Irwin Fouwels, CEO, Expereo

Managed network provider Expereo has acquired British service provider Breeze Networks to expand its range of services across the globe. Breeze provisions cloud-based SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) technologies for enterprises and government agencies.

Netherlands-based Expereo pursued the acquisition because of the company's “active M&A outlook for organizations that help to strengthen [its] existing brand proposition,” Expereo CEO Irwin Fouwels told SDxCentral in an email. “Breeze Networks is an interesting organization due to their strength in SD-WAN and SASE technology, which will complement Expereo’s SD-WAN practice,” he added.

Breeze CTO Matthew Lea will serve as technical portfolio lead as part of Expereo’s technical team led by CTO Kristaps Petrovskis. Lea will drive Expereo’s expansion plans for its SD-WAN and SASE practice, “particularly within the UK, a key market for growth,” according to Fouwels.

Breeze CEO George Cowan added in an announcement, “having recently worked with Expereo on a global deployment for one of our customers, we witnessed first-hand the shared values of both companies and commitment to providing excellence in delivery and customer service.” Cowan will assist with Breeze's integration into Expereo prior to his retirement.

Expereo intends to continue its acquisition strategy with the “full support of majority investor Vitruvian Partners and minority investor Apax Partners SAS,” the announcement added.  

Fouwels said software-driven networking and the dispersion of a global workforce following the COVID-19 pandemic are drivers for organizations to rethink global WAN infrastructures. He added, “businesses demand more flexibility, agility, and cost effectiveness whilst ensuring that high-quality Internet and cloud access remain at the fore.”

“Expereo is very heavily focused on Internet solutioning,” Director of Global Solutions Engineering Salim Khouri told SDxCentral in an earlier interview. “It always starts with good Internet.”

He added “of course, we do SD-WAN and SASE, but we take it from a different approach. We do it fit for purpose.” 

For example, Khouri said that in remote cases where Internet is needed for a site, and not in a data center, “SD-WAN functionally as an orchestration tool to connect all your sites together over your Internet is perfect.” Expereo’s network, he noted, also implements an IP core that helps optimize connectivity between regions around the world. 

There is no one-size-fits-all with SD-WAN, but organizations make choices between vendors that have different capabilities. As Gartner tightens the SASE and security services edge (SSE) definitions, Khouri says the major manufacturers and vendors that deploy these solutions are coming together to provide unified frameworks.

“So everyone's operating from the same level,” he said. “If you look at what they advertise -- I'm not talking about what they actually execute, but what they advertise -- they're all advertising similar things now, whereas many years ago, everyone had little bits and pieces of the puzzle.”

Khouri said Expereo is trying to “execute on bringing together Internet connectivity, SD-WAN connectivity, and the SSE components all under one dashboard, all under one management.”

“SSE is one thing, and SD-WAN another thing. There's a few vendors that have them together, but they have a limited footprint or they're very costly,” he said. “Once all the vendors get to that level, then I think IT teams will truly have something that is really nicely packaged.”