VeloCloud Outcome-Driven Networking ‘A Leap Forward’ in SD-WAN

**Editor’s Note: Click here for our recently compiled list of new products and services.**

VeloCloud Networks is introducing a software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) policy implementation approach designed to give businesses more flexibility.

The Mountain View, California-based networking provider on Tuesday announced “Outcome-Driven Networking,” a strategy that lets organizations orchestrate and automate their networking processes based on their specific goals and contexts.

VeloCloud’s Mike Wood

The approach is based around the tenets of abstraction and automation, contextual implementation and self-learning. The user sets goals for how the network will prioritize and transport specific applications, and the network automatically adapts to the desired changes using analytics and other learning features.

It’s VeloCloud’s first product announcement since VMware announced that it was buying the SD-WAN provider.

The company frames the new approach as an opportunity to “liberate IT teams from tedious manual processes.” Mike Wood, VeloCloud’s VP of marketing, tells Channel Partners the announcement reflects the changing role of the IT department. Wood says organizations are also asking IT to accelerate deployments while at the same time decrease those deployments’ risks. And IT needs partners help with those goals.

“What we’re seeing is that IT teams are really raising themselves to a different standard in terms of their relevance within the business, from being more or less of a cost center to now more of a team that’s focused on growth and revenue and profitability,” Wood said. “They’ve also been seeking – and with VeloCloud they’ve been able to implement – this model of taking the business outcomes that they have and translate those into actual actions within IT and within the network.”

An example is Microsoft Office 365, which Wood says customers continually mention to VeloCloud and its partners.

“I just talked to a customer yesterday who’s moving to Office 365 but also going to move to Azure in the services industry. Oftentimes, they desire to improve voice quality along with access to Office 365,” he said. “In the past, typically this involved backhauling these applications to the data center, mainly because there was one single internet connection that they had full control over.”
But Wood says that Microsoft’s best practices recommend that Office 365 run through each of the branch offices via a direct internet connection. And securing an application-based priority like that requires managing complexity and quality of service.

Key features include intelligent routing, policy-driven segmentation and one-click IPsec VPN.

Curtis McEwen, director of information services for Saber Healthcare Group, says the new approach helps Saber segment its network traffic for its six-state health-care network.

“The introduction of VeloCloud Outcome-Driven Networking helps us significantly reduce …