruling the world of enterprise technology, it’s necessary that infrastructure also becomes software defined.

“The pandemic has made it clear that enterprises need more flexible, software-defined wide-area network architectures, not only to enable employees but also to allow contractors and partners to be part of their enterprise value chain,” Mueller said. “The race for SD-WAN is happening so fast that some startups in the space are now buying other startups. That’s the case with Aryaka snapping up SecuCloud to add a very useful software-defined firewall to its SD-WAN offering.”

Aryaka said it hopes to release new products as a result of the Secucloud acquisition later this year.

Image: Aryaka