Verizon Business is expanding its relationship with SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak that includes a new deployment model and more options for customers selecting the managed offering. The move also fills out Verizon’s SD-WAN portfolio, which also includes its managed Cisco-based service.

The Silver Peak expansion now taps into the vendor’s Unity EdgeConnect edge platform that will be offered as a managed service. Verizon explained in an email to SDxCentral that this will offer enterprises a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model that integrates SD-WAN with WAN optimization in a single package. It will run on the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect appliances and SaaS-based controllers.

The expansion builds on what was a more limited Silver Peak offering from Verizon Business. The previous deal was limited to resale and professional service management. The carrier said it now rolls out the turnkey deployment; service assurance and service management from design engineering, delivery, implementation, provisioning; and ongoing lifecycle and change management capabilities.

Verizon Business will run the Silver Peak option alongside the Cisco-based managed SD-WAN that it has offered for nearly 5 years. The carrier noted that the Silver Peak delivery model will allow for faster deployment and service changes compared with the Cisco service and that the core network function integration of SD-WAN and WAN optimization as a consolidated package will differentiate the two in the market.

Verizon has been noted as a leader in the managed SD-WAN space by analyst firms. The most recent was IDC’s latest ranking that touted the carrier’s “well-rounded portfolio” and use of its virtualized network architecture. It was also in the “leaders” category of Gartner’s ranking of global managed network services providers alongside operators Orange Business Services, NTT, AT&T, BT, Vodafone Group, and Tata Communications.

For Silver Peak, the expansion comes on the heels of its $925 million acquisition by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HPE has since been integrating its new toy with its legacy Aruba Networks business, which HPE acquired for $2.7 billion in 2015. The most recent integration was rolling the Aruba Clear Pass artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced security platform into Silver Peak’s SD-WAN.

Silver Peak’s SD-WAN offering has also been lauded by analyst firms. Gartner placed the platform in the leader category of its most recent Magic Quadrant WAN Edge Infrastructure report alongside rivals VMware, Versa Networks, Palo Alto Network, Fortinet, and Cisco. HPE’s Aruba Networks platform was deemed a “visionary” in the same report.