The deal will mark Oracle’s first major move into the growing SD-WAN market, and follows a trend of traditional networking hardware providers doing so through acquisitions.
San Jose-based Talari offers an SD-WAN solution based primarily around WAN optimisation. It has over 500 enterprise customers in 40 countries, and its portfolio includes Failsafe, which adds predictability to an SD-WAN.
It was founded in 2007 and has raised more than $53 million in funding since then. Earlier this year, it launched a Cloud Connect platform and appointed former Dell Technologies executive Partick Sweeney as its CEO.
Oracle said it expects the deal to close in 2018, with Talari’s technology set to complement its own session border control (SBC) offering by adding quality-of-experience connectivity.
Sweeney wrote in a blog: “This is an exciting market and an amazing time to join Oracle! The SD-WAN-scape is crucial to the ongoing evolution of digital transformation. And, the Talari solution accelerates what is possible by means of its Failsafe SD-WAN technology.
“Proprietary Failsafe technology enhances the benefits of SD-WAN by adding greater reliability and predictability while maintaining security for site-to-cloud and site-to-site connectivity and application access over any IP network. Today, Talari serves over 500 enterprise customers in 40 different countries across a variety of industries including public sector, financial services, insurance, retail and manufacturing.”
Oracle is the latest to dip its toe into the SD-WAN acquisition space, following Cisco, which bought VIPtela 18 months ago, while VMware bought Velocloud.
Oracle SVP and GM Douglas Suriano said in a letter to Oracle’s customers and partners: “Talari is a leading provider of Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) technology offering centralized network control and improved application performance. Their proprietary Failsafe technology enhances the benefits of SD-WAN by adding greater reliability and predictability while maintaining security for site-to-site and site-to-cloud connectivity and application access over any IP network.”
AVANT, a master agent which distributes Talari's services, is one of the largest channel of trusted advisors in the vendor's channel partner network.
Drew Lydecker, president and co-founder of AVANT, said: "The pace of change in IT is continuing to accelerate. Companies people have never heard of just a few years ago are disrupting the IT landscape. SD-WAN is the latest example and Talari is the prototypical disruptor. The network world has not changed much over the past decade, but enterprise network and data center needs are changing dramatically with migration to cloud services, growing mobile workforce, and dramatically changing enterprise WAN network patterns.
“The demands on enterprise application performance has never been greater. Talari SD-WAN makes today’s enterprise applications dance and puts the power of enterprise WAN back into the hands of the enterprise, democratizing utilization of carrier services. The behemoths like Oracle are gobbling up the nimble innovators and disruptors like Talari as a way of leapfrogging into this new technology space. SD-WAN is really about improving the application experience and enhancing the WAN security posture, and will be a phenomenal compliment to Oracle’s portfolio.”
