Zayo Group purchased QOS Networks, a managed edge and SD-WAN company in Irvine, California that helps enterprises deploy, manage and monitor their SD-WAN and edge networks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, however, Zayo said that the QOS brand will be retained.
Zayo said that by acquiring QOS it will be able to combine its extensive fiber network, as well as its optical and packet capabilities, with QOS’ managed SD-WAN and edge services. Hypescalers, data centers, and telecom operators that are looking for fiber-to-the-tower connectivity are all potential customers for the combined capabilities of Zayo and QOS.
Zayo has about 126,000 miles of fiber, both dark fiber as well as lit fiber, running to thousands of buildings and data centers in North America and Europe.
QOS was founded in 2012 and its portfolio of SD-WAN products includes VMware’s VeloCloud, Versa Networks and Palo Alto’s Prisma. The company said it has deployed more than 45,000 SD-WAN edge devices globally.
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This isn’t Zayo’s first foray into SD-WAN. The company in 2018 inked a deal to use Versa Networks to power its SD-WAN offering.
Brian Lillie, chief product and technology officer at Zayo, told FierceTelecom that the acquisition of QOS Networks strengthens Zayo’s SD-WAN offerings, including its Versa product.
“The Zayo-QOS combination will create choice and flexibility for enterprise CIOs as they think about their edge and multi-cloud connectivity architecture,” Lillie said. “Furthermore, this combination will enable CIOs to decide whether they want a co-managed or fully-managed SD-WAN solution, a solution choice that Zayo couldn’t do before."