Cisco today announced two new products to improve service assurance in the wide area network (WAN). It rolled out SD-WAN vAnalytics and Meraki Insight. And it says the products use its intent-based networking technology.

SD-WAN vAnalytics is based on technology from Viptela, which Cisco acquired in August. It provides visibility and corrective actions across the WAN, including branch offices, multiple cloud endpoints, and multiple service providers.

Using vAnalytics, customers can also create “what if” scenarios to forecast how potential policy changes to the WAN will impact application performance and bandwidth usage.

Meraki is Cisco’s wireless solution that manages Internet devices, and enforces device security policies, all through Meraki’s web-based dashboard interface. Cisco’s new Meraki Insight tool is integrated into the Meraki dashboard, and it provides IT administrators with information about WAN application performance.

The new products are part of Cisco’s strategy to extend its intent-based networking chops into the WAN.

“The WAN is a vital part of the network and is one of the toughest to manage,” said Scott Harrell, SVP and general manager of enterprise networking at Cisco, in a statement. “As we bring insight into the WAN with these new innovations, we get closer to delivering end-to-end intent-based networking.”

After Cisco announced its intent-based networking initiative in June 2017, it explained that the technology would initially automate some configuration and other tasks in the access, or local area network (LAN), working with Cisco’s Catalyst 9000 switches.

Kiran Ghodgaonkar, Cisco senior manager, said intent-based networking was first used in the LAN but is now being extended to the WAN.

Ghodgaonkar stressed that Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Center is its management platform for intent-based networking. And Viptela’s vManage platform will merge into DNA Center over time. “Our entire story is built on DNA Center,” he said. “We will integrate the first phase of Viptela on the ISR 4000.”

In terms of what intent-based networking does in the WAN, Joe Aronow, a product architect with Cisco Meraki, said, “There’s this core intent of what experience I want my users to have. This translates it into configuration and gets the assurance you want.”

Cisco recently talked about assurance being the second-wave of its intent-based networking.