Big Switch Networks Secures $30.7MM in Incremental

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 27, 2017) - Big Switch Networks , The Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company, today announced it has secured $30.7MM in new financing to support further sales and product expansion as organizations around the world continue to shift to next-generation networking solutions to modernize data centers.

The financing includes participation from Dell Technologies Capital, Silverlake Waterman, Index Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, MSD Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Intel Capital, a strategic investment from a Tier-1 service provider, and others. Big Switch's total funding raised to date has now exceeded $120MM. 

"This funding is an important vote of confidence from a world class group of investors in Big Switch's ability to execute on our mission to disrupt the status quo of networking," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "This financing will enable us to further expand our geographical footprint and to invest in regions where we are seeing accelerating adoption of our products. In addition, as we were recently positioned as a Visionary in the 2017 Gartner Data Center Networking Magic Quadrant, we want to continue to invest in R&D and innovation."

According to the 2017 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking [i], in which Big Switch was positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant, Gartner findings include:

• "There is a growing willingness to move away from proprietary solutions. Our end-user survey (n = 83) indicated that 42% of clients consider open standards and multi-vendor interoperability support a mandatory requirement, 34% consider it very important, and 20% consider it somewhat important, so openness is a relevant buying criterion for 96% of the end users"
• "Disaggregation of hardware and software can be seen as a first step toward more vendor independence. Interest and adoption of white-/brite-box switching has increased significantly within hyperscale data centers over the past several quarters, and we expect it to reach 22% of the total data center Ethernet switch market by 2020"
• "These results are quite impressive, but in addition, 75% of the end users indicated that they expect an increase in relevance of open networking in their purchasing decisions in the next 24 months." 

The goal of Open Networking is an open ecosystem in which customers can choose among various industry-standard networking gear, network applications and network operating systems to meet their business needs. For decades, the networking industry has been stuck in the mainframe era mentality with a proprietary, monolithic structure built for pre-virtualized, client-server implementations using chassis-based switches. The shift towards SDN in the data center represents the most transformative architectural trend delivering enhanced network agility, choice and optimized network operations for customers. Open networking contributes to the significant disruption occurring within the industry to more easily and efficiently deploy, monitor and adjust network services and performance.

Supporting Quotes

"The company's success implies a new way of organizing not only networking products' software, but also a new way of organizing the networking industry itself," said Kyle Forster, Big Switch Founder. "If you look at our investors, our customers and our partners, this is clearly underway. We believe the changes in the Gartner Magic Quadrant over the last few years sum it up. The industry is changing, and we are excited to be a part of this ecosystem of organizations that are driving to the new model."

"I have been pleased with the accelerating adoption of Big Switch's products and by the team's relentless execution," said Mike Volpi, Partner, Index Ventures. "This financing will fuel continued innovation and geographic expansion."

Supporting Materials Explainer Video: Big Cloud Fabric Explainer Video: Big Monitoring Fabric Explainer Video: Big Monitoring Fabric Inline Research Report: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking Gartner Peer Insights: Data Center Networking / Big Switch Networks TechValidate: Check out what Big Switch customers are saying

Disclaimer Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

[i] Gartner " Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking " by Danilo Ciscato, Mark Fabbi, Andrew Lerner, 03 July 2017.

About Big Switch Networks Big Switch Networks is the Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company. We disrupt the status quo of networking by designing intelligent, automated and flexible networks for our customers around the world. We do so by leveraging the principles of software-defined networking (SDN), coupled with a choice of industry-standard hardware. Big Switch Networks has two solutions: Big Monitoring Fabric, a Next-Generation Network Packet Broker, which enables pervasive security and monitoring of data center and cloud traffic for inline or out-of-band deployments and Big Cloud Fabric, the industry's first Next-Generation switching fabric that allows for choice of switching hardware for OpenStack, VMware, Container and Big Data use cases. Big Switch Networks is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, with offices located in Tokyo, Melbourne, London and Istanbul. For additional information, email info@bigswitch.com , visit www.bigswitch.com or follow us on Twitter @bigswitch and LinkedIn .

Big Switch Networks, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Monitoring Fabric, BigSecure, Big Chain, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light VX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.