SD-WAN

Palo Alto Networks SD-WAN: Prisma SD-WAN and the Security-First Approach Palo Alto Networks entered the SD-WAN market through acquisition rather than organic development. In 2019, the company acquired CloudGenix — a purpose-built SD-WAN startup with a cloud-native architecture and a strong focus on application-defined networking — for approximately $420 million. The CloudGenix technology became Prisma SD-WAN, integrated into Palo Alto’s Prisma SASE platform alongside Prisma Access (cloud-delivered security). What makes Palo Alto’s approach distinctive is not the SD-WAN technology itself — CloudGenix was technically competitive but not dramatically differentiated from Silver Peak or Viptela at acquisition. The differentiation is the integration strategy: Prisma SD-WAN is not sold as a standalone WAN product but as a component of a unified SASE architecture. Understanding Palo Alto’s SD-WAN means understanding where it sits within that broader security and networking strategy. ...

HPE Aruba SD-WAN: EdgeConnect and the WAN Optimization Legacy HPE Aruba’s SD-WAN story starts not with a networking giant but with a WAN optimization specialist. Silver Peak Systems spent years solving the hard problems of enterprise WAN performance — deduplication, compression, TCP optimization, application acceleration — before pivoting to SD-WAN as the technology shift made the market ripe for a new architecture. HPE acquired Silver Peak in 2020 for approximately $925 million, integrating the technology into the Aruba portfolio as Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN. ...

Cisco SD-WAN: Catalyst SD-WAN and the Enterprise Architecture Approach Cisco’s path to SD-WAN runs through one of the more significant enterprise networking acquisitions of the last decade. In 2017, Cisco acquired Viptela — a purpose-built SD-WAN startup — for approximately $610 million. That acquisition became the foundation of what Cisco now calls Catalyst SD-WAN (previously known as Cisco SD-WAN, and before that Viptela SD-WAN). Understanding the Viptela heritage helps explain both the architectural strengths and the operational complexity that characterizes Cisco’s platform today. ...

Fortinet SD-WAN: Security-Driven Networking in Practice Fortinet occupies an unusual position in the SD-WAN market. It did not build a standalone SD-WAN product and later add security to it — nor did it acquire a WAN optimization vendor and rebrand the technology. Instead, Fortinet embedded SD-WAN capabilities directly into FortiOS, the same operating system that runs its NGFW, IPS, SSL inspection, and application control functions. The result is an architecture the company calls security-driven networking, and it has made Fortinet one of the leading positions in Gartner’s SD-WAN Magic Quadrant for multiple consecutive years. ...

SD-WAN Nedir? Ağ Mühendisleri İçin Pratik Bir Kılavuz Kurumsal WAN’ın bir sorunu var. On yıllardır şirketler, şubeler, veri merkezleri ve genel merkezler arasındaki uygulama performansını garanti etmek için MPLS hatları için yüksek primler ödüyor. Bu mimari, tüm trafik dahili olduğunda ve tüm uygulamalar veri merkezinde yaşadığında mantıklıydı. Sonra bulut geldi. Bugün Münih’teki bir şube, Microsoft 365 trafiğini 200 ms’lik bir MPLS backhaul üzerinden Frankfurt’a, oradan internete, oradan Microsoft’un Avrupa edge’ine gönderiyor — her Teams aramasına ve SharePoint senkronizasyonuna 60 ile 100 ms arasında gereksiz gecikme ekleyerek. Ağ, artık var olmayan bir dünya için inşa edildi. ...