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Telstra Gears-Up to Open Networking Backing Cumulus Networks
Telstra Gears-Up with Open Networking
Telstra Ventures has led a US$43 million (A$53.7 million) round of investment in open networking software maker Cumulus Networks.
The vendor’s main product is a Linux operating system for network switches used in enterprise and data centre environments.
It said it would use the Series D funding round to “advance its mission: to free customers from expensive proprietary network stacks” and bring web-scale automation to more companies, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. Source - IT News
Telstra Ventures managing director Mark Sherman said in a statement that Telstra “had the advantage of being a Cumulus Networks customer first, which gave us several months of first-hand experience working with their products, services and team".
“After that experience, we were eager to expand our partnership and invest in the company,” he said.
“Open networking is key to growing service provider capabilities and we are thrilled to have Cumulus join our portfolio of strategic, innovative companies.”
Cumulus said it had “tripled its business in the Asia Pacific region” during 2017, as well as experiencing strong growth in Europe and the Middle East.
It has now had total funding injections of US$129 million.
Economic benefits of software-based networking
SDN and NFV offer nearly infinite economies as of scale. Most of the issues with oversubscribing ports – not having enough, or undersubscribing ports – buying more than you need, are eliminated when software is introduced to replace physical, single-function devices. Time is money, and in a software-driven infrastructure, updates, upgrades and changes are all faster and much simpler. The cost of commodity hardware is typically much lower than that of function specific network equipment. Support costs also decrease, from hardware maintenance cost to operational and vendor support. Request the Complete "CTO’s guide to SDN, NFV and VNF"