Cisco pitching security SD-WAN combination

Cisco might have been fairly quiet on the SD-WAN front, giving plenty of smaller pretenders the chance to try to fill that void, but all that is about to change.

The vendor has put the technology at the forefront of its annual partner summit event coming to the market leaning on its security heritage.

Cisco is unifying its security and SD-WAN technologies in a recognition that the growth in edge computing has also increased a need for greater protection.

David Goff, UK&I head of enterprise networks at Cisco, said that most of its competitors lacked a background in security and would not be able to provide the same sort of proposition.

"This is a huge growth market and an opportunity for us and we are in a strong position able to leverage our heritage," he said.

The Cisco approach is to use its Talos technology to add URL filtering, firewall and intrusion prevention to the SD-WAN and Umbrella to make sure access to malicious applications is blocked before it gets through.

Goff said that the security technology it was bringing to the SD-WAN had already been proven in the data centre and network environments.

He added that there was a fairly sizeable customer base that was looking to make a move to software defined and partners had plenty of targets to go after.

The channel can expect plenty of emphasis being put by Cisco on SD-WAN. Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager, enterprise networking at the vendor, said that, "every WAN device must become software defined and secure".

"Cisco's SD-WAN makes it easy for customers to get the very best of networking and security. We are building a bridge to a new business world that speeds our customers' ability to unlock the power of the cloud, faster with less risk," he added.