Cisco’s Viptela SD-WAN offering is now available as part of KDDI America’s managed SD-WAN portfolio.

In addition to branch-to-branch connectivity, the division of Japan-based telecommunications provider KDDI plans to pair Viptela SD-WAN with its Microsoft Azure Cloud Services offering. Viptela will provide secure access from the enterprise branch to workloads running on the public cloud provider’s infrastructure.

Acquired by Cisco in 2017, Viptela is one of several SD-WAN products with support for Azure Virtual WAN. The integration allows customers to extend their WAN into Azure to optimize the performance of workloads and software-as-a-service applications running there.

The SD-WAN platform can be deployed as an overlay on the enterprise’s existing WAN infrastructure regardless of whether it's using MPLS service, broadband, or dedicated internet access. Once in place, the platform can intelligently route traffic based on network, quality of service, or security policy over the most appropriate WAN link.

Viptela is KDDI America’s first SD-WAN offering from Cisco, though the company has been offering Cisco appliances and services unrelated to SD-WAN for more than three decades. The company also offers SD-WAN services from VMware’s VeloCloud.

Viptela has seen widespread adoption over the last several years. As of the last count, Cisco reportedly had more than 20,000 SD-WAN customers using the service.

The addition of KDDI to Cisco’s global Managed Services Partner program is just the latest partnership to bolster the company’s SD-WAN reach.

Earlier this month, Cisco announced partnerships with Verizon and Comcast. The first addressed remote work challenges faced by Comcast Business customers by sending Meraki VPN gateways to employees' homes. The second introduced a series of fully-and co-managed SD-WAN offerings to Verizon’s SD-WAN portfolio.

Moreover, over the past year, Cisco’s networking and security divisions have grown closer together with the rise of secure access service edge (SASE) to prominence.

Last spring, Cisco tied its Viptela SD-WAN, Umbrella cloud security, and Duo identity management products together to form its own SASE architecture. Later, an update to Viptela enabled existing Viptela customers to breakout traffic to Umbrella points of presence for additional inspection.