Pertino, a cloud-based WAN platform based in Los Gatos CA, started in 2011 and has raised $29M in funding. The founding team are from Packeteer, a network appliance company acquired by Blue Coat Systems. Pertino identifies itself as a cloud networking company, that can be set up in minutes, without the need for hardware, providing LAN-like connectivity between all connected devices.
The Pertino platform is based on the latest software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualization technologies, all running over POPs within Rackspace, AWS & Linode. Pertino competes with Aryaka Networks. Aryaka and Pertino are a new breed of Cloud-based WAN providers, that have some characteristics of a CDN, but more like a B2B CDN. Pertino provides upload and download services, enabling users to share files across long distances.
Pertino requires users to load a software client onto the device, be it mobile or desktop, enabling the connected device to create a VPN network on the fly, without the need for any configuration. Their software replaces the traditional VPN appliance. This solution is a great fit for the SMB market. They have signed up dozens of customers.
It will be interesting to see the these two cloud-based WAN providers duke it out. The Aryaka team is from the CDN world, and the Pertino team is from the networking hardware side of the business. Aryaka has a huge head start. My prediction is Aryaka goes public and Pertino will be acquired by Rackspace.