Juniper today announced the $450 million acquisition of SD-WAN vendor 128 Technology in a bid to bolster its Mist networking portfolio.

"128 Technology represents the next step in the evolution of the user-centric [artificial intelligence]-driven WAN," said Juniper CEO Rami Rahim, during a press briefing Monday. He added that the announcement is the latest step toward realizing its AI-driven network vision, which began with the acquisition of Mist in 2019.

With the acquisition, Juniper aims to be a one-stop-shop for enterprises, universities, and other campuses regardless of whether they need WAN, WLAN, or LAN-switching capabilities. It also positions the company to more directly compete against rivals Cisco and Aruba, the latter of which acquired Silver Peak for $925 million in July.

"With a high percentage of customers preferring to purchase LAN, wireless LAN, and WAN from the same vendor, we think the ability to offer all of these products as part of a single cloud-managed solution with integrated AI-driven insights and automation will drive tangible customer value," Rahim explained.

The deal, which is expected to close during Juniper's fourth-fiscal quarter of 2020, will see 128 Technology integrated into Mist under the leadership of Sujai Hajela, Mist's co-founder.

In addition to drastically reducing WAN overheads and bandwidth consumption, 128 Technology's SD-WAN is ideally suited for 4G LTE and 5G backhaul networks, voice, and other real time traffic, explained Rahim. When combined with the rest of the Mist portfolio, Juniper claims customers will be able to bring Mist's AIOps platform and Marvis virtual assistant to bear on the WAN to ensure service levels, detect anomalies, isolate faults, and recommend corrective actions.

The announcement comes less than a month after Juniper announced the acquisition of assurance testing vendor Netrounds for an undisclosed sum. Like 128 Technology, Juniper plans to wrap Netrounds into its WAN portfolio and enable service providers to ensure end-user experiences.

While not directly associated with the Mist product division, Juniper has made a concerted effort to bring more of its product line under the portfolio.

“Our strategy to Mistify additional elements of our switching, enterprise routing, and security portfolio though the year is helping us take share from competitors and should create incremental pull-through opportunities for our enterprise offering in future periods,” Rahim said during the company's second-quarter earnings call this summer.

Mist has been a bright spot for the company's financials. As of mid-year, Mist orders were up 170% year over year and new logos had increased by more than 100%. “Mist has now secured four Fortune 10 accounts,” Rahim boasted at the time.