Sprint deepened its relationship with VMware today, announcing it's VeloCloud-based SD-WAN offering was now available internationally in more than 100 countries. The expansion more than doubles the reach of the U.S.-based carrier's SD-WAN service compared to a year ago.

Sprint launched its initial VeloCloud-powered SD-WAN offering in 2017, shortly before VMware's acquisition of the software vendor. The service was aimed at U.S. companies, though the carrier quickly began extending the service to new markets outside the U.S. throughout 2018.

While Sprint and VeloCloud share a years-long relationship, new to the arrangement is the telecom's Certainty Network Design Model, which was announced at CES earlier this year. The model offers an alternative network design that combines multiple network layers with SD-WAN to deliver greater network reliability.

"By designing a network with multiple network transport types — private, public, hybrid — and access options — Ethernet, broadband, fixed wireless — Sprint is able to offer an industry-leading 100% availability [service-level agreement]," a Sprint spokesperson boldly noted in an email to SDxCentral.

Earlier this month Sprint expanded its SD-WAN offering to include Cisco's Meraki platform. The company says it plans to begin rolling out other SD-WAN offerings in the near future.

"Our SD-WAN strategy is to have a well-rounded portfolio that meets the majority of customer requirements whether that is [a small-to-midsize business] or enterprise or includes specific technical design criteria or includes global deployment footprint," the spokesperson explained. "We are being selective and choosing vendors whose value statements align with Sprint’s strategy."

The company is taking a similar tact with universal CPE-based services, like SD-WAN or security. These services run as virtual network functions (VNFs) often on x86-based, white-box hardware. uCPE opens the door to running multiple VNFs on a single appliance. However, according to Sprint, uCPE while offering greater flexibility than proprietary appliances, it isn't always the most cost-effective solution for every customer network.

While the international expansion will no doubt open up new opportunities for Sprint's wireline business. It remains to be seen what the impending acquisition by T-Mobile US will hold for that subset of the company's managed services like SD-WAN.

Earlier this month, T-Mobile cleared a major hurdle in its 22-month-long mission to swallow up Sprint, and while it isn't a done deal yet, it's looking increasingly likely.

Sprint declined to comment on how a pending merger with T-Mobile would impact Sprint's SD-WAN and wireline offerings moving forward.

"We cannot common on the merged companies' portfolio. Information will be shared when available," the Sprint spokesperson noted.

Since coming under VMware's massive umbrella just over two years ago, VeloCloud has grown to become one of the more influential SD-WAN vendors on the market. Gartner's latest WAN Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrant report listed VMware as a leader in the SD-WAN and WAN spaces.

However, while VeloCloud started out as an SD-WAN platform, the vendor has recently undergone a transformation into a full-blown secure access service edge (SASE) vendor. The category combines elements of SD-WAN and managed security into a single cloud-managed platform.

And with this transformation, VeloCloud is also gaining new capabilities fueled by VMware's insatiable lust to acquire strategically significant companies. Last month VMware announced VeloCloud would soon add AIOps capabilities with the acquisition of software company Nyansa.