Viptela Announces Secure Extensible Network 

Viptela, Inc. emerged from stealth and announced the Viptela Secure Extensible Network (SEN). Viptela SEN allows companies to easily deploy and manage wide-area networks (WANs) in a highly secure and affordable way. In deployments at Fortune 500 companies, Viptela's SEN has already accelerated the delivery of new services and reduced network complexity and costs by up to 80 percent.

"The WAN industry has seen incremental steps in innovation and agility of the underlying infrastructure during the last ten years. However, the hub-and-spoke model that once served WAN users well is no longer able to keep up," said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. "The WAN needs a serious overhaul to address today's realities. People need access to applications instantly, enterprises need to connect offices directly, not through a hub, and security has to reach the ever-changing perimeter of the WAN. Viptela addresses all of those needs with its SEN."

Traditional networking infrastructure was developed when the security perimeter was well-defined, applications were low-bandwidth, and most content and applications resided in centralized data centers. As workers become more mobile and cloud-based apps proliferate, traffic patterns are shifting and bandwidth needs are exploding. Enterprises are struggling to scale connectivity over legacy MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) networks and are unable to find a solution that provides the scale, security and simplicity needed to innovate in this dynamic environment.

"Customers are tired of incremental innovation and automation," said Amir Khan, CEO, Viptela. "What is needed is a fundamentally disruptive WAN architecture. The Viptela SEN is the first networking solution to deliver what companies have been asking for: routing, security, segmentation, and policy integrated into one simple, scalable solution."

The Viptela SEN enables secure connectivity as a utility. It allows enterprises to focus on enabling applications and services on top of a robust networking platform.

Managing the Disappearing Security Perimeter Security vulnerabilities on corporate networks arise with weak encryption policies, distributed security enforcement points, and complex management schemes that are an outcome of today's outdated WAN architectures. In addition, audit and compliance penalties can be levied as a result of inadequate network-wide segmentation for sensitive applications, mission-critical lines of business, or B2B partners.

The Viptela SEN overcomes the many security limitations imposed by inflexible WAN architectures. With its highly segmented and scalable architecture, the Viptela SEN enables rapid device authentication, allowing only known and trusted devices to talk to the network; encryption at scale, ensuring protection across diverse transport networks; and efficient key management with no impact to performance.

"It's been 15 years since I've seen a business model deliver complete innovation in circuit optimization, with comprehensive consideration for performance, security and Quality of Service," said Richard Stiennon, chief analyst, IT Harvest.

Use Cases The Viptela SEN takes aim at the use cases most challenging to CIOs, CISOs and IT directors today. These include:

• Transport-Agnostic WANs. The Viptela SEN provides a cost-effective, secure IP fabric over any underlying transport network (MPLS, Broadband Internet, Metro-Ethernet, LTE, etc.)
• End-to-End Network Segmentation. The Viptela SEN provides end-to-end segmentation for sensitive traffic that needs to meet regulatory compliance or for traffic among different lines of business and business partners
• Optimized Internet Exit. Enterprises can deliver an optimal user experience for cloud, real-time voice/video, and Internet applications by securely enabling localized Internet exit points.
• B2B Partner Networks. Enterprises with a dynamic partner ecosystem can rapidly and securely onboard business partners over any transport network.
• Encryption at Scale. The Viptela SEN provides powerful encryption, with automated key management and device authentication to secure any network infrastructure.
• Network Service Insertion. Existing network services such as firewalls, IPS and load balancers can be consolidated at centralized locations, and application traffic can be routed through these services by simple policy changes, based on business logic instead of arcane layer 3 routing rules.

By using time-tested and proven technologies that have scaled the Internet for two decades, Viptela also enables organizations to deploy the SEN in a phased approach - starting with a single branch site and growing to the most critical network segments.

Components, Pricing and Availability The components of the Viptela solution include:

• vEdge Routers. The vEdge routers are full-featured IP routers that perform standard functions and implement routing policies, while participating in the overlay control and data plane.
• vSmart Controller. The vSmart controller, a virtual appliance, is the controller for the overlay network.
• vManage Network Management System. The vManage NMS, a virtual appliance, enables automatic configuration, management, and monitoring of the Viptela SEN.