3. Cisco Acquires Viptela

Purchase Price: $610 million

In a monumental move in the SD-WAN industry, Cisco acquired SD-WAN startup Viptela for $610 million. San Jose, Calif.-based Viptela provides SD-WAN technology to several Fortune 500 companies and carriers such as Verizon. Its offerings include the vSmart Cloud-based SD-WAN Controller to centrally manage routing, policy, security, segmentation and authentication of devices; vManage Network Management System for centralized configuration and management; and vEdge routers.

"Together, Cisco and Viptela will be able to deliver next-generation SD-WAN solutions to best serve all size and scale of customer needs, while accelerating Cisco’s transition to a recurring, software-based business model," said Rob Salvagno, vice president of corporate business development at Cisco.