Cisco today said it intends to acquire the software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) vendor Viptela for $610 million in cash.

Privately-held Viptela, based in San Jose, California, will give Cisco a pure-play SD-WAN offering. Cisco has been making do with its existing intelligent WAN (IWAN) portfolio.

Cisco said today it will combine Viptela's cloud-first network management, orchestration, and overlay technologies with its own routing platforms, services, and SD-WAN capabilities. “Cisco is committed to Viptela's product offering and architecture as well as existing Cisco IWAN and Meraki SD-WAN solutions,” the company said in a prepared announcement.

Some companies that have been using IWAN for their SD-WAN needs have begun to shift away from that strategy. For instance, Orange Business uses IWAN. But the provider has created a network-as-a-service called Easy Go Network, which uses a variety of VNFs to deliver services. And Orange said it plans to eventually use its Easy Go Network for its SD-WAN service.

The Viptela employees will join Cisco’s Enterprise Routing team within the Networking and Security Business led by SVP David Goeckeler.

Goeckeler has said that Cisco will grow the company both organically through innovation, and inorganically through acquisitions.

The purchase of Viptela is expected to close in the second half of calendar 2017.

Viptela has been a rising star in the SD-WAN space. In February 2016, the startup announced that Verizon had chosen its technology. In May 2016, it announced a C-round, bringing its total funding to $110 million. And in January 2017, Viptela hired Praveen Akkiraju as CEO. Akkiraju had worked at Cisco for 19 years, leading every major routing business at the company. In his last role at Cisco, he was senior vice president and general manager of the company's Enterprise Networking group.

Viptela is the second SD-WAN vendor to be acquired recently. In January, Riverbed Technologies said it was buying Germany-based SD-WAN vendor Ocedo.

SDxCentral spoke to some analysts recently who didn’t predict much consolidation in the SD-WAN market. But with Ocedo and now Viptela, we could be seeing the beginning of a trend.