Cisco Meraki scored another service provider win with Shenandoah Telecommunications (Shentel), which today launched its Shentel Business Managed Solutions portfolio.

The Edinburg, Virginia-based managed service provider currently offers business connectivity and internet service in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. With the addition of Cisco Meraki, Shentel will offer SD-branch and SD-WAN capabilities including managed wireless, switching, and routing functionality to small to midsize businesses in the region.

According to Cisco Meraki Director of Product Management Omri Guelfand, managed services provide customers with a more predictable way of dealing with difficult task like monitoring and maintaining their network.

While Meraki is a leader in the SD-branch arena, it is facing stiff competition from rival vendors like Juniper, Extreme, and Aruba.

Last month, Aruba's parent company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) acquired SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak in a $925 million deal. According to Keerti Melkote, Aruba’s founder and president of HPE’s Intelligent Edge division, the addition of Silver Peak will enable Aruba customers to extend connectivity beyond the branch and into the cloud, accelerating software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in the process.

Meanwhile, Juniper recently rolled out WAN capabilities to its Mist platform. Mist has traditionally competed in the wireless LAN market, but since its acquisition by Juniper in 2019, it has added switching, routing, and now WAN capabilities to its AI-first SD-branch platform.