Santa Clara, California, Oct. 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pluribus Networks, a leader in distributed cloud networking and SDN automation, today announced a funding round of $20 million led by investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. The financing will be used to bolster R&D for multiple new product initiatives along with sales and marketing resources that will further accelerate the company’s penetration into the distributed cloud market, while supporting expansion into adjacent sectors.
With organizations continuing to embrace distributed cloud networking, Pluribus is experiencing strong market traction delivering automated data center networking solutions to both enterprise and service providers across all regions and verticals. Its portfolio of high-performance Freedom™ 9000 series data center switches, combined with the Netvisor® ONE OS and the Adaptive Cloud Fabric™ controllerless SDN automation software, delivers a highly automated and cost-effective network fabric that increases agility and radically simplifies network operations across distributed data center locations. Pluribus software is also available on a variety of high-performance hardware platforms, including Dell EMC PowerSwitch™ and Edgecore Networks Open Cloud white box data center switches.
“Our organization has studied the cloud networking landscape, and we believe Pluribus is well-positioned to compete and benefit from the market’s adoption of 5G, edge and distributed computing. Pluribus’ innovative approach to data center automation is driving better performance, lowering costs and significantly simplifying operations for both enterprises and service providers,” said Pete Chung, head of Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
“With such pronounced momentum of cloud infrastructure towards distributed data center architectures, Pluribus is uniquely positioned to address a number of multi-site data centers, edge computing and metro use cases by providing networks that are highly distributed and perform at scale. The recent thorough due diligence and investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, along with the strong support of our existing investors, is an affirmation of our technology, vision and market position,” said Kumar Srikantan, Pluribus Networks, president and chief executive officer.
“As both a technology partner and investor, we are pleased to see Pluribus’ accelerating growth as they continue to innovate and support Ericsson’s delivery of best-in-class mobile solutions to our customers,” said Albert Kim, Head of Ericsson Ventures.
“In recent months, we have raised our data center switching forecast to reflect increased market opportunities and accelerated pace of digital transformation. We now forecast the market to surpass $20 billion by 2025. We have also raised our forecast on disaggregated network operating system software and expect the next wave of adoption to be driven by a broad set of customers including Tier 1 Cloud service providers, Tier 2/3 Cloud service providers, Telcos and large enterprises. Given this healthy outlook, it is no surprise to see increased investment in companies that are addressing this market, including Pluribus Networks,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Research Director, Dell'Oro Group
“Edgecore is excited to see Pluribus Networks receive this round of financing, positioning them to continue to invest and enhance their disaggregated and SDN automated cloud networking solution. Edgecore continues to also invest for the future by delivering new innovative next generation data center switching and routing platforms. Edgecore’s high performance open networking switches, combined with the Pluribus Netvisor ONE operating system and the Adaptive Cloud Fabric software, continue to deliver tremendous value to our mutual end users globally,” said Heimdall Siao, President of Edgecore Networks.
Morgan Stanley adds to Pluribus’ existing portfolio of top-tier investors, including Ericsson, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Temasek, Menlo Ventures, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Data Collective Venture Capital and Mohr Davidow. Prior to this financing round, Pluribus had previously raised $125 million in funding and will now continue to innovate and grow share in the data center networking market.
About Pluribus Networks
Pluribus Networks delivers highly scalable, automated and cost-efficient data center network solutions based on the principles of disaggregation and controllerless SDN automation. The Linux-based Netvisor® ONE operating system and the Adaptive Cloud Fabric™ controllerless SDN software have been purpose built to deliver radically automated networking along with superior economics by leveraging white box switches including Pluribus’ own Freedom™ Series of switches. The Adaptive Cloud Fabric controllerless SDN architecture is optimized to deliver a modern network fabric underlay and overlay across data center sites to support distributed cloud with rich services, automated operations, intrinsic security, comprehensive visibility and no single point of failure. Pluribus is deployed by more than 350 customers, including more than 100 tier one mobile network operators, in mission critical networks around the globe. Visit Pluribus Networks to learn more.
About Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital
Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital is the growth-focused private investment platform within Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital targets growth equity and credit investments within technology, healthcare, consumer, digital media, and other high-growth sectors. For over three decades, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital has successfully pursued growth investment opportunities and has completed investments in over 200 companies leveraging the global brand and network of Morgan Stanley. For further information about Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, please visit www.morganstanley.com/im/expansioncapital.
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