No Jitter Roll: Five for Friday 2019-11-21No Jitter Roll: Five for Friday 2019-11-21
A look at the latest news coming out of the SD-WAN market and from Mitel, AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, TrueConf, and Verint.
November 21, 2019
For this week’s No Jitter Roll, we look at a slew of SD-WAN announcements, the latest collaboration partnerships, video collaboration compatibility, and an enhanced cloud workforce management solution.
Aryaka Expands Portfolio, Other SD-WAN News
Kicking off this week's news, we turn to managed SD-WAN services provider Aryaka, which introduced four as-a-service SD-WAN offerings:
SmartOptimize, incorporating the company’s network and application acceleration technology
SmartCloud, supporting multi-cloud networking for public clouds, SaaS providers, and partner clouds
SmartSecure, offering managed firewall options and network function virtualization capability for pureplay firewalls
SmartInsights, for insights into SD-WAN performance across applications and SD-WAN infrastructure
Aryaka manages, orchestrates, and monitors these with its SmartManage solution, which includes customer support and global service level agreements, Aryaka said. These SD-WAN offerings will be generally available in Q1 2020, according to Aryaka.
Aryaka also announced a separate security as a service offering that will provide SD-WAN deployment security and new regional deployments for its SD-WAN products. Built out from its "network function virtualization architecture," the new managed IT security as a service product "[brings] in virtual network form functions of different security vendors and integrates that with edge devices," said Shashi Kiran, CMO, Aryaka, during a No Jitter briefing. Aryaka designed this offering to complement best-of-breed firewalls as well as its own security developments, Kiran said. This service will initially be available for Palo Alto Networks devices and extend to other vendors in the coming months, according to Kiran.
Additionally, Aryaka SD-WAN service users can bring services from other regional providers under Aryaka’s managed service umbrella, Kiran said.
Among other recent SD-WAN news:
Fortinet, Tata Communications Release SD-WAN offering – Fortinet this week made a host of announcements, including a joint offering with Tata Communications for Azure Virtual WAN. The offering will enable inter-branch connectivity for Microsoft backbone users and allows access to applications running on Azure, Fortinet said.
Epsilon Moves into Enterprise Market – Connectivity and communications service provider Epsilon moved into the enterprise market with its SD-WAN offering, which combines cloud-delivered SD-WAN with its Data Centre Interconnect and Direct Cloud Connect services.
Spectrum Enterprise Demonstrates at MEF19 – Communications service provider Spectrum Enterprise this week demonstrated its intent-based network scaling solution that is driven by AI and machine learning and uses data from IoT devices to predict network demand. The demo took place at the MEF19 networking conference.
Versa Networks Demonstrates, Wins at MEF19 – Similarly, cloud IP platform provider Versa Networks demonstrated two proof of concepts at MEF19 – one showcasing how multi-vendor SD-WAN services can be orchestrated and another where Versa and partners demonstrated the way in which Versa SD-WAN services can be supported via API automation certification. Additionally, Versa received the MEF19 Multi-Vendor Innovation award alongside software-defined networking solution provider Netcracker.
Palo Alto Networks Adds SD-WAN Capabilities – Security provider Palo Alto Networks last week announced new SD-WAN and data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities for its secure access service edge (SASE) platform Prisma Access, along with a new management user interface and service-level agreements.
Mitel, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner for Communication, Collaboration
Moving over to partnership news, Mitel has teamed with AWS to expand its UCC portfolio with Amazon Chime software development kit (SDK). With Amazon Chime SDK, developers can create customized calling experiences, manage microphones and cameras, and control meeting features, according to AWS.
Mitel said it plans to extend audio and video calling and screen-sharing capabilities to its applications, allowing for seamless real-time communications from any device. Additionally, Amazon Chime SDK is now a part of Mitel’s CloudLink architecture for voice, video, chat, and microservices, which is already hosted on AWS, Mitel said.
Salesforce Chooses Microsoft Azure
In other partnership news, Salesforce last week expanded its partnership with Microsoft, by naming Microsoft Azure its public cloud provider for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and announcing further Microsoft Teams integrations.
With the partnership, Salesforce plans to build new integration that gives sales and service users the ability to search, view, and share Salesforce records directly within Teams, according to Salesforce and Microsoft. The new integrations will be available in late 2020.
TrueConf Makes the Connection
Video collaboration provider TrueConf announced compatibility of its software with other SIP-enabled video conferencing platforms, such as Cisco Webex, BlueJeans, and Lifesize, using the multiprotocol gateway built in the software, TrueConf said. The feature is currently available and doesn't require extra plugins or licenses, according to TrueConf.
Verint Enhances Workforce Management Solution
Lastly, cloud workforce management provider Verint unveiled the latest version of its workforce management (WFM) solution. Leveraging AI-infused automation tools, the new version of Verint’s WFM solution features a redesigned user experience and mobile tools for forecasting and scheduling, Verint said. The cloud solution also supports a vendor-neutral approach to contact center ACD and data source integrations, according to Verint.
