Riverbed signs strategic OEM agreement with Versa

Riverbed has signed a global original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with Versa Networks, combining Riverbed's global support and services, and digital performance with Versa Network's enterprise-class secure SD-WAN technology.

This agreement strengthens Riverbed's presence in the SD-WAN market, and expands the company's reach and ability to address larger and more complex enterprise SD-WAN deployments in order to help businesses of all sizes and types transform their networks and compete in the digital era.

Riverbed will offer an expanded portfolio of SD-WAN solutions alongside Riverbed SteelConnect, which will now include a new enterprise offering leveraging Versa Network's Secure Cloud IP software platform.

The new SD-WAN solution will deliver high scalability, a full stack of enterprise and carrier-grade routing and advanced network security capabilities, which complement Riverbed's powerful SD-WAN, application acceleration and digital experience management solutions, providing a complete family of offerings.

"The agreement with Versa Networks allows Riverbed to provide our customers with a broader set of choices and address the modern networking needs of organisations of all types and sizes – large, medium and small, cloud-first, hybrid and traditional – across the globe," says Riverbed CEO Paul Mountford.

"Versa's enterprise-class technology complements Riverbed's leading SD-WAN, application acceleration and digital experience management solutions nicely, and will be backed by Riverbed's leading support and professional services that customers rely on. This expanded portfolio allows Riverbed to more fully go after our large enterprise installed base, which includes the vast majority of the Fortune 2000, and will empower our customers to choose the right SD-WAN solution to help them transform their networks, gain agility and remain competitive in their respective industries.

Since the initial 2016 launch of Riverbed's SD-WAN solution SteelConnect, Riverbed has grown its SD-WAN customer base to 1,000+ organisations all over the world.

"Riverbed is a trusted leader in enterprise-wide area networking and digital performance," says Versa Network CEO Kelly Ahuja.

"Our partnership will provide customers with a complete family of next-generation networking and security solutions for today's digital world with multi-cloud, multi-transport networks. Versa is teaming up with Riverbed to leverage the organisation's global reach into large enterprise, industry-leading support and services, and expertise and leadership in digital performance, which will drive greater opportunities for Versa and a strong offering for enterprise customers.

Riverbed's SteelConnect solution introduces a broad set of capabilities, including integration with SteelCentral for visibility and insight and integration with the WAN Optimisation solution (Riverbed SteelHead SD).

SteelConnect provides automated "one-click" connectivity for Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to help IT professionals achieve agility, performance and security across the distributed and hybrid enterprise.

Riverbed will continue to offer SteelConnect SD-WAN, and will leverage Versa Network's technology for larger scale enterprise deployments – offering a family of Riverbed SD-WAN solutions that can now address the varying digital networking needs of all types and sizes of organisations worldwide.

Its SD-WAN offerings leveraging Versa Network's Secure Cloud IP software will be available in the second half of 2019.