PLUMgrid, the worldwide leader of secure cloud networks for public and private clouds, today announced the general availability of the PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite and its deployment at leading IT solutions and telecom service provider Swisscom (SCMN.VX).

As market acceptance and deployments of OpenStack increase, the need for a secure, scalable and multi-tenant cloud networking solution has become essential. Customers today want a flexible and agile software solution that is open and holistic, solving networking issues throughout the cloud lifecycle.

'PLUMgrid is the first company to deliver a comprehensive cloud networking suite to help our customers build OpenStack clouds without worrying about scale, performance and security,' said Awais Nemat, Co-founder and CEO at PLUMgrid. 'Our solution reduces the time to build clouds, lowers overall cost and accelerates delivery of new services to market.'

The PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite is a secure, comprehensive and open software solution that delivers terabits of performance and scales across tens of thousands of workloads. Built on the PLUMgrid Platform and IO Visor„¢ technology, it provides highly automated workflows that significantly reduce the deployment time of OpenStack clouds and enables users to create private Virtual Domains„¢ for applications and projects. Virtual Domains provide isolation, security and policy enforcement across tenants.

The PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite simplifies operations with built-in monitoring, analytics and troubleshooting tools. Its distributed architecture and high-availability features ensure that maintenance and upgrades can be performed with no downtime. The PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite is integrated with the leading OpenStack distributions and is certified with Red Hat OpenStack 4.0.

'Many enterprises adopting private cloud, as well as service providers offering public cloud, have a genuine need for network infrastructure that is closely aligned with the performance, scalability, security and automation requirements that cloud demands,' said Brad Casemore, Director of Research for Datacenter Networks at IDC. 'These customers also have operational models that are different from those of traditional enterprises with more conventional client-server workloads. PLUMgrid is focused exclusively on this cloud opportunity, correctly perceiving that cloud implies a set of requirements that traditional approaches to networking, architectural and operational, were not designed to solve.'

PLUMgrid is the first company to introduce key networking innovations for OpenStack cloud. They include:

Encrypted Virtual Domain - end-to-end data plane encryption for all network traffic within a Virtual Domain. This unique capability provides cryptographic isolation across tenants, removes threats of cross-contamination and security exposure, and helps businesses meet compliance requirements.
Terabits of Performance - 40Gbs of throughput per server and terabits of scale-out performance by leveraging hardware offload capabilities within x86 servers and NICs. Details of integration and results of performance benchmarks with Mellanox are available at www.plumgrid.com.
Cloud Scale - PLUMgrid™s unique distributed architecture allows users to scale to thousands of Virtual Domains and tens of thousands of workloads across multiple racks and locations to build large-scale cloud networks.

PLUMgrid is also announcing the completion of its Series B round of financing, totaling $16.2 million. Longworth Venture Partners led the investment, with participation from U.S. Venture Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Swisscom Ventures. The additional funding will help PLUMgrid grow its global sales and marketing efforts, and continue to innovate for new markets.

'PLUMgrid addresses a hard problem for cloud infrastructure - how to deliver secure, scalable and automated cloud networks,' said Nilanjana Bhowmik, PLUMgrid board member and partner at Longworth Venture Partners. 'The PLUMgrid team brings together solid leadership, great technology, customer focus and impeccable execution. We see a broad set of use cases for their technology, and strong capabilities to continue to lead the market.'

Supporting quotes

'Much of the discussion around cloud computing today is focused on finding ways to deploy cloud environments faster, and cloud operators know networking is slowing it down. Today, PLUMgrid™s open software solution helps to remove networking pains, allows for faster deployment of OpenStack clouds, and enables customers to maintain scale, performance and security.'
- Bob Laliberte, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

'PLUMgrid is delivering security, scale and performance for OpenStack networking. The PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite promises to simplify building and operating cloud infrastructure by delivering virtualized network services at scale to solve cloud networking issues in the modern data center.'
- Nick Lippis, Co-Founder and Co-Chair, Open Networking User Group

'The PLUMgrid team has clearly claimed the leadership in innovative technologies in the network virtualization infrastructure space and has now demonstrated its benefits in production environments. USVP partners with entrepreneurs that have a strong vision and want to build big companies. PLUMgrid is the first and only company to tackle the cloud network virtualization challenge head-on and holistically. An end-to-end solution in this space will go a long way in getting service providers and enterprises to adopt public and private clouds at large scale.'
- Jacques Benkoski, PLUMgrid board member and Partner, U.S. Venture Partners

About PLUMgrid

PLUMgrid provides secure virtual network infrastructure for private and public clouds. The PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite, featuring the unique Virtual Domains„¢, is a distributed software suite that gives cloud operators the ability to build a scalable cloud infrastructure and offer secure, multi-tenant, advanced network services to applications and users. Founded in 2011, PLUMgrid is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and is funded by top-tier venture and strategic investors. For more information on PLUMgrid OpenStack Networking Suite, the PLUMgrid Platform, Virtual Domains and IO Visor„¢ visit www.plumgrid.com, read the latest posts on the PLUMgrid blog http://www.plumgrid.com/blog/ and follow the company on Twitter @PLUMgrid.