Khalid Raza, Founder and CEO, Graphiant

Edge services provider Graphiant emerged from stealth by introducing the Graphiant Network Edge, a solution that provides connectivity between the enterprise WAN, hybrid cloud, network edge, customers and partners delivered as-a-service.

Graphiant Founder and CEO Khalid Raza also founded SD-WAN company Viptela, which Cisco acquired for $610 million in 2017. He told SDxCentral that Viptela was only a small piece of an SD-WAN mission Cisco “didn’t let” him complete.

Raza explained his vision for Viptela was to move the networking market to a place where hardware would become obsolete. But larger vendors like Cisco, he added, are reluctant to move away completely from hardware dependency.

And even when they do, they often still sell per-customer bespoke software licensing to offset hardware costs. Raza said that model isn’t sustainable with a larger number of customers.

Graphiant is his chance to complete the work he left unfinished at Cisco, he said, adding that the network is getting more complicated and expensive due to a growing volume of data and an increasingly dispersed userbase using traditional protocols like SD-WAN and MPLS.

According to Raza, a network solution that will overcome these emerging challenges needs two factors: the network must be private, and also has to be as-a-service.

“This has happened in compute, this has happened in storage. Why not in networking? Because it's not in the interest of any networking vendor, because they want to sell a bespoke licensing or a software model on a per-customer basis,” he added.

Graphiant Chief Product Officer Ali Shaikh explained the Graphiant Network Edge allows users to optimize the internet and maintain sovereignty over their data. Shaikh formerly led sales engineering at Cisco for Viptela and Meraki, but had originally joined Viptela with Raza.

All routing on the Graphiant Network Edge is handled by the Graphiant Stateless Core, which includes metadata protocol, end-to-end privacy, and a programmable network to get SLAs for applications. Graphiant claims the core architecture is “highly differentiated and impossible to solve via automation.”

Shaikh said the protocol layer allows for cost savings that directly pass on to the customer when they move off of an MPLS environment or some of the “more complicated SD-WAN environments.” Graphiant says the solution will offer 60% in savings in 6 months of service compared with SD-WAN and MPLS solutions.

Shaikh noted companies like Aryaka and Cato similarly offer full services, but said their architectures don’t as easily enable “customers the ability to program the backbone itself.”

“Our goal here is that the network should be programmable, so that you don't have to do unusual things to access the cloud versus your data center versus your branches,” he said.

Graphiant’s go-to-market leader Matt Krieg, also a former Viptela employee, said he anticipates the company’s stateless core will be “a pretty big threat to the traditional hardware technology providers, hardware networking providers, infrastructure or telco business.”

Krieg said because the Graphiant solution isn’t tied to specific hardware, custom-made silicone, or other physical components, they are primed to serve enterprises in their target markets: financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.

“[Raza] always says thankfully Cisco didn't listen to him with Viptela, and didn't listen to him again with Graphiant,” Krieg commented. “And I would say we're all thankful that Cisco didn't listen to him either time.”

Raza anticipates the service will be “a major disrupter to companies like Cisco,” because the “pure” software-as-a-service model will upset traditional business models that rely on hardware and bespoke software licensing.

“What made them successful in their previous business model makes it very difficult to transition to the new business model,” he said. “Telcos will hate us for the first year, and then they will come around.”