Yesterday NFWare, a startup with Russian roots that develops virtualization solutions for network infrastructure, announced that it raised $2 million from Sistema_VC and its existing investors Almaz Capital, Maxfield Capital, and Telefonica Open Future.
“As telecom operators, Internet companies and data centers have to invest continuously to enhance the capacity of their network infrastructure, NFWare offers a technologically elegant and effective solution to reduce the costs and increase traffic processing speed,” stated Sistema VC President Alexey Katkov, summarizing the startup’s value added.
Based on NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Networking) approaches, the NFWare solutions make possible the migration of network infrastructure functions to a virtual environment — as opposed to the traditional approach based on pre-packaged hardware.
“Our software-based networking technology significantly increases network speed for high-load traffic processing,” claims the startup, whose solutions run on standard x86 servers and enable a throughput of up to 200 Gigabits per second on a single virtual machine.
These solutions may help operators reduce their network infrastructure costs by “up to 70%.”
Towards a $29 billion market
The market of network infrastructure virtualization solutions, which reached $2.4 billion in 2016, could top $29 billion by 2023, according to data from Analysys Mason Group cited by NFWare.
“Virtualization technologies will become a foundation for building the next generation network infrastructure, where 5G and the Internet of Things will be the key drivers for NFV in the telecom industry,” believes Alexander Britkin, CEO and co-founder of NFWare.
NFWare has deployed its solutions in the networks of several large telcos, including Spain’s Telefonica and Russia’s Rostelecom, and has just inked a contract with Mail.Ru Group, a leading Russian Internet group.
The startup was established in 2014 as a spin-off startup from the Applied Research Center for Computer Networks, a non-profit organization. An alumni from Wayra, Telefonica’s accelerator, NFWare runs offices in Russia, Spain and United States.
Sistema_VC is the venture arm of Sistema, a major Russian corporation. Almaz Capital and Maxfield Capital are two funds with Russian roots operating internationally. Telefonica Open Future provide startups with acceleration services and investment..
