San Jose, Calif. -- Today Arrcus, the provider of the software that powers network infrastructure and its transformation for the interconnected world, formally launched and released its first product, ArcOS, an independent, hardware agnostic network operating system. ArcOS enables organizations to cost effectively build massively scalable infrastructure across physical, virtual and cloud network environments while delivering superior performance, security and deployment flexibility.

Arrcus also announced $15 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst and Clear Ventures. Advisors include include Pankaj Patel, former EVP and CDO of Cisco; Amarjit Gill, serial entrepreneur who founded and sold companies to Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, EMC, Facebook, Google, and Intel; Farzad Nazem, former CTO of Yahoo; Randy Bush, Internet Hall of Fame, founder Verio (basis of NTT's DataCenter Business); Fred Baker, former Cisco Fellow, IETF Chair and Co-Chair of the IPv6 Working Group; Nancy Lee, ex-VP of People at Google, and Shawn Zandi, Director, Network Engineering at LinkedIn.

'I am excited about Arrcus and the impact it will have on our industry. ArcOS is a fundamental building block to assure a new generation of cloud infrastructure devices, including switches and routers, as they gain mainstream adoption. In particular, ArcOS delivers open orchestration, standards-based APIs, per module restartability plus security, best-in-class protocols with minimal open source dependency. All of this is important as IT becomes a key innovation enabler through smarter infrastructure. ArcOS can be deployed physically, virtually and in the cloud, which is key for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments." said Nick Lippis, co-chairman of Open Networking Users Group (ONUG).

The networking industry is a multi-billion market dominated by a small number of vertically integrated box vendors. Lack of choice keeps prices high and innovation low, and customers have limited control of their networking infrastructure. In recent years, there has been an explosion in next generation networking silicon options with advanced functionality and accelerating feature velocity that is transforming what is possible. As a result, there are many options of fully featured, high quality, cost efficient network hardware systems that are readily available from multiple original design manufacturers (ODMs) but their adoption has been slow.

Until ArcOS, there has been a lack of a viable independent network operating system that unleashes the transition from being vertically integrated to the best-in-class horizontally segmented solutions. As a independent hardware agnostic operating system, ArcOS lets companies transform the way they manage their networks in either greenfield or brownfield environments, liberating them from vertically integrated proprietary solutions and opening the door to horizontally diversified choices of best-in-class silicon and hardware systems. ArcOS is also the world's first independent networking operating system to have been ported to both Broadcom's StrataDNX Jericho+ and StrataXGS Trident 3 bringing the most advanced switch-on-chip capabilities to the market from the industry leader.

Arrcus co-founder and CEO Devesh Garg said: "We use 'network different' as our fundamental approach to enable the freedom of choice through our product innovation and challenging the status quo. Arrcus has assembled the world's best networking technologists, is bringing new capabilities and is changing the business model to make it easier to design, deploy and manage large scale networking solutions for our customers."

ArcOS' first principles based architectural priorities include a modular micro-services paradigm, advanced Layer 3 routing capabilities and an open and standards based autonomous platform. Key elements include a hyper-performance resilient control plane, an intelligent Dataplane Adaptation Layer (DPALTM), Data-Model Driven Telemetry and consistent YANG/OpenConfig APIs for easy programmatic access. These capabilities in conjunction with Broadcom's StrataDNX Jericho+ platform enable the support for the full BGP internet routing table.

"StackPath's industry-leading edge delivery platform depends on having a resilient and massively-scalable network. As such, we partner with companies like Arrcus so that we can deploy programmable hardware based on open standards across our entire infrastructure and still meet our strict networking requirements," said Wen Temitim, CTO at StackPath. "In addition to the platform flexibility, ArcOS provides easy-to-consume, standards-based OpenConfiq/YANG programmable APIs that drives significant operating and deployment efficiencies through automation."

"As the market leader in merchant silicon switch SoCs, we are excited to see the launch of Arrcus and their support for Broadcom's StrataDNX Jericho+ and StrataXGS Trident 3 platforms," said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products at Broadcom. "Building on the industry's most pervasive silicon platforms, the ArcOS carrier-grade network operating system will further drive the adoption of our networking switch products offering new levels of programmable switching platforms, enhanced network telemetry and high scale required for the data center and edge environments."

Arrcus enables open networking for the following use cases:

Arrcus