AT&T Adds Cisco Teleworker Into Its SD-WAN Soup

AT&T Business added Cisco’s Teleworker option to its SD-WAN service that is targeted at making it easier for companies to set up remote workers and supports the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) criteria for managing system security.

The offer uses a single piece of hardware that includes a full SD-WAN software stack and that ties into an employee’s home internet connection. The system prioritizes business applications over non-business traffic and can be deployed with zero-touch provisioning.

The deployment can be managed by AT&T or by the customer using its own support and security policies. And the FISMA certification allows the service to be used by federal employees.

Cisco offers the Teleworker option on its Meraki-branded SD-WAN service. Comcast Business announced a similar Teleworker update earlier this year.

AT&T Teleworker Hits Surging SD-WAN Interest

The update builds on AT&T’s adoption of Cisco’s Secure SD-WAN platform last year. That update involved dynamic routing, optimized cloud connectivity, application performance monitoring, application-aware firewall, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and advanced malware protection running on Cisco’s line of Integrated Service Routers (ISRs) and its Aggregated Service Routers (ASRs) hardware.

AT&T also offers the Meraki-based platform alongside Cisco’s Viptela and VMware’s VeloCloud platform.

The carrier last year noted that customer connections into its SD-WAN Static Network Based product surged 700% during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 virus outbreak. However, it noted that it has been able to maintain network performance because of the platform’s cloud-based nature.

A Forrester Research report late last year ranked AT&T as a “strong performer” in the managed SD-WAN space, noting that the carrier was especially strong among larger enterprise customers at the expense of smaller enterprise customers.