The Indian service provider Tata Communications selected Versa Networks for one of the variants of its managed software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) service.

Tata offers its IZO SD-WAN Prime for customers that want to use existing branch office equipment. But in addition, Tata is offering its new IZO SD-WAN Select service based on Versa’s technology.

IZO SD-WAN Select is purely software-based. It uses Versa's software in its 20 cloud gateways globally and at customers' branch offices on non-proprietary x86 appliances.

The SD-WAN is cloud-native, says Kumar Mehta, Versa’s founder and chief development officer. “It’s centrally managed; it’s provisioned and monitored from the cloud,” he says. “You can deploy a subset of functions in the cloud or on the premises from the cloud, either public or private clouds.”

Versa previously partnered with x86 hardware vendors Advantech, Silicom, and Lanner.

“In Tata’s case, they’re buying hardware directly from one of our validated vendors and deploying in customer sites,” says Mehta. “When they buy the hardware it comes packaged with our software.”

Tata tested Versa’s technology for about eight months in 2016. “They liked our offering with multi-tenancy, packaged with a full-stack of security,” says Mehta. “We were the best solution for brownfield deployment.”