SDN Startup Big Switch Lands $48.5M Funding

SDN pioneer Big Switch today announced a $48.5 million Series C funding round, which it plans to use for international expansion and R&D.

Both new and past investors put money on the table, for a total of $94 million in funding since the company was founded in 2010.

Investors include Morgenthaler Ventures, Silver Lake Waterman, Triple Point Capital, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Accton, CID Group and MSD.

Big Switch saw more than 300% growth last year with customers in the US, APAC and EMEA, in verticals including tech, financial services, government, service providers and higher education.

Big Switch's products are Big Monitoring Fabric and Big Cloud Fabric, which pretty much do what they say on the tin -- Big Monitoring Traffic is designed to connect networks with monitoring tools, while Big Cloud Fabric is a platform for buildings. Both products are based on SDN networks built on white box and so-called brite box switches -- branded white boxes.

Big Switch Networks also added two new faces to its board: former NetApp Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) CEO Dan Warmenhoven and venture capitalist Gary Morgenthaler. Warmenhoven in particular helped drive NetApp and Palo Alto Networks Inc. through their fast growth cycles, and will help Big Switch through the same transition, Big Switch CEO Doug Murray tells Light Reading.

In addition to R&D, Big Switch plans to use the funding to put additional feet on the street in the US, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, South Korea, the UAE, Russia and Europe.

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The year is already off to a good start for network virtualization startup funding, with VeloCloud Networks Inc. announcing a C funding round last week, bringing its total funding to $49 million. (See Cisco Joins $27M Round for SD-WAN Startup VeloCloud.)

Big Switch had planned to announce the C funding round in early November, but delayed to give more investors an opportunity to join, Murray says. (See Big Switch Scores New Funding Round .)

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— Mitch Wagner, , West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected].