Silver Peak Accelerates Industry Shift to an Application-Driven WAN Edge; High-Performance SD-WAN Solution Displaces the Need for Branch Routers

Singapore,
March 29, 2017 –
Silver Peak, the global leader in
broadband and hybrid WAN solutions, today announced a series of new
advancements to the Unity EdgeConnect high-performance
SD-WAN
solution that will enable enterprises to realize the advantages of a thin
branch office. With its latest software release, EdgeConnect becomes the
industry’s first fully integrated SD-WAN solution to combine high performance
SD-WAN, WAN Optimization, routing and a stateful firewall. These advancements
simplify and consolidate branch office infrastructure, shift the WAN edge
toward being application-driven and enable secure, direct internet connectivity
to SaaS and trusted web-based applications from the branch office. With more
than 350 customer deployments and counting, EdgeConnect is fast becoming the
preferred SD-WAN solution for geographically distributed enterprises and
partners including Clair Global, Bentley Systems, Radial Inc., and NuSpective
Solutions.

According to Gartner vice president and
distinguished analyst Joe Skorupa, “By 2020, more than 50 percent of WAN edge
infrastructure refresh initiatives will be based on SD-WAN versus traditional
routers.”

SD-WAN Powers
the Thin Branch

Silver Peak EdgeConnect liberates
enterprises from the cost, complexity and headaches associated with legacy
router-centric branch office infrastructure. With a series of new innovations
and capabilities, EdgeConnect can power an application-driven WAN edge and
enable enterprises, of all sizes, to confidently embrace commodity broadband to
connect users directly to applications, whether they are hosted in the cloud or
the data center. By consolidating branch office infrastructure at the WAN edge,
enterprises can dramatically simplify operations and lower costs without
sacrificing network or application performance.

Granular SaaS
and Cloud Application Visibility and Control with First-packet iQ

EdgeConnect incorporates a new feature
called First-packet iQ that automatically identifies more than 10,000 applications
and 300 million web domains based on the first packet received. With granular
insight into HTTP/HTTPS traffic, First-packet iQ enables internet breakout
automation by steering specific, trusted SaaS and web-based application traffic
directly to the internet while directing unknown or suspicious traffic to a
regional hub or data center firewall for further inspection. Direct internet
breakout automation optimizes SaaS and web application performance, enhancing
worker productivity and business agility. First-packet iQ utilizes
sophisticated techniques to provide the highest levels of application awareness
and intelligence available today. The techniques include a dynamic application
data repository based on DNS queries and hosted in the Silver Peak cloud
portal, DPI, TCP/UDP port data and IP protocol methods to assure accurate
application identification on the first packet.

Integrated
Stateful Firewall for Secure Internet Breakout

EdgeConnect now integrates a stateful
firewall that supports foundational firewall and security capabilities for
branch office locations that do not host applications. The integrated stateful
firewall allows outbound traffic to exit, but only allows ingress traffic to
enter in response to user-initiated sessions providing robust, thin branch
security. For applications traffic directed to regional or corporate firewalls,
EdgeConnect supports seamless service chaining across its industry-leading
technology alliance ecosystem that includes: Check Point Software, Palo Alto Networks,
Fortinet and zScaler.

Seamless
Routing Interoperability

EdgeConnect now supports
industry-standard BGP routing protocols for seamless interoperability between
the SD-WAN and legacy WAN architectures. BGP routing protocols facilitate full
mesh network configurations and dramatically simplify the addition of local
subnets to an SD-WAN, enabling enterprises to transition to an SD-WAN at a
comfortable pace. The combination of an integrated stateful firewall and
routing interoperability enables progressive enterprises seeking to rapidly
integrate acquired companies or consolidate branch office infrastructure to
transition to a thin branch without sacrificing the performance, security and
reliability of their WAN.

“We’re embarking upon a long overdue
revolution of the legacy WAN as enterprise network managers reach a boiling
point over the rigidity, complexity and escalating costs associated with
router-centric architectures,” said Tricia Png, regional director for ASEAN, at
Silver Peak. “Increasingly, enterprises are seeking to simplify branch and WAN
Edge infrastructure with SD-WAN solutions that connect users directly from
branch offices to cloud-hosted applications without sacrificing application
performance. EdgeConnect enables distributed enterprises to immediately or
progressively transform their router-centric WAN infrastructures to an SD-WAN
to gain the performance, security, reliability and control they require to keep
pace with changing business requirements.”

Bentley Systems

Founded in 1984, Bentley
Systems
is a global leader in comprehensive software solutions for advancing
infrastructure. With a global footprint spanning more than 50 countries, the
performance and availability of the firm’s network and applications is critical
to enabling its more than 3,000 employees, across 90 locations, to design,
develop and deliver a complete portfolio of infrastructure lifecycle management
software.

“Our managed NaaS-based SD-WAN
solution was proving cost prohibitive to scale so we conducted a
proof-of-concept and selected Silver Peak EdgeConnect. We selected EdgeConnect
for its superior performance, advanced feature-set and ability to cost-effectively
scale in line with our business requirements,” said David Craig, network
manager, Bentley Systems, Inc. “We put our trust in Silver Peak as the first
customer to deploy BGP routing in a production network and we are very
satisfied with our ability to easily create a full mesh network and dynamically
route traffic between our 15-central hub and 80+ satellite office sites. To
date, we’ve realized a 15 percent gain in network and application performance
and we’re on track to a three-month ROI that will enable us to save more than
$1.4M in connectivity costs over the coming three years.”

Clair Global

Founded in 1966, Clair
Global,
based in Lititz Pennsylvania, provides its clients with industry-leading
production equipment and services for concerts, corporate events and festivals
around the world. With a mission to exceed client expectations, the performance
of the firm’s network and applications is critical to the overall success of
their business.

“To simplify network operations
and lower connectivity costs, we evaluated a range of SD-WAN solutions and
ultimately selected EdgeConnect for its high performance, advanced features and
ease of deployment,” said Ben Harris, lead network administrator, Clair Global.
“We deployed the EdgeConnect software, taking advantage of 2-way BGP routing to
mesh our global sites together and enable us to simplify router management,
embrace commodity broadband and seamlessly connect our employees to the
applications that drive our business. From inventory control to VoIP and client
data our network and applications are performing better than ever before. More
simply put, EdgeConnect has been a game-changer for Clair Global.”

Radial Inc.

Radial Inc., headquartered in King of
Prussia Pennsylvania, is the leader in omnichannel commerce technology and
operations, enabling brands and retailers to profitably exceed retail customer
expectations from ‘behind-the-click’ with advanced order submission, payment authorization
and rapid shipping and fulfilment systems. The firm’s wide area network and
applications underpin its continued success and will serve to fuel future
growth and expansion.

“Our deployment of the
EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution brings us new levels of simplicity and flexibility
in connecting our employees to business applications using cost-effective
broadband transport,” said Ray Stegmaier, senior director of network
operations, Radial Inc. “With new capabilities like BGP routing combined with
integrated WAN Optimization with Unity Boost and advanced application
visibility and control with Unity Orchestrator, we’ve regained control of our
network and can take full advantage of commodity broadband without compromising
network or application performance. EdgeConnect has proven phenomenal for us,
the shift has been transparent to employees and we’re well on our way toward
reducing our monthly MPLS connectivity costs.”

NuSpective
Solutions

NuSpective
Solutions,
based in Pleasanton, California is a leading solution partner that provides IT
services to enterprise clients of all sizes. The firm’s solution partnerships
span best-in-class data center and networking infrastructure OEMs and top tier
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers. It specializes in enabling
clients to design and deploy a managed infrastructure leveraging any
combination of managed hosting, private cloud and public cloud assets around
the globe.

“As enterprise applications migrate to
the cloud, it’s driving a reevaluation of WAN requirements that include
evaluating SD-WAN solutions to simplify and consolidate branch office
infrastructure and leverage the favorable economics of broadband to connect
branch office users directly to applications, whether they reside in the data
center or the cloud” said Bob Murtagh, principle and co-founder at NuSpective
Solutions. “We’re helping our clients to navigate a gamut of SD-WAN vendors’
solutions, but in the end, with the advancements that Silver Peak has announced
today, we’re confident Silver Peak offers the industry’s most complete SD-WAN
solution that provides enterprises with the flexibility to use any combination
of underlying transport to deliver an unmatched user experience edge to edge.”