A10 Networks Gets $115 Million in New Funding

A10 Networks, which makes application delivery controllers and other network-related products, will now have at least another $80 million at its disposal.

A10 officials announced Oct. 3 that the 9-year-old company got the money through its latest round of funding, led by Summit Partners. In addition, the vendor received a $35 million revolving credit line gained though Bank of America Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets, ratcheting up the new money available to it to $115 million.

The company will use the money to build out its product portfolio, according to founder and CEO Lee Chen.

“With this investment, A10 will continue to extend its technology leadership and expand its market penetration with innovative solutions to help customers accelerate, optimize and secure Websites and applications,” Chen said in a statement.

The company, with more than 500 employees, is based in San Jose, Calif., and has offices in more than 22 countries. A10 is still a private company, but officials said on its Website that the company is profitable and has shown consistent quarterly revenue growth.

A10 sells a range of products that, together, address issues around networks, security and identity management, according to officials. The primary product line is the company’s AX Series application delivery controllers, designed to increase application availability. It’s a market that Gartner analysts expect to double to $2.9 billion within the next few years, and one that Dell’Oro Group analysts said in August will hit $2.3 billion by 2017.

Revenues in the space this year should grow 5 percent over 2012 despite the slow start to the year, due in part to continued data center build-outs and consolidations, according to Dell’Oro.

“The core market drivers … remain sound and we are only just beginning to see the positive impact of the public cloud on virtual ADCs,” Casey Quillin, senior analyst of data center appliance market research at Dell’Oro, said in a statement.

For vendors like A10, F5 Networks, Riverbed Technology and Radware, Cisco Systems’ decision last year to exit the application delivery controller market has been a boon, Quillan said.

“Cisco’s discontinuation of its ACE module has left quite a sizable hole in the market, and while filling it in with new vendors will take time, Citrix, F5, Radware, and A10 have all won deals addressing this opportunity,” he said.

In May, A10 rolled out its Thunder Series platforms, which the company described as application delivery controllers that offer unified application service gateway functionality.