Viptela, the wide area network SDN firm, is teaming up with cloud security company Zscaler on a technical and sales partnership, the companies announced today.

Both San Jose, Calif.-based startups have high-profile venture backers. Lightspeed Venture Partners has invested $38 million in Zscaler, and Viptela in March received a $33.5 million round from Sequoia Capital.

The new partnership pairs Viptela's wide area network security controller with Zscaler's cloud security platform, which acts as a portal between enterprise network traffic and the public internet. In essence, Viptela's enterprise users will have the option to automatically route all traffic bound to and from the public web through one of Zscaler's 100+ data center security portals around the world, eliminating the need to deploy physical firewalls.

Though the technical integration is complete, the companies are still moving toward package pricing and cross-selling, said Viptela Director of Marketing Lloyd Noronha.

"Their customer base has started with smaller businesses and is moving up," Noronha said of Zscaler. "We've started at the largest businesses and are going down. So even at that level it's complementary."