SnapRoute, a company that builds open-source software for networking hardware used in data centers, today announced that it has picked up a hefty $25 million in its Series A funding round. The investment was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing seed investor Lightspeed Venture Partners.
In addition, this round also garnered interest from new investors AT&T and Microsoft Ventures. SnapRoute has also announced that their lead investor Norwest’s partner Rama Sekhar has joined the company’s board. He will be accompanied by Lightspeed partner John Vrionis, Joe Sexton, and SnapRoute CEO and founder Jason Forrester. They will now work out the next plan of action for the company’s growth.
The $25 million capital infusion will be utilised by SnapRoute to accelerate development of their open networking software solutions. This will give them an edge in the networking ecosystem, thus enabling them to court more Fortune 500 companies. The company also plans to utilise a chunk of these funds to increase their team size, product offerings, and customer base.
Talking about their investment, Rama Sekhar, partner at Norwest Venture Partners says,
SnapRoute is disrupting the multi-billion dollar networking market by fundamentally changing how networks are built and scaled today. By disaggregating software from hardware, SnapRoute is offering flexibility that has historically eluded the networking industry. We are excited to invest in this innovative team as they change networking as we know it.
SnapRoute was founded by former Apple engineers, who had been working behind the curtains before exiting stealth mode in mid-2016. In addition to the founding team, more than half of the team used to be employed at Apple’s data center. But, now they’re working on building their own solutions to build an optimised network for organisations and enterprises.
The company came into existence with the aim of simplifying the needs of those who were completely entangled with traditional hardware and software solutions. It was seen that it became extremely difficult to build and micro-manage networks with the reliability to scale and compete in the current scenario. Enterprises are using hardware tools that does not meet their requirements and ultimately increases not only the cost but also the complexity of their networks.
Commenting on this investment, Forrester says,
In under a year, we’ve been able to challenge legacy players who have previously had a tight grip on the market. Why? Because our technology is more agile, flexible and affordable than any other offering. This approach has already been validated by our production customers. We are excited for the next phase of the company and to expand our offering and customer base.
The company is known in the networking industry for building a Network OS called ‘FlexSwitch,’ separate of the hardware involved. This is an open-source software that has been designed to runs on commodity “white box” switches and routers. Unlike traditional vendors, it has been developed to provide more flexible network optimisation techniques to enterprises. SnapRoute describes the said product as under,
It is a fully programmable network stack that is modular, Linux distribution agnostic, and equipped with RESTful APIs at every level. The solution offers the network operator increased control,visibility, and flexibility. It also allows for the development of custom applications from open APIs.
Further, though it hasn’t been exclusively mentioned but SnapRoute is working with Facebook for the development of an open networking infrastructure through the Open Compute Project (OCP). The company currently boasts of nearly 32 employees, as much as 35 customers, and 12,000-13,000 switches running their software.
