INFRA
INFRA
INFRA
Cisco and SD-WAN acquisition fatten up network fabric
When Cisco Systems Inc. acquired software-defined network startup Viptela Inc. earlier this year, some saw a flat-footed legacy trying to buy relevance. The 33-year-old multinational giant, however, is infusing Viptela with more than the $610-million check it plunked down for it, according to Manan Shah (pictured), director of product management at Cisco Systems.
The companies are filling in blanks in each other’s portfolios and rounding out their business models. “Cisco as a company is moving towards a subscription-based business model,” Shah said. “And Viptela was all about subscription business model. So that was very attractive to Cisco.”
Shah spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. (* Disclosure below.)
What’s legacy is new again
While Cisco has green-lighted Viptela to keep innovating at the pace of a startup, the latter is pulling new customers thanks to Cisco’s corporate clout. As an indie startup, Viptela sometimes met with doubts from companies uncertain about its rep. The trusted Cisco brand has significantly increased its sales pipeline.
Viptela is also stitching capabilities from Cisco’s portfolio into its software-defined wide area network fabric. “If you look at Viptela, it was all Ethernet-based products,” Shah said.
It could not offer customers digital subscriber line technologies or T1/E1 interfaces, for instance. These and other offerings in Cisco’s portfolio are now wide open to Viptela, just as Viptela’s SD-WAN network solutions are available for Cisco to bake into products.
“It naturally made sense to leverage all of the breadth of portfolio that Cisco has and build that into the fabric,” Shah said. “In the next few months, we will have a new software which will leverage all of those capabilities and has a full breadth of portfolio connected into that SD-WAN fabric.”
Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco Systems nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
Photo: SiliconANGLE
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