Forward Networks Raises $35 Million in Series C Funding

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Forward Networks, the industry leader in network assurance and intent-based network verification, today announced it has secured $35 million in Series C funding, led by Goldman Sachs, one of Forward's prominent customers. Also participating in this round are existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures (previously DFJ Venture) and A. Capital. The Series C investment will be used to expand sales and marketing programs into new regional and vertical markets, and to fund continued investment in R&D.

Forward Networks launched Forward Enterprise in 2016 to solve the biggest issue businesses face with network operations: risk. 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. By enabling network and application teams to verify intent and predict network behavior, Forward's solution brings the benefits of intent-based networking to large enterprises: 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 David Erickson, Chief Executive Officer, Forward Networks. "This round of funding is key to expanding our efforts to bring network verification to enterprise customers."

"In the past year, we have scaled our deployment of Forward Enterprise to our entire network of over 15,000 devices. Our network engineering team relies on the Forward platform to be the single source of truth for our network. It's a critical component for automating our infrastructure," said Joshua Matheus, Managing Director, Technology at Goldman Sachs. "The team here has been so impressed with the scalability and network analysis functionality of Forward Networks' solution that we decided to lead its funding round."

"We continue to see the value that Forward Networks' platform brings to large enterprises running complex networks," said Bill Krause, board partner at Andreessen Horowitz. "They have solved a critical business problem, which presents a real growth opportunity."

"Many networks today have grown so large and so complex, they've outgrown human-scale management techniques," said Mike Feibus, President and Principal Analyst at FeibusTech. "Forward Networks' mathematical network-twin platform helps IT predict behavior and solve failures – regardless of which network vendors' hardware is deployed. With Forward Networks' intent-based software in such high demand, it's no wonder they're putting expansion in high gear with a fresh injection of capital."

For more information, visit www.ForwardNetworks.com.

About Forward Networks

Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, avoid outages, and simplify network management.

Results? More reliable networks, reduced outages, and reduced business risk.

Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, A. Capital, and Goldman Sachs. For more information, visit www.ForwardNetworks.com.

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SOURCE Forward Networks