Infotech Lead America: The software defined networking (SDN) market is seeing more traction with F5 Networks deciding to buy LineRate Systems.
The strategic acquisition enables F5 to have access to LineRate’s layer 7+ networking services technology, intellectual property and resources.
The investment is part of F5 Networks’ vision to offer superior service agility, application intelligence, and programmability to software defined data centers.
The global Software Defined Networking market is estimated to grow from $198 million in 2012 to $2.1 billion in 2017. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 60.43 percent from 2012 to 2017. North America is estimated to be the biggest market for SDN solutions.
Over the next five years, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is expected to witness increased market traction, to become the most lucrative SDN market globally. The report segments SDN solutions based on Switching, Controllers, Cloud Virtualization Applications, and Network Virtualization Security; Switching comprising majority of the market size currently.
Recently, Big Switch Networks announced Intel Capital’s investment in the company’s Series B funding, bringing the total amount raised to date to over $45 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and others
Karl Triebes, EVP of Product Development and CTO at F5, says extreme scale of applications, infrastructure, and services will be vital to SDN, core to F5, and the key to customers realizing the benefits of software defined data centers.
LineRate’s network capabilities and innovations in layer 7 will bolster its efforts to extend F5’s market leadership.
The LineRate acquisition also aligns with F5’s vision for application control plane architecture and goal of delivering application-layer SDN services to bring superior agility, application intelligence, and programmability to software defined data centers.
LineRate’s software defined solution will become an important part of F5’s initiatives focused on software defined data centers.
Manish Vachharajani, co-founder and chief software architect at LineRate Systems, says it recognizes that the SDN fabric may be good at layer 2-4, but ultimately customers care most about the applications.
