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HomeNetworking5 hot network-automation startups to watch
by Jeff Vance

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5 HOT NETWORK-AUTOMATION STARTUPS TO WATCH

Analysis
Feb 18, 20209 mins
Network Management SoftwareNetworkingSecurity
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Automating network processes can head off issues and speed resolution of
problems while cutting the workload on IT pros.



Credit: Thinkstock

With the combined challenges of tight IT budgets and scarcer technical talent,
it’s becoming imperative for enterprise network pros to embrace automation of
processes and the way infrastructure responds to changing network traffic.

Not only can automation help address these problems, they can also improve
overall application-response time by anticipating and addressing looming
congestion. Modern applications, such as virtual reality and artificial
intelligence, and architectures that incorporate IoT and hybrid cloud have yet
to reach their true potential because network capacity seems to always lag
behind demand.  

A common problem is that too much networking infrastructure is still manually
maintained and managed, but major vendors are starting to addressing these 
issues, as are startups that seek to break bottlenecks through automation.





Among the innovations implemented by the automation startups described here are
a novel network operating system, digital twin software, network-security
automation and large-scale automated Wi-Fi-assurance tools.

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Collectively, they have raised more than $150M in funding, attracted top-tier
leaders with long, successful track records in the networking industry, and are
on a mission to modernize networking from the datacenter to endpoints.






CONTAINOUS

Year founded: 2016



Funding: $11M

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

CEO: Emile Vauge, who was previously a lead developer/DevOps professional at
Zenika, Thales, and Airbus





What they do: Provide a network management platform.

According to Containous, multi-cloud networking is too complex and too
labor-intensive with too many unwieldy tools with far too little integration
among them. Even worse, the time DevOps teams spend on networking is not spent
building, iterating, and shipping software.

Containous’ multi-cloud network-management platform is built for cloud-native
applications and microservices. It condenses multiple network visibility and
management features into a single, centralized platform.



The platform auto-discovers applications, containers, and microservice and
automatically manages routing, encryption, load balancing, and mirroring at the
cloud edge.

The Containous open-source cloud edge router, Traefik, integrates with all major
cloud-native tools and orchestrators. It automatically monitors the health of
cloud-based enterprise assets, alerting IT teams to problems, and features
auto-scaling tools that allow enterprises to add or subtract resources at will.

Containous has also built a service mesh that provides visibility into container
environments and manages traffic flows inside clusters.

Competitors: HAProxy, NGINX, Istio, and Kong Customers: None publicly announced



Why they’re a hot startup to watch: With IDC forecasting that there will be more
than 1.8 billion enterprise container instances by 2021, the demand for network
intelligence and management tools will mean a demand for Containous’s products.

The company just closed a $10M Series A funding round in January 2020, and while
this is CEO Emile Vauge’s first stint in the C-suite, he brings 15-plus years of
development experience with multinational corporations. COO Vincent Pineau adds
exit experience to the mix, having helped two companies to successful exits. He
was VP of Global Support and Service at Talend when it became the third French
company to be listed on NASDAQ. He was also co-founder and COO of Influans,
which was acquired by Ogury.

Containous says its software has already been downloaded 1.4 billion times,
indicating that it is gaining traction.


FORWARD NETWORKS

Year founded: 2013

Funding: $62M

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

CEO: David Erickson, a contributor to the OpenFlow specification and the author
of Beacon, the OpenFlow controller used by Big Switch Networks, Cisco,
Floodlight, and others

What they do: Provide digital-twin software for the management of large
networks.

According to Forward Networks, any enterprise network with more than a few dozen
devices is so complex that it is nearly impossible for resource-strapped IT
teams to stay current with real-time, end-to-end network behavior. It’s even
harder to ensure that all the devices are properly configured. 

Forward Networks’ software automatically searches, verifies, and predicts the
behavior of enterprise networks by creating a software copy, or digital twin, of
the entire network, including both on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

The software analyzes how the network responds to changing demands, traffic
patterns and infrastructure changes. Forward Networks contends that it can do
this in seconds using a proprietary approach. Via the twin, network engineers
can see how applications will behave over their network, while quickly
pinpointing where devices or software configurations are out of alignment with
required policies.

The digital twin automatically stays up-to-date through continuous monitoring,
which can also be set to verify network configurations against corporate
policies.

Competitors: Cisco, VMWare (through the Veriflow acquisition), Intentionet,
NetBrain, and Solar Winds

Customers: Goldman Sachs, PayPal, Telstra, and UBISOFT

Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Forward Networks is backed by $62M raised in
three rounds of funding from Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold
Ventures, and A. Capital. With the rise of multi-cloud networks, which are
difficult to maintain and manage, Forward Networks has already carved out a
viable market niche and landed some top-tier customers.


KENTIK

Year founded: 2014

Funding: $38.2M

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

CEO: Avi Freedman, who previously served as Chief Network Scientist for Akamai

What they do: Provide SaaS-based traffic-analysis and network-management
software.

Kentik’s AIOps platform, a network traffic analysis and management platform,
unifies network data from cloud and on-premises infrastructure to deliver a
complete end-to-end picture of the state of hybrid networks.

The platform can analyze traffic across networks where packet capture is not
feasible because of traffic levels and decentralized infrastructure. Kentik
ingests multiple sources of real-time and historical monitoring data, adds
contextual insights, applies AI/ML to recognize patterns and anomalies worthy of
actions, and gives network pros the ability to automate corrections.

Competitors: Netscout (through its Arbor Networks acquisition), Nokia (Deepfield
acquisition), SolarWinds, and Turbonomic (through its SevOne acquisition)
Customers: Box, eBay, GoDaddy, IBM, Netskope, Sky UK, Twitch, Yelp, and Zoom

Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Kentik has the backing, team, and early
customer traction to be viable. The startup has raised $38.2M in three rounds of
funding from August Capital, First Round Capital, Engineering Capital, Data
Collective (DCVC), Glynn Capital, Tahoma Ventures, and Third Point Ventures.

Kentik’s C-level team knows network management inside and out. Founder Avi
Freedman has decades of experience managing large networks. In 1992, he founded
Philadelphia’s first ISP, Netaxs. He spent a decade at Akamai, first as VP of
Network Infrastructure and then as Chief Network Scientist. Before founding
Kentik, he was CTO at ServerCentral. Chief Scientist Ian Pye was Cloudflare’s
first hire. As the lead analytics engineer, he wrote many of Cloudflare’s
backend systems. CTO Jonah Kowall previously served as VP of Market Development
and Insights for AppDynamics, helping position the company for its $3.7B
acquisition by Cisco in 2017.

The customers it names are major enterprises.


SALTSTACK

Year founded: 2012

Funding: $31M-plus

Headquarters: Lehi, Utah

CEO: Marc Chenn. was director of sales with Compliance11, which was acquired by
Charles Schwab in 2011.

What they do: Provide an automation and collaboration platform for network
security.

IT and security teams can’t keep up with the complexity and scale of modern
infrastructure. According to Gartner, 99% of exploited vulnerabilities occur on
misconfigured or non-compliant systems. SaltStack says the Achilles heel of the
current approach to this problem is that it lacks automated remediation, which
means IT and security teams are always in reactive mode.

SaltStack’s software platform fully automates the mapping of security policy to
infrastructure configuration, scanning the infrastructure against desired
policies, managing vulnerabilities, and automating remediation of
vulnerabilities at scale.

Competitors: Microsoft, Red Hat, Puppet, and BMC

Customers: None publicly announced.

Why they’re a hot startup to watch: With stricter privacy laws and the growing
popularity of SD-WAN, security is becoming ever more important, which assures a
strong demand.

SaltStack’s CEO Marc Chenn has experience leading startups to successful exits.
He played a critical role in the 2002 IPO of Altiris and its eventual $1 billion
acquisition by Symantec. Chenn also helped lead SaaS provider Compliance11 to an
acquisition by Charles Schwab.


WYEBOT

Year founded: 2016

Funding: $9M

Headquarters: Marlborough, Mass.

CEO: Roger Sands, who was previously mobility business line manager for HP.

What they do: Provide autonomic Wi-Fi assurance software.

According to Wyebot, large, mission-critical Wi-Fi networks, are difficult to
monitor, manage, and repair. The traditional approach to fixing Wi-Fi issues is
sending a network engineer to troubleshoot using handheld tools. Wyebot says its
AI engine software can accomplish remotely what network engineers do on site.

Wyebot’s Wireless Intelligence Platform provides visibility into large Wi-Fi
networks and analyzes network behaviors using AI and multi-radio sensors. The
platform automatically identifies problems and recommends fixes.

Automated problem resolution combined with a remote client for end-user
applications and performance metrics give IT visibility into what is going on
throughout all locations at the organization. This allows problem solving
without having to go onsite.

The company claims this approach results in up to a 90% reduction in mean-time
to problem resolution, up to 50% reduction in Wi-Fi problem tickets, and up to
80% reduction in onsite problem-solving visits.

Competitors:  Ekahau, Metageek, 7Signal, and HP (Cape Networks acquisition)
Customers: Tampa Prep, Hachette Book Group, and Audi FIS Women’s Ski World Cup
at Killington, Vt.

Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Wyebot has raised a total of $9M in two seed
rounds, will be raising its Series A round this year, and has already landed
named customers.

CEO Roger Sands and CTO Anil Gupta have solid track records in this space. Sands
served as Co-CEO of Colubris Networks, where he built its enterprise business
and led its sale to HP. After the acquisition, Sands ran HP’s global Wi-Fi
business. Gupta has nearly 25 years of experience in the networking industry. He
served as a principal software engineer at Colubris Networks until its
acquisition by HP. Then, he served in various designer/architect roles at HPE
Aruba. Gupta also holds 15 Wi-Fi patents.


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by Jeff Vance

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Jeff Vance is the founder of Startup50.com, a site that discovers, analyzes, and
ranks tech startups. Follow him on Twitter, @JWVance, or connect with him on
LinkedIn.


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