Big Year for Big Switch Networks -- Momentum and Record Growth

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Dec 23, 2014) - Big Switch Networks, the leader in bringing hyperscale networking to data centers worldwide, today announced that it has delivered a record-setting year of customer adoption, partner traction and product innovation in the SDN category. Big Switch introduced its flagship product, Big Cloud Fabric in Q3, which contributed to unprecedented company growth during the most exciting year for networking innovation in more than a decade.

Big Switch secured its first two $1MM+ customers in 2014 and now has customers in production in data centers across APAC, EMEA and the US. Customer verticals include financial services, government, service providers, higher education, and tech.

"We have executed well across the business this year and have positioned the company for significant growth in 2015," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "As data centers around the world have begun to invest in SDN, we've built a world class team and designed the products necessary to deliver against surging market demand."

Big Switch partnered with Dell in 2014 to deliver best in class software, hardware and support, and the success of the relationship was validated by Gartner's Joe Skorupa and Andrew Lerner coining the term "Brite Box" to describe branded white-box switching. Big Switch also onboarded over 20 new technology partners, including A10, Blue Coat, FireEye, and Riverbed, in addition to signing 27 channel partners to help deliver hyperscale-inspired designs to a broader data center community worldwide.

In 2014 Big Switch delivered multiple releases of Big Tap, including Big Tap 4.0 in August, which included the Dell platform as well as Trident-II 10G and 40G support. Big Tap 4.0 also included features such as tunneling and DPM (deeper packet matching) to expand Tap Every Rack and Tap Every Location use cases. The company also introduced Big Cloud Fabric in Q3 -- the world's first and only bare metal SDN fabric for use cases such as private/public clouds, Big Data, VDI, SDS, and NFV. This industry-leading SDN fabric includes innovations such as zero touch fabric operations, ultra-fast hitless upgrade, REST APIs, streamlined GUI, fabric-wide visibility and troubleshooting, OpenStack, CloudStack, and multi-vendor Trident-II switch support.

The Big Switch engineering team drove several major product releases, executing against 16 consecutive team milestones. As the company continues to innovate and execute, Big Switch is making key additions to the executive and management team. Recent hires include:

• Gregg Holzrichter, VP of Marketing & CMO
• Shaun Page, VP of Worldwide Sales
• Joe Palazola, VP of Worldwide Operations & Customer Support

Big Switch was also recognized by several industry organizations in 2014 with the following awards:

• Lead 411/Hottest Silicon Valley 2014
• CRN/Emerging Vendor 2014
• AlwaysOn/2014 Global 250
• CRN/Top 100 Execs: Disruptors category
• CRN/CRN Virtualization 50
• AlwaysOn/Top 100 Private Companies
• MIT/MIT Sloan CIO Innovation Finalist
• FCW/Top 17 Companies
• IDG UK TechWorld Awards/ Networking Product finalist

Most recently Big Switch expanded its geographic coverage by opening a KK subsidiary in Otemachi, Japan. Japan is a world leader in SDN deployments and already represents 30% of the Big Switch customer pipeline. This announcement deepened Big Switch's commitment to customers and systems integrators in Japan. Strong demand from outside North America will accelerate global expansion into additional markets in 2015 as well.

For more information, please visit www.bigswitch.com.

Related links:

• CEO Doug Murray's Blog: 2014 year in review, 2015 predictions
• Big Cloud Fabric Overview
• Big Tap Monitoring Fabric Overview

Tweet this: 2014 was a very good year for @bigswitch -- significant partner, customer, revenue growth with first scalable bare-metal SDN fabric 

About Big Switch Networks:
Big Switch Networks is the market leader in bringing hyperscale data center networking technologies to a broader audience. The company is taking three key hyperscale technologies -- OEM/ODM bare metal and open Ethernet switch hardware, sophisticated SDN control software, and core-and-pod data center designs -- and leveraging them in fit-for-purpose products designed for use in enterprises, cloud providers, and service providers. The company's Big Tap Monitoring Fabric is a next-generation SDN solution to monitor existing networks, and the flagship Big Cloud Fabric is the industry's most advanced bare metal switching fabric intended for new data center pods such as private cloud, big data, and VDI. The company is backed by Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Intel and Goldman Sachs. For additional information, email info@bigswitch.com, follow @bigswitch, or visit www.bigswitch.com.

Big Switch Networks, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Tap, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light vSwitch are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.