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Virtualization Startup Big Switch Networks Lands $13 Million in Funding

Big Switch Networks, a new company building a platform to bring the benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise networks, announced April 28 that it secured $13.75 million in a Series A financing, led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Big Switch Networks also announced that it has joined the newly formed ONF, a […]

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Nathan Eddy

Apr 28, 2011

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Big Switch Networks, a new company building a platform to bring the
benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise
networks, announced April 28 that it secured $13.75 million in a Series A
financing, led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

Big Switch Networks also announced that it has joined the newly formed
ONF, a nonprofit group focused on promoting OpenFlow and other
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies as a way to speed
innovation in the networking industry. OpenFlow is a standard protocol
that enables networks to evolve more rapidly by giving owners and
operators better control over their networks and the ability to
optimize network behavior.

With this infusion of capital, four new directors joined Big Switch
Networks co-founders Guido Appenzeller, CEO, and Kyle Forster, vice
president of sales and marketing, on the board. "Enterprise networking
is exciting again. We’re seeing new customer problems that aren’t well
addressed with traditional networking technologies and changes in the
large IT suppliers that are creating opportunities for startups like
Big Switch Networks," said Mike Volpi, partner at Index Ventures and
former senior vice president and general manager of the routing
technology group at Cisco.

The company believes network virtualization is defined by three
fundamental principles: Hosts on the network see the virtual topology,
not the underlying physical topology, application or department-level
admins manage their virtual topology, not the underlying physical
topology, and the central team can add capacity when needed by scaling
out the underlying physical topology without impacting the virtual
topologies on top.

“Traditional L2/L3 designs and industry-standard CLI have been the
tools of this trade, and we believe they will continue to be the tools
of this trade for a long time to come. Rather than creating a new
paradigm, we believe that there is an opportunity to slip in a
virtualization layer underneath,” stated a blog post on the company’s
Web site. “As new applications, new departments or new classes of
traffic emerge, we believe that a networking team should have the
choice of whether to manage that via the familiar tools of the
underlying physical network or via those same familiar tools applied to
a virtual network on top.”

Virtualization Startup Big Switch Networks Lands $13 Million in Funding

Nathan Eddy

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