WAN Provider Teridion Teams With Cisco Meraki To 'Tightly Integrate' SD-WAN, Security

Cloud WAN provider Teridion said it's the first vendor to tightly integrate its SD-WAN solution with Cisco Meraki’s MX Security product.

Teridion, a provider of application delivery and WAN solutions, has been building a close relationship with Cisco Systems and now the fruits of that tight-knit association are paying off.

Petah Tikva, Israel-based Teridion is the first vendor to announce a network-level integration between its high throughput, low latency public cloud-based WAN service and Cisco Meraki’s MX Security and SD-WAN appliances, Pej Roshan, Teridion's vice president of products and marketing, told CRN.

Cisco Meraki’s MX appliances combined with Teridion’s WAN solution will give enterprises and channel partners better visibility and control of the first, middle, and last mile of the Internet and will extend SD-WAN and WAN acceleration beyond enterprise branches to SaaS applications and public cloud providers, the company said.

[Related: Cloud WAN Provider Teridion Launches Channel Partner Program ]

The San Francisco-based company also said that Teridion for Enterprise, its public cloud-based WAN service, is now generally available. Teridion in November launched a new channel program that targets VARs focused on networking and SD-WAN, as well as master agent partners. Teridion said it is relying strictly on the channel to sell Teridion for Enterprise.

Teridion said that partners that offer the combined Cisco Meraki and Teridion solution will be able to offer a compelling service to their customers because it will give enterprises access to "all the cool things that Meraki offers" with the Teridion WAN service, Roshan said.

"This is the first of its kind of solution. For the first time, you have Meraki, which has great edge and WAN security capabilities and analytics, natively integrated with the Teridion service, so partners can stitch together a really powerful WAN that has built-in SaaS acceleration," Roshan said.

The tightly-integrated solution will be particularly helpful for customers that need better remote desktop and VDI experiences and it can also help improve voice and video performance, Roshan said. "There's been no good, single way to improve performance across multiple clouds," he added.

Partners have been trying to piece together a single solution that offers throughput improvement and reduced latency, but they've often had to incorporate several different solutions that leave "holes" between integration points, said Kevin Moynahan, director of channel sales for Teridion.

"Seven out of 10 of our midsized customers already have some Meraki in their networks, so we are going to be able to leverage that base and make our partner's offerings stronger," he said. "It's a win-win."

BlueFox Group, a Phoenix-based solution provider, partners with both Teridion and Cisco, primarily selling Meraki to its base of midmarket customers. Meraki has been a great solution for its customer base, but there was always a piece missing that BlueFox had to fill in using another product, said Eric Wood, principal of BlueFox Group.

"Before we had to get another product and put it on the side of Cisco Meraki, and it makes it really complicated," he said. "Now we can use the full stack of features that are built into Meraki and get the SD-WAN we need all in one place, all under one umbrella."

BlueFox Group plans to roll out the combined Teridion and Meraki solution across its base of customers, Wood said. "The whole reason to buy Meraki is that it makes things simple. Now having Teridion and Meraki blended together, we don't need to add in any more products," he said.

Both Teridion's partners, as well as Cisco Meraki partners, will have access to the joint solution. "We are the only solution that Cisco has approved for this type of integration," Roshan said.

Teridion for Enterprise can be easily "snapped-into" Cisco Meraki MX enterprise security and SD-WAN appliances to bring carrier-grade Internet and WAN performance to broadband and dedicated Internet access connections. Cisco's Meraki MX will serve as the primary interface for the new solution. Enterprises using the joint-solution can expect throughput improvement ranging from 20 to 300 percent, as well as improved circuit-grade network performance around latency, loss, and jitter. Teridion costs less than carrier circuits and is backed with an SLA, according to the company.

Teridion for Enterprise can run on top of 25 different cloud provider platforms today, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. In addition to Cisco Meraki, the offering also works with third-party SD-WAN offerings from the likes of Silver Peak and VeloCloud.