Network assurance and intent-based network verification vendor Forward Networks has raised $35 million in a Series C round of funding.
Forward Networks said the investment round would go toward expanding its sales and marketing teams into new regions and to fund additional R&D activities.
The funding round was led by Goldman Sachs, which is also one of Forward Networks' customers, along with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures and A. Capital.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford PhD graduates. Three years later, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company launched its "Forward Enterprise" to help businesses proactively monitor and map their network traffic in order to identify potential problems before they occur.
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Forward Enterprise documents, searches, verifies, and predicts the behavior of enterprise networks by creating a mathematical model of the entire network infrastructure for both on-prem and cloud. Forward's solution brings the benefits of intent-based networking to large enterprises. Those benefits include more reliable networks, reduced outages and reduced business risk.
"Our customers are seeing dramatic improvements in network availability and operational efficiency by deploying Forward Enterprise," said Forward Networks CEO David Erickson, in a statement. "This round of funding is key to expanding our efforts to bring network verification to enterprise customers."
In 2017, Cisco introduced intent-based networking (IBN) with launch of its new DNA Center. Other vendors, such as Apstra, Huawei and Juniper Networks, have also jumped on the IBN bandwagon.