Centec Networks, a developer of Ethernet switching silicon and SDN white box solutions, announced $47 million in Series E funding led by China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (CICF), a national fund established to help develop IC technology companies in China.
Centec, which was founded in 2005 and is based in Suzhou, China, said it is pursuing an open-networking strategy. The company has developed and released multiple product generations including switch silicon for 1GE10GE, 40GE and 100GE applications, with OCP’s Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) to ease the integration into both commercial and open source Network Operating System(NOS). Centec has a history of success delivering productized switch platform based on either a commercial or open source NOS for global vendors to integrate and customize for SDN and Open Networking applications.
The company has raised $30 million in previous funding rounds, developed four generations of switching silicon, and has achieved double-digit quarterly growth for the past 3 years. Proceeds from its Series E funding round will be used to develop new products and to scale the company’s sales and marketing operations across the globe, especially North America. CICF is joined in the round by existing investor China Electronics Corporation (CEC) through its China Electronics Innovations Fund, which led the company’s prior funding round.
“This funding round further establishes Centec as one of the top global sources of Ethernet switching silicon, and will enable us to meet growing product demand, accelerate innovation, and launch a new product family for the rapidly growing SDN white box market,” said James Sun, CEO of Centec Networks. “The CICF investment also reinforces our position as a leading innovator in the worldwide market for Ethernet switching silicon, and a valued partner for customers entering the Chinese market.”
“Centec has emerged as a leading competitor in a segment dominated worldwide by a single vendor and has developed impressive switch chips with competitive features using a fraction of the funding a U.S. company would require,” said Bob Wheeler, principal analyst at The Linley Group. “The additional funding led by CICF will further strengthen its technology and market leadership in China and fuel its major expansion beyond China into the global market.”
http://www.centecnetworks.com/en/About.asp?ID=23
Centec Debuts Fourth Generation 1.2 Tbps Switching Silicon
Centec Networks announced its fourth-generation GoldenGate switch silicon, a 1.2 Tbps chip designed to address SDN and virtualization in 10GE, 40GE and 100GE networks by increasing visibility in the forwarding plane.
The company said it was able to incorporate a number of unique features to solve SDN challenges for elephant flow detection, flow completion time, and flow visibility and control, while also supporting network virtualization with diverse overlay technology including the latest GENEVE protocol.
