Glue Networks has worked with Cisco for a few years, supplying Cisco with its software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technology that works in conjunction with Cisco’s intelligent WAN (IWAN) platform. So when Cisco decided to buy SD-WAN vendor Viptela, that was a bit of a snub to Glue Networks.

But the vendor is taking it in stride and repositioning itself. Glue Networks has recently changed its name to Gluware. And a couple of former Cyan executives are now working at Gluware. The co-founder of Cyan, Eric Clelland is now SVP of sales, marketing, and business development. And Richard Lopez, another Cyan alum, has become VP of solutions architecture. Cyan created the Blue Planet software-defined networking (SDN) technology that was eventually bought by Ciena for $400 million.

In terms of Gluware's relationship with Cisco, Clelland said, “I’m not going to infer anything negative to Cisco. They worked with Glue for a while and decided to write their own software that does the same thing. Then they said, ‘Let’s go buy Viptela.’ Gluware is still happy to help them out.”

When he mentioned Cisco’s own SD-WAN software, he was referring to Cisco’s Application Policy Infrastructure Controller – Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) that works with Cisco’s integrated service routers (ISRs).

Clelland said, “We’ll continue to work with enterprises that have Cisco routers in their networks to provide SD-WAN. We’re the only pure software solution for people that have invested in ISRs, without having to invest in new hardware.”

Gluware, which was founded in 2011, has raised more than $37 million in funding. In addition to continuing to support customers that use Cisco ISRs, Gluware this week announced an expanded product — Gluware 3.0 — a multivendor, multidomain IT automation and orchestration solution.

“It’s very important we emphasize the multivendor, multidomain piece,” said Clelland. It means that the company's software can orchestrate network functions between the physical and virtual environment. And Gluware’s VNFusion provides enterprise and service providers the flexibility of mixing and matching vendors. For this, Gluware has developed extensions to connect to different vendors’ routing and switching equipment.

“We perform config management and automation for routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers,” said Lopez. “The code doesn’t need to run on the device itself. We are an orchestration platform that communicates via the appropriate protocol for that device. We can run the Gluware control software platform in the cloud or on-premise on a server.”