Japan’s SoftBank added Aryaka to its cadre of SD-WAN platform providers, tapping the vendor for its full WAN offering that will include network, equipment, and eventually security components to support SoftBank customers domestically and with their international networking needs.

Hugo Vliegen, SVP of product management at Aryaka, explained that the move will initially involve the vendor’s cloud-based SD-WAN-as-a-service platform. This will be the basis for SoftBank’s “SD-CORE(aryaka)” offering.

SoftBank will also tap into Aryaka’s private core products that include its FlexCore L3 private core and L2 private core. Those two products tie into Aryaka’s points of presence (POPs) and are designed to replace SoftBank’s MPLS connections.

Aryaka unveiled the FlexCore platform late last year, labeling it as a lower cost and lower performance alternative to its existing L2 network. The L2 core is intended as a premium alternative to MPLS networks.

This will allow SoftBank to map customer sites to the private core of their choice “based on performance or cost considerations or on the criticality of sites and applications.” Customers can make those changes through a self-managed portal.

“SoftBank is basically going to sell Aryaka’s private core but as well Aryaka’s on-site appliances, the CPE that will be sitting on-site at the branch offices, and are going to use our capabilities for connecting home users,” Vliegen said.

While the SD-CORE(aryaka) service is aimed at international traffic and connections, Vliegen said that the service will also target domestic enterprise customers. "They're going to position Aryaka across their whole customer range, so not just for global customers, but as well customers within Japan," he noted.

SoftBank also offers SD-WAN components from vendors like Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks.

The deep infrastructure deployment also opens the door for Aryaka to add in its security services. Vliegen said that after the initial deployment, Aryaka will “layer in additional services, especially in terms of the cloud security services.”

“The initial roadmap is that we have these secure web gateway functions embedded in our POPs, and then over time we will layer onto that same architecture more advanced security functions,” Vliegen said.

Aryaka last year acquired German cloud security vendor Secucloud, which provided the vendor with a ready-made secure access service edge (SASE) product. That deal added an embedded security component for Aryaka that the vendor had previously partnered to provide.