Software Networking Firm Cato Networks Lands USD 55 Million Funding Round

Cato Networks Ltd. has refilled its war chest with a USD 55 million round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The round brings its total amount raised to USD 125 million. Previous investors Aspect Ventures, Greylock Partners, Singtel Innov8, USVP and co-founders Shlomo Kramer and Gur Shatz also participated in the round.

Cato Networks sells software-defined wide-area networking tools. SD-WAN is a specific application of software-defined networking technology applied to WAN connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks – including branch offices and data centers – over large geographic distances. A WAN might be used, for example, to connect branch offices to a central corporate network, or to connect widely separate data centers.

In the past, these WAN connections often used technology that required special proprietary hardware. The SD-WAN movement seeks to move more of the network control into the cloud, using a software approach.

Cato’s specific SD-WAN platform is called Cato Cloud, which is a hosted traffic management platform that enables organizations to centrally control communications from their data centers to branch offices and cloud deployments. It also allows them to regulate access to applications and services for mobile workers.

The company’s ability to attract such a significant amount of funding isn’t such a surprise considering the growth its seen over the last 12 months. During that period, it saw its total customer bookings grow by 352 percent year over year.

It also added some compelling new features to the Cato Cloud platform, including Intelligent Last-Mile Management tools that automate network monitoring and troubleshooting. In addition, Cato expanded its self-healing capabilities to customers’ own data centers, enabling brownouts and network outages to be remedied automatically by converging networking and security infrastructure and ensuring these are always aligned.

Slowly but surely, Cato Networks is becoming a “complete WAN transformation platform,” Chief Executive Officer Shlomo Kramer said in an interview.

“As we take on legacy telcos to offer a new platform for enterprise networks, we are rounding out our managed services offerings in both networking and security, introducing additional enterprise-grade security layers and network optimization features at cloud pace, and invest in scaling our global network footprint,” Kramer said. “Cato is consistently moving upmarket, enabling ever-larger enterprises to move their mission-critical networks to the Cato Cloud.”―Silicon ANGLE