Enea has partnered with Nexcom to develop an open source SD-WAN kit that's designed to ease the barrier to entry for system integrators and communications service providers.

The kit includes flexiWAN’s open source SD-WAN software platform and pfSense, an open source firewall, both of which are designed to run as virtualized instances on universal CPE (uCPE) appliances from Nexcom. Additionally, the two companies are working on scripts to automate onboard and testing.

“The demand for uCPE-based SD-WAN and security is growing rapidly and this kit is a great way to shorten time-to-market,” said Karl Mörner, VP of product management at Enea, in a statement. “We think of it not only as a starter kit, but also as a complete, cost-effective, software solution for deploying secure SD-WAN.”

For its part, Enea is providing its uCPE virtualization and management platform, called Enea NFV Access, while Nexcom is supplying two Intel-based white box appliances.

These uCPE platforms allow for differentiated networking capabilities and price points that cover a range of performance requirements and use cases, the companies claim. The first is an Intel Atom-based system designed for lightweight, scale-out workloads, while the other is based on an Intel Xeon D-series processor and is targeted at high-performance networking environments.

At the root of the arrangement is the flexiWAN SD-WAN software platform, which launched just over a year ago. The software platform can run on any white box hardware. The company has partnered with several uCPE vendors and telecoms to develop and test the platform. Security functionality is provided as a virtual network function (VNF) running pfSense.

“Leveraging the open source SD-WAN of flexiWAN allows vendors such as Enea and Nexcom to ship their products pre-installed with a ready to use solution” said flexiWAN CEO Amir Zmora in a statement. “The system automatically registered with flexiWAN’s cloud management and users can open a free account and start using the system.”

Additional network functions can be added via third-party VNFs using Enea NFV Access.