Oracle’s Purchase Of Talari Makes It The First Major Public Cloud Provider To Offer SD-WAN

There’s a huge trend for SD-WAN providers to tie into public clouds. But Oracle is the first major public cloud provider to offer SD-WAN, itself. It will be offering SD-WAN as part of its Oracle Communications’ business.

In 2017 Oracle tried to create its own SD-WAN technology in house. It had some good components, including a voice-edge in the enterprise and analytics. But its customers were chomping at the bit. “We were going to roll it out as a SaaS,” said Doug Suriano, SVP and GM of Oracle Communications. “But we couldn’t get to market fast enough even with the installed base.”

So in November, Oracle announced it was acquiring SD-WAN company Talari Networks, a vendor based in San Jose, California. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the transaction will be complete before the end of 2018. And all of Talari’s approximately 80 employees will join Oracle.

Talari’s technology is expected to complement Oracle Communications’ session border controller (SBC) infrastructure. Suriano said Oracle’s SBCs are “the voice edge of an enterprise network,” and Talari’s SD-WAN technology provides the “data edge of an enterprise network.” He said both technologies can run on Oracle’s x86 devices at customer locations, and customers who want to run virtual functions on their own hardware will have that option as well.

In addition to technical synergies, the two companies bring new customers to each other. Talari counted about 500 customers, mostly small- to medium-sized businesses. Oracle’s Suriano said, “I’m serving basically the Tier 1s and large global enterprises. It was a nice synergy.” Oracle’s direct sales force will now work to expand both groups of customers.

Andy Gottlieb, co-founder and CMO of Talari Networks, said one criticism Talari had suffered was people saying “These guys are small; they don’t have the reach.”

“Well, now we have the reach,” he said.

Gottlieb added: “Oracle is the first cloud provider I know of doing SD-WAN. Because Oracle has a communications business, we’re a nice fit. Being a cloud vendor that has reliable SD-WAN gives Oracle customers a big leg up.”

This doesn’t mean that Oracle won’t work with all the other SD-WAN vendors and service providers that want to connect with Oracle Cloud.

And on the flip-side, Oracle’s SD-WAN will help customers to connect with other clouds. “We’re seeing large enterprises are going to have 10-20 clouds they get their services from, said Suriano, adding that it’s important to have “an SD-WAN that works with any cloud for any enterprise.”

He agreed with Gottlieb that SD-WAN makes an especially good fit for Oracle because the company has a communications vertical. But Suriano added, “I think you’re seeing a little noise with AWS and Microsoft getting tighter partnerships with other SD-WAN vendors. I think AWS will do a little more natively.” – SDX Central