Versa Networks Named 2016 Light Reading Leading Lights Finalist for Company of the Year (Private) and Most Innovative NFV Product Strategy

Santa Clara, Calif., May 4, 2016

Versa Networks, a networking and security startup providing next-generation WAN and branch office solutions for service providers and enterprises, today announced that Light Reading editors named the company a finalist in the categories of Company of the Year (Private) and Most Innovative NFV Product Strategy for this year’s Leading Lights Awards. These selections further validate Versa Networks as a leading innovator in NFV solutions for creating next-generation managed services.

Versa Networks’ business case for its NFV solution is clear – providers’ managed services are difficult to design and launch rapidly, as well as operate profitably. This is due to multiple factors, primarily the inflexibility, cost and complexity of branch customer premises equipment (CPE) and head-end devices. Virtualizing branch and head-end infrastructure via Versa solutions enables rapid-fire deployment of a wide range of managed network and security services, including the growing deployments of managed SD-WAN.

Versa NFV-based software solutions reduce the total cost of ownership of managed network and security services by up to 80 percent, while accelerating provisioning times from months to hours. Service providers and enterprises can use Versa FlexVNF software on a variety of deployment options – commodity x86 servers, white box appliances, virtual machines or containers – to provide a wide set of virtualized networking and security functions (VNFs) that seamlessly work together via service chaining. Versa FlexVNF, Director and Analytics are designed with multi-tenancy and elasticity to provide economies of scale and radically improved agility. For example, branch WAN and firewall capacity can be instantly scaled up or down with just a few mouse clicks. The solution provides unmatched agility, cost savings and flexibility versus the legacy network and security devices traditionally used in managed service offerings. This is due to the fact that it is purely software-based and designed around NFV principals such as VNFs, service chaining and programmability.

“Light Reading is one of the leading voices in the telecommunications industry, and their recognition of us for these two Leading Lights awards validates our vision and technology innovation,” said Mark Weiner, chief marketing officer of Versa Networks. “We believe we have built the most advanced VNF-based architecture in the industry, which enables our service provider and large enterprise customers to head-on address the core operational and business challenges they are facing with hardware-based WANs and managed services.”

Leading Lights Awards Dinner

For the past 12 years, Leading Lights has served as the communications industry’s foremost awards program focused on next-generation communications technologies, applications, services and strategies.

All 2016 Leading Lights winners will be announced live at the Leading Lights Awards Dinner, taking place on May 23rd (the night before Big Communications Event) at Hotel Ella in Austin, Texas. The ceremony has historically attracted over 200 C-Level executives and industry leaders.

About Versa Networks

Versa Networks, the leader in SASE, combines extensive security, advanced networking, industry leading SD-WAN, genuine multitenancy, and sophisticated analytics via the cloud, on-premises, or as a blended combination of both to meet SASE requirements for small to extremely large enterprises and Service Providers, and via the simplified Versa Titan cloud service designed for Lean IT. Thousands of customers globally with hundreds of thousands of sites trust Versa with their networks, security, and clouds. Versa Networks is privately held and funded by Sequoia Capital, Mayfield, Artis Ventures, Verizon Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Liberty Global Ventures, Princeville Capital, RPS Ventures and Triangle Peak Partners. For more information, visit https://www.versa-networks.com or follow Versa Networks on Twitter @versanetworks.