VMware targets SD-WAN management with Nyansa acquisition

VMware says it plans to acquire AI-based network management and analytics firm Nyansa for an undisclosed amount.

VMware said the Nyansa technology will be targeted at boosting monitoring and troubleshooting for LAN/WAN deployments within its SD-WAN package – VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud. 

Founded in 2013, Nyansa’s primary technology is a cloud-based network management package called Voyance that employs AI to automate the discovery of devices on the network and identify unusual behavior.  Nyansa says it’s being used to watch-over some 20 million client devices operating across roughly 200 networks. Its customers include Tesla, Uber, Lululemon, GE Healthcare and Stanford University.

VMware says Voyance is multifunction analytics platform that brings visibility into and behavioral analysis of critical device performance.

“Consolidating network-infrastructure monitoring into Voyance dramatically simplifies the way network staff, engineers and architects plan, deploy, and manage the evolving enterprise edge, and can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of managing enterprise networks,” VMware stated.

“With Voyance, organizations can automate the end-to-end analysis and correlation of critical infrastructure data to improve the productivity, performance and security of critical devices on the wired and wireless network.”

Combining VMware’s SD-WAN package with Nyansa’s cloud-based AIOps platform offering, “users will have access to a single platform that can deliver comprehensive and actionable data on network traffic and application performance from the cloud, to branch offices, to the end user and across their wired and/or wireless devices,” wrote Sanjay Uppal, VP and GM, VeloCloud Business Unit, VMware in a blog about the acquisition.

“Nyansa can proactively predict client problems, optimize their network, better enable the behavior of critical IoT devices, and justify infrastructure changes based on actual user, network and application data," Uppal stated.  “The combination of Nyansa’s AI/ML capabilities with VMware’s existing analytics, visibility and remediation capabilities will make it easier for [customers] to operate and troubleshoot the virtual-cloud network and accelerate the realization of a self-healing network.”

The Nyansa buy, expected to close in the first quarter of VMware’s fiscal year, would be the company’s ninth acquisition in the past 13 months.  Those have included the recently closed $2.7 billion buy of cloud development firm Pivotal and the purchase of security vendor Carbon Black in October for $2.1 billion.Other acquisition included:

• Avi Networks for multi-cloud application delivery services.
• Bitfusion for hardware virtualization.
• Uhana, for deep learning and real-time AI application development.
• Veriflow, for network verification, assurance, and troubleshooting.
• Heptio for its Kubernetes technology.