Avi gains funding for its application load balancing, security and analytics software.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

June 6, 2018

3 Min Read
Cisco Cracks Wallet, Joins $60M Avi Funding

Avi Networks, which provides load balancing, security and analytics for cloud and on-premises applications, has a valuable new best friend in the form of Cisco, which joined other investors in a $60 million Series D round announced Wednesday.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) joins an oversubscribed funding round that also includes DAG Ventures, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures, according to a press release issued by Avi Networks Wednesday. Total funding to date is now $115 million, the company said. (See Avi Lands $60 Million Funding.)

Avi Vantage Platform provides Layer 4-7 networking services -- application load balancing between servers and cloud platforms, as well as analytics and an application firewall service.

"We can see who interacts with apps," Avi CEO Amit Pandey tells Light Reading. Avi's analytics tools measure whether users are seeing latency problems, degraded performance or other issues. Because Avi sits in front of the application, "in many ways we are the last line of defense," Pandey says. "You have perimeter firewalls -- we provide an application firewall." Additionally, the Avi platform can learn from application behavior, and automatically suggest and implement load balancing and security rules. (See Avi's Fire-Breathing New CEO Scorches Competitors.)

Figure 1: Avi CEO Amit Pandey Avi CEO Amit Pandey

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Cisco had a previous reseller relationship with Avi; the firm's software complements Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure, Avi says. The company also has partnerships with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Amazon Web Services Inc. (See Avi Bridges the Enterprise Multi-Cloud and Avi Connects Up With Microsoft Azure)

Avi, which made a strategic acquisition to enhance its multi-tenant cloud capabilities late last year targets Global 2000 enterprises and telcos, with customers in finance, including the world's largest banks, and technology, including Adobe. (See Adobe Taps Avi for Microsoft Azure App Delivery and Avi Acquires StacksWare for Application Management From the Cloud .)

Use cases include public and private cloud infrastructure, network automation and SDN, Pandey says.

Its competitors include F5, Citrix and DIY applications built using open source tools, says the CEO.

The company has "well over" 250 employees and while it doesn't disclose any financials, the CEO claims it is enjoying year-on-year sales growth of 300%.

— Mitch Wagner Follow me on Twitter Visit my LinkedIn profile Visit my blog Follow me on FacebookExecutive Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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