Silver Peak claims cloud-scale SD-WAN innovation with enhanced core platform

The journey into software-enabled networking continues with self-driving wide area network technology provider Silver Peak claiming enhancements to its platform, enabling cloud-first enterprises to scale, automate and extend software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) deployments across multiple fabrics and leading cloud services.

The advancements and new capabilities of the Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform include multifabric orchestration and management, one-click automation with cloud services, advanced segmentation and cloud-scale connectivity. All of these, according to Silver Peak, enable businesses to scale, automate and simplify the configuration, deployment and management of a modern WAN edge to 10,000 sites and beyond.

“As the digital transformation initiatives and cloud strategies of large enterprises mature and become increasingly sophisticated, SD-WAN offerings must be capable not only of scaling to accommodate large numbers of sites, but also of providing multitenant and segmentation capabilities that the world’s largest enterprise customers demand for control, manageability and consistent security across multicloud environments,” remarked Brad Casemore, vice-president of research, datacentre networks at IDC, assessing the upgrade.

“With the latest enhancements to its Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform, Silver Peak is responding to the evolving requirements of its largest enterprise customers,” he added.

Silver Peak also believes that as cloud-first enterprises continue to scale deployments, they will also be seeking to simplify network management through advanced automation. This it sees as particularly true as it relates to configuring, deploying and enforcing consistent security policies across all network locations.

Together with ecosystem security partners Zscaler and Check Point Software, Silver Peak is allowing network administrators to automate the configuration of internet protocol security (IPsec) tunnels from branch locations to the nearest cloud-delivered security point of presence (POP) with drag and drop capability through the Unity Orchestrator management interface.

The software is designed expressly for large-scale global enterprises with multiple divisions, business units or subsidiaries that each require a dedicated SD-WAN fabric. Each fabric can be individually orchestrated and managed, providing enterprises with centralised network-wide visibility and control, including aggregated observability of the entire network.

The one-click automation now extends to public cloud workloads hosted in Microsoft Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) instances, enabling network managers to automatically identify, classify and onboard Azure-destined traffic to the nearest Microsoft Virtual WAN on-ramp in proximity to each branch location, assuring the highest quality of experience for application users.

Silver Peak said such a combination of advanced one-click automation ensures consistent security and application policy enforcement across all WAN locations, reducing configuration time from hours to minutes and making IT more responsive to the business.

“As global enterprises shift IT spending toward modern cloud applications and services, many are coming to the realisation that a no-compromise WAN transformation strategy is required to achieve a multiplier effect on these investments,” said Damon Ennis, senior vice-president of products at Silver Peak.

“With today’s expanded capabilities, [the new, enhanced solution is] engineered to address the changing requirements of cloud-first enterprises, enabling them to scale, automate and extend SD-WAN deployments across multiple fabrics and cloud instances, while maintaining centralised control and complete observability of the WAN.”