Networking software provider Aviz Networks today announced a $17 million Series A funding round to accelerate its growth in open networking solutions and artificial intelligence capabilities.
Aviz Networks provides support and services to enable organizations to adopt the open source SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) network operating system. In the past year, Aviz Networks has seen solid progress, with the company reporting a 400% increase in revenue compared to the previous year. Aviz’s product portfolio has also expanded from two products last year to four this year. The latest addition is the company’s network AI assistant, which aims to assist with operations and management.
“We have seen tremendous growth,” Vishal Shukla, co-founder and CEO of Aviz Networks, told Network World.
The funding round was led by Alter with participation from new investors Qualcomm Ventures and Celestica, alongside existing investors Moment Ventures, Wistron and Accton. The new funding follows a $10 million round announced in December 2023.
SONiC remains a cornerstone of Aviz’s strategy
Shukla highlighted the growing demand for SONiC, particularly in data centers and GPU fabrics, driven by the need for new infrastructure to support the increasing use of GPUs and inferencing networks.
Aviz’s approach to Sonic is to provide a single vendor experience for customers, while still enabling them to leverage the flexibility and choice offered by the open-source standard. The company aims to support customers with a 30-minute service level agreement (SLA), ensuring a high level of enterprise-grade support.
As SONiC continues to gain traction, Shukla is also aware of the challenges that need to be addressed. Shukla noted that there are some gaps in edge network protocols and there is a need for more alignment on ASIC-specific features. He explained that the ASIC architecture is different between different vendors such as Cisco, Marvell and Nvidia. As such, he expects that in the coming year there will be even more collaboration inside of SONiC especially on RoCE (RMDA over Converged Ethernet) based capabilities.
What AI brings to Aviz
A key focus for Aviz Networks has been the development of its Network Copilot AI assistant, which takes a vendor-agnostic approach to network operations and management. The solution is designed to integrate with various enterprise tools including ServiceNow, Atlassian’s Jira and other platforms while addressing the needs of different user personas across organizations.
The AI assistant is trained to understand and address the specific needs of executives, network operators, architects and procurement personnel. Beyond just catering to different user personas, the AI assistant is designed to use both historical and operational data to provide more informed and contextual assistance.
The initial focus for the AI networking copilot is on automating routine and mundane tasks, with an eye toward enabling more complex tasks in the future. The overall goal for Aviz moving forward is all about growth. Shukla said he wants Aviz to be a guiding force in the industry on how to really do AI for networking.
“We want to be exponentially ahead in AI, that’s where we will invest, from the technology point of view, ” Shukla said.
Read more about SONiC
- Aviz gives its enterprise SONiC offering an AI boost
- Cisco joins $10M funding round for Aviz Networks
- SONiC test lab gains industry support
- Cisco and Aviz coordinate support for enterprise SONiC networks
- eBay scores cost savings and a bandwidth boost with white-box switches running SONiC
- Microsoft shifts SONiC development to the Linux Foundation
Source:: Network World