Software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) vendor VeloCloud Networks today closed $27 million in Series C financing led by venture fund March Capital Partners and including Cisco Investments. Prior investors New Enterprise Associates and Venrock also participated in the round, bringing the company’s total funding to $49 million.

Cisco has been kind of quiet on the SD-WAN front. Its Virtual Managed Services product includes SD-WAN, according to SDxCentral's "2015 Virtual Edge Report." But its investment in VeloCloud sends the message that it wants more help in the SD-WAN space.

In today’s VeloCloud announcement, Jeff Reed, general manager of enterprise infrastructure at Cisco, says, “We are collaborating closely with customers looking to transition to software-driven WAN deployments with our Cisco Intelligent WAN.”

Seventy-five percent of enterprises use VPNs to connect their multiple locations and remote workers, according to an SDxCentral survey. The most commonly referenced VPN vendor used by enterprises was Cisco.

By moving more network services over to an SD-WAN, enterprises and service providers can reduce capex and opex, vendors claim. Also, IT departments are frustrated with their current WAN options and the need to buy proprietary equipment from vendors.

With VeloCloud’s technology, the customer buys an overlay WAN service but doesn’t have to buy or own any hardware.

Cisco plans to make its WAN technology interoperable with VeloCloud's for joint customers.

Cisco’s involvement with VeloCloud doesn’t bode well for Glue Networks, whose WAN software it resells and uses to manage Cisco routers connecting branches.

In 2015, VeloCloud expanded its SD-WAN ecosystem of vendor partners, which now includes BroadSoft, Cisco, Equinix, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, VMware, Websense (now called Forcepoint), and Zscaler.