Boise, Idaho-based Cradlepoint announced Tuesday it has acquired SDN vendor Pertino with the plan of incorporating the latter’s WAN and cloud-based technologies into its own LTE networking portfolio.

The deal closed on Nov. 20 after six months of negotiations. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Cradlepoint's cloud platform provisions mobile services to customers such as buses, taxis, and police cars, but the company is acquiring Pertino with a bigger picture in mind. CIOs and IT managers are looking for software-defined enterprise network products in order to provision 4G mobility, machine-to-machine, and Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, says Cradlepoint CEO George Mulhern.

Cradlepoint’s platform is based on purpose-built, on-premises devices, including branch routers that handle multiple 4G connections as well as MPLS and broadband wired connections. The company's portfolio also includes failover offerings where customers are using LTE as a failover mechanism for their wired networks.

Pertino, which was founded four years ago, brings SDN capabilities into Cradlepoint’s stable. Pertino’s Cloud Networking Engine is a cloud-managed virtual gateway that’s designed to connect IP-enabled devices or virtual instances to a virtual overlay network.

With Pertino, Cradlepoint will be able to offer its customers, which Mulhern says include carriers, service providers, and small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), end-to-end connectivity in the form of an overlay network. The overlay network can be segmented, monitored, and secured and can provide policy requirements to thousands of endpoints, according to Pertino CMO Todd Krautkramer.

“The requirements we’re hearing from our enterprise customers are for greater agility and greater security, being able to optimize costs, and extending the WAN in the ways they haven’t been able to do before,” CEO Mulhern says. “This opportunity with Pertino came up, and we really see it as a way to accelerate our time to market with those capabilities and services.”

Cradlepoint will integrate Pertino’s client into its routers in the first half of next year. The two companies are also integrating their cloud platforms, but since both are built with REST APIs, “it will be easy to get done,” Mulhern says. During the next 12 to 18 months, the two companies will work on further integration and roadmap development.

With Pertino based in Los Gatos, California, the deal also gives Cradlepoint a presence in Silicon Valley. All of Pertino’s 25 employees are expected to join Cradlepoint, according to Mulhern. Cradlepoint has 450 employees, and Mulhern says his goal is to build an “IPO-level company.”