Avi Networks is a networking start-up offering SDN+NFV software solutions that run on bare-metal hardware. They have raised $33M from Greylock Partners, Menlo Ventures and other top VC’s. Their mission is to disrupt the enterprise networking sector with its virtualization solutions. More specifically, they aim to redefine the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) market and Load Balancing (LB) industry that is dominated by F5 Networks, Citrix and Riverbed Technologies. Avi Networks is the first start-up to target the ADC and LB market from an SDN perspective. Their platform is called CADP, which stands for Cloud Application Delivery Platform, and is comprised of a control plane, data plane, analytics engine, service module which provisions networking services, and other components. Unfortunately for F5 Networks and Riverbed technologies, they must not only deal with the CDN threat, but now they have to deal with the likes of Avi Networks.
Background
- Company: Avi Networks
- HQ: Sunnyvale // Founded: 2012 // Raised: $33M
- LinkedIn Employee Count: 38
- Executives: Umesh Mahajan (CEO & Co-founder), Murali Basavaiah (Co-founder) and Ranga Rajagopalan (CTO)
- Product: SDN based software suite that virtualizes Application Delivery Controller and Load Balancing functionality on bare-metal hardware
- Competition: F5 Networks, Citrix and Riverbed Technologies
- Customers: Hitachi, Top Two US Telco, Top 5 US Financial Services Company, Top Three Retailer, and Top Five Global Bank
 Product Features
- CADP: Cloud Application Delivery Platform is the product name of their SDN platform
- CADP Components: 1) Web-based UI 2) Controller for policy based control and analytics and 3) Service Engine that provides application delivery services and metrics
- HYDRA: Hyperscale Distributed Resource Architecture is an analytics based service that separates the data plane from the control plane when dealing with application delivery controllers and load balancers
- Inline Analytics: a component the Hydra architecture
- Distributed Microservices: Module that automates the performance, capacity, and placement of resources