Versa Networks has partnered with several European network integrators, including Interdata in France, Xantaro in Germany, Ymon in Finland, and Axians in the U.K. These companies will include Versa’s technology in their portfolios for service providers and enterprises that are adopting software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), which is becoming a popular way to append their MPLS networks.

Versa provides SD-WAN along with software-defined security and virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) — and it's the security piece that makes Versa stand out from the SD-WAN crowd, says Jarkko Salomäki, CTO of Finland’s Ymon, quoted in today's press release.

“Branch security has become vital in 2016 as attackers zero in on branches as the next vulnerable entry point, especially when direct Internet access is enabled,” says Kumar Mehta, CEO of Versa Networks.

One of the benefits of SD-WAN is that end users can save money on expensive, redundant MPLS lines and add public Internet connections for non-critical traffic. “But now I have an open Internet connection – what am I going to do about security?” asks Versa's Chief Marketing Officer Mark Weiner.

To that end, Versa recently announced its FlexVNF for service providers and large-enterprise IT teams to deliver a range of layered security services for branch offices, including domain name system (DNS) security, a next-generation firewall (NGFW), anti-virus capability, intrusion prevention, and content filtering.

In addition, a secure Web gateway provides visibility into outbound Web traffic to enforce security and corporate policies.

One Versa FlexVNF software instance, running on one rack unit of commodity x86 hardware, can provide up to 40 Gb/s of stateful firewall, 20 Gb/s of next-generation firewall (NGFW), or 10 Gb/s of unified threat management.

Versa FlexVNF software is multitenant across multiple end customers or business divisions, and its security can be located at the branch office or delivered from the telco cloud.