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Talari Networks is launching a partner program designed to encourage other tech vendors to build products for the company’s software-defined WAN portfolio and to help drive customer adoption.
Talari officials on May 26 unveiled the Talari Unite Technology Alliance program, which will provide tech partners with such resources as free virtual appliance and software licenses, online lab and solution lab technologies, and significant discounts on physical appliances. The goal is to accelerate the development of solutions based on the company’s software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) technologies, according to officials.
Talari and its partners will focus on a range of areas, including security, business applications, cloud, virtualization, WAN optimization, wireless networking and storage, officials said.
“The Talari Unite program enhances our ability to offer integrated solutions that facilitate revenue opportunities for our partners and deliver thoroughly tested and validated solutions to our mutual customers,” Michele Hayes, vice president of marketing at the SD-WAN vendor, said in a statement.
Talari officials are looking to create an ecosystem around its products as it competes in the fast-growing and highly competitive SD-WAN market. SD-WAN is part of the larger software-defined networking (SDN) push and is focused on campus networks. The cloud has changed the demands on the WAN, which traditionally has pushed data between campus and other remote sites and the data center, using transport modes like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), a relatively expensive but reliable way to move traffic.
However, MPLS and other traditional transport methods were not made for a cloud-centric world. With the cloud and the growing proliferation of mobile and connected devices, applications and data—both structured and unstructured—are coming from a variety of places, including cloud environments. Businesses are looking for faster and more affordable ways not only to connect their campus sites with the data center, but also directly to the cloud and the Internet. SD-WAN technologies are designed to enable the best transport method—whether that’s MPLS or other options, such as broadband, DSL, 3G and 4G.
Few people had heard of SD-WAN 18 months ago, but now there are almost two-dozen vendors pushing into the space, from established networking players like Cisco Systems, Riverbed Technology and Silver Peak Systems to pure-play companies like VeloCloud, CloudGenix, Aryaka, Viptela and Talari.
It’s not difficult to understand the interest of vendors to get into the space. IDC analysts are expecting the market to grow to $6 billion by 2020, up from less than $225 million last year. Gartner analysts are forecasting that the percentage of enterprises using SD-WAN technology will grow from about 1 percent currently to 30 percent by the end of 2019.
Talari, among the older pure-play vendors, has been in the market for 10 years and released its first commercial product in 2008. President and Chief Operating Officer John Dickey told eWEEK last month that Talari was “here before SD-WAN … was even a term. That intelligent layer we have is pretty unique to us. Other players have it, but we’re ahead of them.”
Talari’s portfolio includes a network control node that delivers centralized intelligence for SD-WAN, purpose-built appliances for the data center, branch, virtual or cloud deployments, and a secure overlay network that supports MPLS, Internet, wireless and satellite networks. In addition, there is the Aware software for SD-WAN management and analytics. The company’s solution also can support Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and VMware.