A couple years ago Fujitsu created a software-defined networking (SDN)/network functions virtualization (NFV) solutions practice within its business services unit headed up by Ralph Santitoro. Now, Fujitsu is also offering a software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) managed service through this business unit, and it's partnered with Silver Peak to use the vendor’s Unity EdgeConnect technology. Fujitsu’s SD-WAN is targeted toward service providers.

Fujitsu owns its own network operations center (NOC) from which it delivers its managed services. “We just extended that to deliver SD-WAN managed services,” said Santitoro. “We’ve found that pretty much every service provider wants to bring SD-WAN to market; it doesn’t matter the size of the service provider. But they really need to get to market quickly.”

The company is offering SD-WAN as a subscription service, provided via a consultative approach. “It’s a white-labeled managed service,” said Santitoro. “It’s not cookie-cutter. We customize the service for them.”

The service is access network agnostic and can be delivered over any type of wired or wireless WAN including broadband Internet, MPLS VPNs, Carrier Ethernet, WiFi, and LTE.

Fujitsu and Silver Peak say they are targeting service providers with this managed SD-WAN. But Shayne Stubbs, VP of service providers and cloud at Silver Peak, pointed out, “Everybody is just looking to serve enterprises.”

Stubbs said Silver Peak has established its SD-WAN business with enterprises. The company is approaching 600 customers globally. “We’re using that to shape our offering to service providers,” he said.

Although many of the largest service providers have already made announcements that they’re offering SD-WAN through various vendors, Santitoro said, “Just because something was announced, it doesn’t mean it’s the only solution a Tier 1 wants to go with.” He said Tier 1s often give their sales teams the option to use their internal solution or something else, whatever works best for the enterprise customer. "That’s where we fit in," he said.

Stubbs added that the definition of “Tier 1” is expanding. “I would say in certain cases really large enterprises are like service providers,” he said.

And some municipalities are building very large networks. Santitoro said Fujitsu built a broadband network for the state of Kentucky. And the state can sell services to large enterprises such as IBM, which has a big presence in Kentucky. “SD-WAN is a great way for these municipalities to expand out and deliver a national or even global service," he said.

Both Silver Peak and Fujitsu are participating in MEF’s group that is working on standardizing SD-WAN managed services. Pascal Menezes, CTO of MEF, told SDxCentral in July that service providers are deploying SD-WAN with systems from vendors, but they need to plug into their operation support systems. And that’s where MEF is helping them.

Fujitsu’s SD-WAN via Silver Peak conforms with the terminology and SD-WAN service capabilities described in the “Understanding SD-WAN Managed Services” white paper published in July. Santitoro wrote the white paper for MEF.