Oracle is acquiring SD-WAN company Talari Networks, a vendor based in San Jose, California. The parties say Talari’s SD-WAN is used by more than 500 customers in more than 40 countries. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close before the end of 2018.

Oracle says the addition of Talari’s technology will complement Oracle’s session border controller (SBC) and network management infrastructure, ensuring the performance of real-time communications and applications over any network.

Talari’s flagship product is its Failsafe SD-WAN, which includes physical appliances, virtual and cloud appliances, and its Talari Aware management system for on-premises or cloud.

Recently, Gartner published its first Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure and placed Talari in its "Niche Players" quadrant. The report, which profiles 20 vendors, placed VMware in the top position for completeness of vision, followed by Cisco and SilverPeak in its coveted "Leaders" quadrant.

The Gartner report stated, “Talari’s strength lies in its sophisticated link aggregation and remediation, which provide seamless failover for sensitive applications such as UCaaS/VoIP. Talari should be shortlisted for WAN edge opportunities for global mid-market enterprises, especially when link remediation and sophisticated traffic steering are required.”

SD-WAN vendors, connectivity providers, and application providers have begun to realize how much they need each other.

“Recently, cloud service providers have come to realize the importance of high-quality network connectivity to ensure a happy end user,” said Cliff Grossner, senior research director at IHS Markit. “For Oracle, purchasing Talari is an important move to be able to bundle SD-WAN with cloud services, remaining competitive with other providers that have established relationships with SD-WAN vendors such as Citrix.”

Citrix is an example of an SD-WAN vendor that has relationships with connectivity providers. For example, in May, Citrix partnered with the managed cloud provider RapidScale, which is offering Citrix NetScaler SD-WAN as a standalone managed service over RapidScale’s backbone. And Citrix recently partnered with Teridion to combine SD-WAN with a routing optimization network.

Gartner apparently values SD-WAN vendors with a connectivity play because it placed Aryaka and Citrix in the "Challengers" quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure.

Talari is the third major SD-WAN vendor to be acquired. Cisco has purchased Viptela, and VMware has purchased VeloCloud.

Some have speculated that the SD-WAN marketplace is entering the “trough of disillusionment” in terms of the hype cycle for a new technology. And we don’t know how much Oracle paid for Talari. Perhaps that will be revealed in upcoming Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings since Oracle is a public company.