16 Hot Networking Products Putting The Sizzle In SD-WAN

New SD-WAN Products Take Center Stage

As the networking landscape transforms to a software-defined approach, vendors are releasing a slew of new offerings aimed at reducing costs, increasing network automation and driving efficiency.

Solution providers should keep a keen eye on the new networking products launched recently by Cisco Systems, CloudGenix, Aruba Networks, Brocade Communications, Mushroom Networks and Riverbed around routers, network controllers and SD-WAN. SD-WAN, in particular, is a fast-growing market, one that research firm IHS expects to grow at a CAGR of 90 percent with the market tipping $1.3 billion by 2020, making up 71 percent of WAN optimization revenue in four years.

Here are 16 new networking products shaking up the market.

CloudGenix SD-WAN ION Platform

CloudGenix launched an SD-WAN platform for virtualizing the remote office. The new Instant On (ION) 3000v reduces the need for complex legacy hardware and improves the security and performance of the application, according to the company.

Inside 3000v is CloudGenix's new Application-Defined Fabric that allows enterprises to deploy applications anywhere based on SLAs.

"With our application-defined fabric, enterprises are no longer hostage to their hardware vendors and have the freedom to deploy their applications anywhere, enhancing both application performance and security posture," said Kumar Ramachandran, founder and CEO of CloudGenix, in a statement.

Aerohive SD-LAN, Wave 2 APs

Aerohive Networks said it is redefining the access layer with the flexible wireless and wired networking capabilities of its new SD-Local Area Network offfering. Aerohive's SD-LAN capabilities include a new line of cloud-managed access switches: the AP250, a Wave 2 802.11ac access point with software-definable dual 5GHz radios.

The SD-LAN solution also includes the latest release of HiveManager NG cloud-delivered network and policy management as well as an open API platform.

Riverbed SteelConnect SD-WAN 2.0

Riverbed's new SteelConnect 2.0 SD-WAN platform delivers significant updates and enhancements, including native dynamic routing for simplified networking, end-to-end visibility through integration with Riverbed SteelCentral, WAN optimization via Riverbed SteelHead, and support for large-scale data center deployments with Riverbed Interceptor.

Riverbed also unveiled two new gateway models: SteelConnect Gateway 1030, delivering up to 1 Gbps throughput at edge locations, and Gateway 5030 that delivers up to 10 Gbps throughput and supports high-availability configurations in the data center. The final touch to SteelConnect 2.0 is the new Switch S48 that offers 48X GbE PoE+ ports in a 1U rack-mountable form factor.

Brocade Data Center SLX Routers With Software

Fresh off its acquisition of Ruckus Wireless, Brocade Communications launched a next-generation data center router, the SLX 9850. The extensible 9850 provides density, scale and performance for 10/40/100GbE data center use cases, according to Brocade.

The routers include Brocade's SLX embedded Insight Architecture software that delivers pervasive network visibility as well as the company's Workflow Compose to provide server-based network automation that integrates across IT domains for end-to-end workflow automation.

Aruba Networks-HPE Mobile-First Platform

Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, launched its Mobile First Platform that uses open APIs to provide third-party developers and business leaders with network insight to improve applications and services.

The foundation of the platform is built on ArubaOS 8.0, the company's newest operating system that allows developers to leverage contextual information from the infrastructure via APIs and enables greater programmability with the ability to upload custom application signatures in real time.

Cisco, Salesforce Team Up For IoT, UC

In a blockbuster announcement in September, Cisco and Salesforce said they are combing their Internet of Things and unified communications technologies together in new joint offerings. The two companies will co-develop and co-market offerings that combine its platforms in collaboration, IoT and contact center with Salesforce Sales Cloud, IoT Cloud and Service Cloud offerings.

Cisco Spark and WebEx will be integrated into Salesforce's Cloud and Service Cloud, while Cisco's Jasper IoT platform will be integrated with Salesforce's IoT Cloud. The alliance will also combine Cisco's Unified Contact Center Enterprise and Salesforce Service Cloud. The contact center integration is now available through the Salesforce AppExchange, while the IoT and collaboration offerings will become available in the second half of 2017.

Mushroom Networks' Virtual Network Function

Mushroom Networks launched a new virtual network function (VNF) platform representing the next stage in the SD-WAN market, according to Mushroom. Mushroom's VNF Design Studio enables enterprise and service providers to easily build their own VNFs in order to give network administrators an easier way to design and deploy customized WAN overlays.

"VNF Design Studio extends the programmability benefits of the software-defined data center all the way to the branch office," said Mushroom CEO Cahit Akin in a statement.

Avi Vantage Platform 2.0

On the heels of launching its first partner program, Avi Networks revamped its flagship Avi Vantage Platform that delivers automated application services including load balancing, application analytics, predictive auto-scaling and security for on-premise or public cloud applications. New key capabilities include multicloud autoscaling, DNS Service for Amazon AWS, Google cloud support and extended OpenStack support.

"The new release … addresses the requirements of our largest enterprise customers who have developed and deployed applications in their OpenStack or VMware private clouds, public clouds and software-defined data centers, where they want to deploy and manage applications and traffic across any of these environments in a cost-effective manner," said Guru Chahal, vice president of products for Avi, in a statement.

ARM's CoreLink Interconnect

ARM released new interconnect technology to meet the demand of cloud-based business models across markets including 5G networks, data center infrastructure and industrial systems. The two new releases for the backplane are the CoreLink DMC-620 Dynamic Memory Controller and the CoreLink CMN-600 Coherent Mesh Network interconnect.

ARM said the two new products enable its latest systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) to offer unmatched data throughput.

Wave2Wave New Cable Fabric

Data center connectivity specialist Wave2Wave Solution is expanding its Edge cable fabric family with new QSFP28 copper-based, direct-attached cables. Edge is a single cable product family to build a network fabric for spine-and-leaf, data center infrastructure, and server rack-and-stack environments. The QSFP28 supports data rates now up to 100 Gbps, with near-zero wire speed latency and no power consumption that reduces data center energy use.

Xirrus Holds Hands With Microsoft

Xirrus built a new cloud management feature that integrates with Microsoft Office 365 to streamline Wi-Fi connectivity for organizations using Microsoft cloud-based office applications. A feature of the Xirrus EasyPass suite of access services, the new functionality simplifies and expedites how organizations deliver secure Wi-Fi access via the cloud-based Microsoft authentication system they are already using.

"The new integration makes it easier and less expensive to deliver an enterprise Wi-Fi network," said Bruce Miller, vice president of product marketing at Xirrus, in a statement.

H uawei VideoSense

China-based Huawei recently released VideoSense, touting it as the first video experience visualization management offering. VideoSense delivers video with visualized, manageable and optimizable features.

"Managing and maintaining video experience for large-scale user deployment has become a common challenge for most operators," said He Yibo, vice president of Huawei's network product line, in a statement. "The network is the backbone of the experience, while Operation, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) provides guaranteed levels of experience. VideoSense … allows operators to build experience-centric differentiated competitive edges."

Virtual Hyper-Converged From Riverbed

Riverbed's hyper-converged solution that brings server, storage and network infrastructure into a single appliance, SteelFusion, can now be offered in cloud and virtual deployment options. The new Virtual SteelFusion Edge delivers complete software-defined edge capabilities in a virtual form factor capable of running on any server hardware that meets required specifications, according to the company. This gives customers the flexibility to deploy SteelFusion on commercial off-the-shelf server hardware, according to Riverbed.

In addition, SteelFusion is now available to deploy on IBM SoftLayer, an IaaS platform and bare-metal cloud infrastructure for the enterprise.

ONOS' Hummingbird

Targeting service providers, Hummingbird is the ONOS Project's new software-defined networking OS that provides the only SDN control plane that can support both disruptive and incremental SDN for service providers and enterprises, according to ONOS. Hummingbird expands ONOS to be able to configure and control legacy networks with additional support for Arista and Cisco devices as well as improved interoperability and ways for applications to interact with protocols through message bus integration.

Organizations funding ONOS include AT&T, Cisco, Huawei, Intel, Samsung and Verizon, to name a few.

Cisco's Cloud Services Push

Cisco recently launched a slew of professional services that partners can either resell, white label, co-deliver or co-develop alongside the networking giant. The new services include Cloud Acceleration, which accelerates the design and deployment of both traditional private clouds and cloud-native solutions such as OpenStack and Platform as-a-Service. In addition, the networking giant's new IT Transformation services for DevOps focuses on DevOps-related change management initiatives that help align business processes and capabilities.

Also new is a multicloud managed and orchestration service for Cisco's Cloud Center, as well as enhanced application and cloud migration services to automate the complexity in on-boarding and migrating applications and workloads to the cloud.

Avaya's Cloud Networking Platform

Avaya recently revealed a complete network life-cycle management solution for enterprise and SMBs. The new Avaya Cloud Networking Platform delivers a unified solution for deploying and managing wired and wireless networks providing centralized management, visibility and control over the network without the complexity of controller appliances or overlay management software.

It also includes zero-touch activation of new access points and switching along with automated software updates, with a fully integrated guest portal and BYOD on-boarding capabilities. On the security front, the multi-tenant platform offers data isolation among different cloud tenants, while all communications are fully encrypted with traffic remaining on the firewall protected LAN.