Arista acquires VMware’s VeloCloud SD-WAN outfit from Broadcom

It's 2025 so even this networking deal is about AI, which is apparently about to change wide area networks

Broadcom has sold VeloCloud, the software-defined WAN business VMware acquired in 2017, to Arista.

A post about the acquisition written by Arista CEO Jayshree Ullal opened by revisiting the reason software-defined (SD) WAN was hot back in 2017 when VMware acquired VeloCloud – people were tired of paying for expensive dedicated MPLS circuits and SD-WAN enabled the creation of cheaper virtual WANs.

Ullal’s post characterizes traffic flows on the WANs of the late 2010s as “simple, involving many-to-one conversations from many distributed users to a few centralized data sources.”

These days, WANs likely connect to many sources of data – Ullal mentions “a laptop or smartphone, a house, an airplane, or any other location on the move” in addition to “a central company data center, the public cloud, or distributed branch office sites.” That proliferation means WAN traffic patterns have changed. The CEO also feels that AI agents will bring more change to WANs as they roam around networks looking for data in many locations.

She reckons buying VeloCloud will help Arista to handle this new world of WANs.

“VeloCloud’s secure, AI-optimized cloud WAN portfolio will provide seamless, application-aware solutions to connect customer sites of any type, complementing Arista’s leading data center and campus wired/wireless portfolio,” she wrote.

VeloCloud founder Sanjay Uppal used his LinkedIn account to comment on the acquisition by remarking that his company – which he continued to lead as a Broadcom senior vice president – recently “realized that enterprise app architectures were changing once again with the emergence of a distributed agentic framework across the distributed enterprise.”

While he praised Broadcom’s stewardship of VeloCloud, Uppal said “The best way to grab this opportunity was in partnership with a networking systems leader as customers were increasingly looking for a comprehensive solution from LAN/Campus across the WAN to the data center.”

“When Arista, a close partner of Broadcom, proposed that VeloCloud become a part of their leading networking portfolio, we knew that this was the right fit,” he wrote.

Neither Broadcom nor Arista have mentioned how much money will change hands.

VMware acquired VeloCloud to grow its network virtualization business, but the SD-WAN company was an uneasy fit because it built and sold hardware. Arista’s business is built on boxes, so it will find that part of VeloCloud’s business easier to digest. VMware has gone all-in on private clouds, so probably won’t miss its SD-WAN sideline. Broadcom may, as it built a Secure Access Service Edge by combining products from VeloCloud and Symantec. ®