News

flexiWAN Claims First with Open Source SD-WAN Now Generally Available for Production

• By David Ramel
• 01/08/2020

Israeli company flexiWAN claimed an industry first with yesterday's introduction of what the company says is the first open source software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) offering.

The company emerged from stealth in the spring of last year with a mission to democratize SD-WAN with its open source, open architecture approach that it said signals a "second wave of SD-WAN" that will eliminate enterprise networking vendor lock-in.

After subsequently shipping beta software in August of last year, the company yesterday (Jan. 7) announced its software is now generally available for download and production deployments. The software can be downloaded directly or obtained preinstalled on dedicated hardware appliances available from partners. The source code being donated to the community is available here. The codebase includes both flexiEdge and flexiManage components, the company said, and doesn't include the flexiWAN billing system and UI that are deployed via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering. As per the "no vendor lock-in" approach, it runs on Intel x86 white-box hardware, without mandating a specific hardware vendor.

While the source code is freely available, flexiWAN offers commercial options in a variety of pricing models based on the number of registered flexiEdge instances, including a free tier.

Besides being the first open source SD-WAN offering, flexiWAN said its solution is unique and disruptive in several other ways:

• The "Android of Routers" -- Removing vendor lock-in and allowing for service provider differentiation, flexiWAN features a modular and open architecture allowing for laser focused solutions that answer enterprise needs. Anything from simple IPsec tunnels to full blown, feature rich SD-WAN can be modularly achieved and cost optimized
• Business model innovation -- freemium model with publicly available pricing and a partner program that helps partners differentiate and succeed in this crowded market
• Flexible deployment options -- SaaS and self-hosting options are available

"This release is a major milestone for flexiWAN and our community as it is the world's first production-ready open and community-driven SD-WAN solution," said Amir Zmora, CEO & co-founder of flexiWAN. "Our innovation and openness doesn't stop at the technical level. By offering our services as a freemium business model, along with publicly sharing our pricing and source code with the community, we strive to lead the industry to more openness. We hope to lead the way towards more modern business and pricing models."

More information is available in an FAQ the release notes.