flexiWAN Launches With Open Source SD-WAN Architecture

A new startup is joining the SD-WAN space with an open architecture. The Israel-based company, flexiWAN, is seeking to solve some of the problems created by the crowded SD-WAN market today. flexiWAN CEO and co-founder Amir Zmora first saw the need for an open SD-WAN architecture when he was working as a consultant for enterprises and service providers in the SD-WAN and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) space.In conversations, he realized that SD-WAN had a few problems that openness could solve: IT managers have limited control of their networks and the elements and technologies that comprise them; and networking (especially SD-WAN) requires expertise in a number of domains. So no single vendor can provide in-depth expertise across all domains. And while service providers have some opportunity in these two areas as they can prioritize and optimize different parts of an enterprise’s network, this requires a multi-vendor approach and they are forced to sell closed, vendor-specific services that don’t interconnect, Zmora said. This is not a valid long-term solution, as future enterprise requirements are unknown and will evolve and current services will be rendered useless. So flexiWAN is breaking the vendor lock-in and “monopoly” that exists today with a “decomposed” SD-WAN architecture. “Enterprises and service providers were locked to use all networking applications from a single vendor. With flexiWAN, they will be able to pick and choose [the] best of breed,” said Zmora. flexiWAN officially launched today, though it is still in the development phase. Its software is available now to only enterprises and service providers for private proof of concept (PoC), which it has already been conducting. It plans to launch an open source, production-ready version toward the end of this year.