Specialization helps a business stand out from a crowded market, and there are fewer markets more crowded than SD-WAN. That's why, in an effort to retain its position as one of the SD-WAN market's leading players, Aryaka is expanding its portfolio of services while retaining its focus on serving the biggest global enterprises.

The foundation of Aryaka's business is an international SD-WAN platform, comprising multiple points of presence (PoPs) and leased fiber that it uses to offer global managed services. That's different from many SD-WAN players that either sell self-service SD-WAN technology or offer SD-WAN services that run over a patchwork of telco networks.

That approach has proved successful: The company is currently ranked third, behind only VMware and Cisco, according to IHS Markit Technology researchers, in what is a very fragmented market.

Now, though, it is branching out with additional connectivity options and a new application tool set.

Aryaka is expanding its SD-WAN service options to include regional as well as global connectivity. According to the company's CMO Shashi Kiran, this will enable customers that currently use a combination of Aryaka for global connectivity, along with alternative options for more regional WAN links, to use Aryaka for regional as well as global connectivity. With this new regional offering now available, Arayaka refers to its range of connectivity-as-a-service offerings as SmartConnect.

Additionally, Aryaka has unveiled a portfolio of additional "as-a-service" products dubbed collectively as SmartServices: SmartCloud enables multicloud connectivity to public cloud platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, starting with Salesforce; SmartSecure, which comprises a managed firewall service and/or virtualized firewall integration; SmartOptimize, for network and application acceleration; and SmartInsights, an analytics offering.

SmartCloud will provide direct connectivity between Aryaka's PoPs and public cloud providers. That's important to enterprises that are relying on software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to run their business, and need reliable, fast connectivity to those applications. Aryaka will initially provide SmartCloud to Salesforce, with others provided based on customer demand, Kiran said.

SmartSecure sees the addition of firewall virtual network functions (VNFs) to Aryaka's managed customer premises equipment (CPE). The first VNF comes from Palo Alto Networks, with others to follow. "Our intent is to be firewall agnostic," noted Kiran.

The new services will be available in the first quarter of calendar 2020. (Read Aryaka's press release for more.)

Figure 1: Like this cow, Aryaka needs to stand out in the field. Photo by Phil Roeder(CC BY 2.0)

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That steps up the competition between Aryaka and regional service providers.

The new regions aren't small -- North America is one, parts of Europe are another, and China is a third. Nor are the new customers small -- they're midsized to large enterprises, with presence spanning those individual regions. Regional connectivity expands Aryaka's addressable market eightfold, Kiran says.

Standing out from the crowd
Aryaka CEO Matt Carter told Light Reading soon after he took the position last year that he saw differentiating the company from a crowded field of SD-WAN vendors as the primary challenge.

Since then, Aryaka scored $50 million funding in May, and deepened its portfolio, providing hybrid WAN that can run over the public Internet. Now it offers regional connectivity and a range of applications designed to meet enterprise customers' needs.

Checking all the boxes
"Aryaka is checking all the boxes of what people are looking for right now in SD-WAN services," Scott Raynovich, founder and principal analyst for Futuriom, tells Light Reading.

Regional service is part of a trend to get SD-WAN connectivity to the cloud as close to customers in a region as possible: That improves performance, which is key to attracting customers, noted Raynovich. Offering a variety of security options is also important, he added.

The new services will help Aryaka stand out in the crowded SD-WAN field, which Raynovich believes could currently include as many as 50 alternative offerings, while other industry watchers have put the number of SD-WAN suppliers as high as 70.

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— Mitch Wagner Executive Editor, Light Reading