Dell EMC And VMware Launch SD-WAN Edge ‘Prime Time’ Solution

‘What we have is Dell, who is the leader in open networking category, combining forces with VMware software, and we’re delivering an SD-WAN solution bundled together,’ says Brian Henderson, director of converged infrastructure and open networking product marketing at Dell EMC.

Dell EMC and VMware are once again flexing their integration muscles with the new Dell EMC SD-WAN Edge solution looking to take the growing software-defined WAN market by storm.

“What we have is Dell, who is the leader in the open networking category, combining forces with VMware software, and we’re delivering an SD-WAN solution bundled together,” said Brian Henderson, director of converged infrastructure and open networking product marketing at Dell EMC in an interview with CRN.

The new Dell EMC SD-WAN Edge powered by VMware is an integrated platform that helps improve the customer experience by bundling VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud software as a subscription with Dell EMC hardware. The new solution, unveiled at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas on Tuesday, will be sold in one-year or multi-year subscriptions.

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The solution is based on Dell EMC’s Virtual Edge Platform (VEP) 4600, which is roughly the size of a typical household cable box, according to Henderson. “It’s like a miniature virtualized network function server. It’s a network optimized server that is designed to run these virtualized network functions,” he said. “While it is a server, it’s designed for this software-defined networking functionality, especially something like SD-WAN.”

Mike Thompson, CEO of Groupware Technology, a Dell and VMware partner ranked No. 92 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500, said his company is seeing more opportunities around SD-WAN than ever.

“Dell partnering with VMware and VeloCloud strengthens that offering in SD-WAN. As things have started to move to the edge, there’s a whole lot of opportunities there,” said Thompson. “This is a great solution in a growing market where we’re seeing a lot more opportunities.”

Dell Technologies Consulting Services also is debuting three new services for customers adopting the SD-WAN technology: Advisory, Design and Implementation. Dell experts act as advisors to help customers plan, customize and scale the platform, providing a foundation for deployment and management of modernized virtual network functions.

In 2017, VMware acquired VeloCloud, who was an SD-WAN market leader at the time. VeloCloud quickly became a key element of VMware’s edge strategy with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger describing it in 2018 as the hottest product in the company’s portfolio.

“We’re taking that extremely cool VeloCloud software that allows people to move away from a traditional dedicated link, aka MPLS -- which is a very expensive dedicated line -- over to a cheaper form of connection,” said Henderson.

As businesses look to buy WAN optimization solutions that are flexible, cost-effective and solve their problems at the edge, the SD-WAN market is poised to reach $4.5 billion by 2022.

The Dell EMC SD-WAN Edge solution is expected become generally available for partners to sell in July.

“For partners, this SD-WAN market is on fire. We want partners to go after that market segment,” said Henderson. “Over the years people have conquered software-defined storage, software-defined servers and now we’re finally taking on the complexity of networking. For a partner working with Dell, if you haven’t explored SD-WAN yet there is a huge and quickly growing opportunity. It’s prime time to go after SD-WAN.”