Palo Alto Networks agreed to acquire CloudGenix, an SD-WAN start-up based in San Jose, California, for approximately $420 million in cash.
CloudGenix is known for its AppFabric SD-WAN technology, which ensures application-specific, service-level agreements (SLAs). The CloudGenix SD-WAN platform serves approximately 250 customers, many of which are in the Fortune 1000 and include companies in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, finance, banking, tech and hospitality. CloudGenix co-founders, Kumar Ramachandran, Mani Ramasamy and Venkataraman Anand, have agreed to join Palo Alto Networks.
Palo Alto Networks offers its own Prisma secure access service edge (SASE) platform, delivering a global cloud network with cloud-delivered security for users. The company plans to integrate CloudGenix’s cloud-managed SD-WAN products to accelerate the intelligent onboarding of remote branches and retail stores into Prisma Access. This combination will extend the breadth of the Prisma Access SASE platform, address network and security transformation requirements, and accelerate the shift from SD-WAN to SASE.
“As the enterprise becomes more distributed, customers want agile solutions that just work, and that applies to both security and networking. Upon the close of the transaction, the combined platform will provide customers with a complete SASE offering that is best-in-class, easy to deploy, cloud-managed, and delivered as a service,” states Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO, Palo Alto Networks.
“CloudGenix’s vision has been to revolutionize branch offices through cloud-delivered Autonomous WANs. With CloudGenix, enterprises gain cloud-scale economics for the branch office with the freedom to use any WAN, any cloud, and best-of-breed infrastructure services. We thank our customers for making us an industry leader in enterprise SD-WAN. By joining forces with Palo Alto Networks, we will accelerate our ability to serve customers and partners in their network and security transformation,” said Kumar Ramachandran, co-founder and CEO, CloudGenix
- CloudGenix raised over $100 million in funding. Investors included Bain Capital Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Intel Capital, and ClearSky.
CloudGenix enhances SD-WAN with CloudBlades software
CloudGenix announced a major upgrade to its SD-WAN platform with the launch of new “CloudBlade” cloud-delivered software.
CloudBlades enable additional SD-WAN capabilities, such as security, voice, multi-cloud access, and operational tools, to be delivered to a branch office without additional hardware or software.
CloudGenix said its approach differs from traditional enterprise branch office routers which require the installation of additional hardware blades or software. The cloud-delivered software approach brings cloud-scale economics and agility. CloudBlades enables one-click, high-performance delivery of the above infrastructure services from the cloud, using best-of-breed providers in each category.
“As businesses take advantage of the tremendous opportunity at the branch, they need a new model for the delivery of infrastructure services,” said Kumar Ramachandran, founder and CEO at CloudGenix. “Our CloudBlades platform allows enterprises to reimagine what’s possible. Not only do customers get the agility and freedom to choose best-of-breed, they also get to take advantage of cloud-scale economics. The days of the multi-function hardware router are officially at an end.”
CloudBlades includes the following components:
- The CloudGenix Instant-On-Network (ION) is Intel x86-based, lightweight CPE at the branch, this serves as the branch enforcement point for CloudBlades, and can simultaneously host CloudGenix’s SD-WAN products.
- The CloudBlades Platform enables API based integration of the branch CPE directly with various cloud infrastructure services. It provides secure, authenticated API access to CloudGenix CPE and systems; a centralized API for programming the app-flow engine at the CPE; integration with the CloudGenix UI without any code; access to CloudGenix telemetry; and the hosting of approved CloudBlades.
- Individual CloudBlades are created by CloudGenix as well as by partners, customers and other developers. The company is currently supporting more than twenty CloudBlades across various infrastructure services, including with Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, CheckPoint, Symantec, Microsoft, Google, Equinix, Amazon, RingCentral, ServiceNow, PagerDuty, Slack, Fuse, Zoom etc.
- To enable proactive IT, CloudGenix is supporting CloudBlade solutions with ServiceNow, PagerDuty, CloudGenix Clarity and Slack.
