Here are the top stories SDxCentral wrangled this week related to SDN, NFV, cloud, and virtualization infrastructure:

9 SD-WAN Startups Worth Watching — Here are 9 SD-WAN startups gaining traction in the marketplace.

Service Providers Cash In on SD-WAN — They lose MPLS money, but gain more revenues, anyway.

Martin Casado: In the Developer Era, Startups Rule — The Nicira founder and former VMware executive has seen the changes that a software-driven world is causing.

Here are the week’s strays and stragglers we roped for you:

Aryaka appointed Stefanie Ryan as head of strategic channel marketing.

Brocade appointed Phil O'Reilly as vice president of federal sales.

Google lowered the price of Preemptible VMs by up to 33 percent.

Broadband Forum brings network functions virtualization (NFV) home.

KEMP Technologies announced a strategic partnership with rhipe, a cloud channel company.

Brocade released the availability of the Brocade Virtual Application Delivery Controller (vADC) on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

Okta opened a new Bellevue office and plans to double its local headcount.

Big Switch Networks' Community Edition Sweepstakes contest is now open for submissions.

Tufin experienced strong growth in the first half of the company’s fiscal year through June 30th, 2016.

Here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week:

  • HPE Buys Big Data Analytics Company SGI for $275M
  • China Mobile Eyes 5G-enabled Drones To Solve Network Latency
  • White Box Hardware is Getting Smarter
  • Rackspace Integrates Azure Into Its Managed Security
  • Former Google Engineers Launch Xperiel with $7M in Funding
  • DevOps Isn't Just for Greenfield
  • Cumulus Networks Adds VPs of Marketing & Sales
  • Midokura Releases Gives a View Between Physical & Virtual
  • Aviat, Level 3 Will Use Cisco's Tail-f for Network Services Orchestration
  • 3 Data Centers Form Core of Deutsche Telekom's Pan-Euro Network
  • Datadog Integrates AWS Lambda
  • ThousandEyes Touts Enhanced End-User Experience
  • Intel to Acquire Deep Learning Startup Nervana
  • Mirantis OpenStack Finds Its Way Onto Red Hat Linux
  • Open vSwitch Moves From VMware to Linux Foundation
  • Earthlink Teams With VeloCloud to Offer SD-WAN Services
  • Fugue Solves Pain Point of Running AWS at Scale
  • AT&T Labs is Building Its Own 5G Gear for Trials
  • Deep Instinct's Artificial Brain Spots Zero-Day Security Threats
  • SD-WAN Startups Are Probably Too Young for Acquisition
  • Cellular Carrier IoT Connections Jump 33% in 2Q
  • SDN Security Researchers State Their Case at Black Hat