Arrcus raises $50M to pursue multicloud networking, 5G and data center markets

Hyperscale networking software company Arrcus today said it had gained $50 million in funding in a Series D round led by Prosperity7 Ventures.

Arrcus, formed in 2016, positions its software-defined networking technology as a ready solution for enterprises that want to flexibly connect to clouds, data centers and new 5G edge offerings.

An underlying driver of company growth is network modernization, Shekar Ayyar, Arrcus CEO and chairman, told VentureBeat. This modernization can include innovative implementations based on 5G “connected edge” networks that link hybrid and multicloud services with modern data centers.

Ayyar took the helm at Arrcus in 2021. This followed stints at VMware, Lucent and elsewhere. His background in both telecom and software is pertinent to Arrcus’ mission today.

“The market forces, as well as the technology evolution, has led to a blending of the infrastructure between enterprise cloud and communications,” Ayyar said. “Our use cases now are right at the nexus of this, though we’re squarely in the networking space.”

Ayyar described Arrcus as a disrupter, as software-defined architectures and “disaggregated infrastructure” play a role in the next generation of networking transport — primarily in routing and switching.

Expanding networking

As it pursues multicloud networking, Arrcus has forged partnerships with cloud infrastructure and services providers such as AWS, CoreSite, Equinix and others. Software players such as HashiCorp., RedHat, VMware and others also have worked with the company.

Activity also includes advanced network services development. Last year, Arrcus worked with SoftBank Corp to demonstrate automated 5G network slicing based on SRv6 Mobile User Plane, an architecture seen as important to next-generation mobile networking.

Arrcus also expanded in India, while growing its R&D operations and customer engineering support.

CoreSite chases software-defined flexibility

Arrcus’ support for software-defined programmability helps customers as they roll out new services and create new end-user interfaces. That’s according to Brian Warren, vice president of engineering and product at CoreSite, a carrier-neutral data center, co-location and peer services provider, and subsidiary of American Tower.

CoreSite has partnered with Arrcus in creation of the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange, for high-performance cloud and data center interconnections. It can be described as cloud-connectivity as a service for enterprises.

Enterprises today implement complex solutions, Warren indicated. They need human expertise that can sometimes be a precious, hard-to-tap resource. So, networking applications need to become more end-user friendly.

“Traditional telecommunications services took weeks, if not months, to turn on or reconfigure,” he said. Now, with software-defined tooling, he continued, “the customer can go into a portal and program their connectivity between themselves and any other customer on the network.”

The Arrcus vision of the connected edge, multicloud networking and 5g are very complementary to CoreSite’s objectives, Warren said.

On the hunt for multicloud networking

Since its inception, Arrcus has built out an extensive product line, including the Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform.

Also in the portfolio are solutions based on ACE such as its SRv6 Mobile User Plane for 5G networks, Virtualized Distributed Routing (VDR), Hyperscale Datacenter switching and the FlexMCN platform for multicloud networking connectivity.

Cloud migrations and anticipated private implementations of 5G networks are among the areas new Arrcus funding will help nurture.

With this financing round, Prosperity7 joins a collection of investors including Clear Ventures, Lightspeed, Silicon Valley Bank and others. Prosperity7 is a fund within Aramco Ventures, a subsidiary of Aramco.