Silver Peak, a 10-year-old company that cut its teeth on wide-area network (WAN) optimization, is announcing today that it has more than 300 customers for its software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) offering – Unity EdgeConnect.

“WAN optimization solves performance over distance,” says John Vincenzo, SVP of Silver Peak. “SD-WAN is around solving connectivity.”

Vincenzo says Silver Peak’s customers were complaining about the expense of MPLS connections. And with the company’s experience in WAN optimization it was only natural to expand into SD-WAN.

“Last June we announced EdgeConnect, designed for companies with lots of branch offices and that use different forms of connectivity,” he says.

In terms of its competition, Silver Peak goes up against Riverbed in the WAN optimization market. For SD-WAN, Vincenzo names Cisco, VeloCloud, and Viptela as competitors.

New EdgeConnect customers represent a variety of industries including building performance, energy, financial, legal, and retail. For example, Spare Time Clubs selected EdgeConnect to link both its guest wireless network and its T-1 Internet circuits at each club, turning both of its broadband links into an active-active pairing. The health club has reduced its monthly connectivity costs and is getting 20 times the bandwidth.