As the New Year approaches, it seems like everyone proclaims any given year as “a year like no other.” But 2017 truly was a year like no other for NetFoundry. Within the last 12 months, we announced our formation and since then, things have been moving at breakneck speed. From the launch of our brand, to our marketplace listing in AWS, let’s take a jaunt down memory lane with our top five events from 2017.
1 – Introducing NetFoundry
Back in February, while attending Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we made our debut appearance. With a small handful of very hard-working people, the journey officially began. Our company was born in Tata Communications’ Shape the Future innovation program, and Tata Communications provided exceptional support, leadership, and resources to get us to market. Our founder Galeal Zino put it best, “NetFoundry application-specific networks are defined by you – by the needs of people, businesses, services, applications, and data. We’re looking forward to working with you!”
2 – NetFoundry & IBM Partner to Create AppWANs for Watson
About a month after our coming out party, in partnership with IBM, we developed a turnkey AppWAN for Watson that connects contact centers and businesses to Watson voice services using existing Internet access providers, with military grade security and reliability.
This solution uses horizontally scalable, cloud native sets of microservices, deployable as cloud or on-premises Docker containers, virtual machines, or appliances. Among other things, it enables contact centers to augment their agent dialogues with Watson services, providing the agent with data, tips, and suggestions to best manage the customer conversation.
This was our first big partnership announcement and a test of our AppWANs as a key pillar of SaaS provider’s value proposition. With us, they can connect to their end users securely, with excellent performance, and without requiring them to purchase expensive MPLS links to do it.
3 – NetFoundry Joins EdgeX Foundry to Help Accelerate IIoT Adoption
Earlier this year, a vendor-neutral, open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation called EdgeX Foundry was launched. Their vision is to create a common interoperability framework that enables an ecosystem of plug-and-play, “EdgeX Certified” components in the industrial IoT space. In other words, they’re developing standards to accelerate IIoT adoption by removing the pain points that have hindered its widespread use.
NetFoundry became part of the community along with over 50 other EdgeX Foundry members shortly after its inception. We support the EdgeX Foundry community by delivering:
- Private connectivity atop the public Internet, carrier agnostic, across any mix of access networks
- Military-grade security, manageability and reliability, extensible for unique market needs
- Agile, infinitely and easily scalable, cloud-native deployment, using common developer/DevOps tools
The work being done by the EdgeX Foundry community will continue to accelerate IIoT adoption, ease implementation, and foster innovation, and we here at NetFoundry are proud to be a part of it.
4 – NetFoundry Gets “Under the Dome” With cleverDome
Security’s a really big deal in the financial services industry, and as fintech startups flood the market and big banks push more and more services to the cloud, it’s becoming imperative that turnkey security solutions be available for financial services companies of all sizes.
Aaron Spradlin recognized this need and created cleverDome, which provides what will become the fundamental model for the future of financial networks: unification of endpoint protection with a secure communication layer under a common due-diligence standard. His model is built on a community-driven platform in collaboration with financial services industry thought-leaders and it’s changing the game.
cleverDome brought in NetFoundry to implement software defined perimeter across the dome, extending the concept to include application micro-segmentation and endpoint protection. vendors, broker/dealers, and investors are all liberated from the confines of expensive private circuits and cumbersome VPN connections with the added benefit of better security by using our AppWANs.
With NetFoundry protecting data in motion and upholding access controls, endpoint security is enabled by leading endpoint protection software providers (such as Entreda), assuring device attestation before engaging the protected network.
5 – NetFoundry Virtual Gateways Appear in the AWS Marketplace
It may seem pedestrian to some, but when you’re a startup, there are some events that feel pretty big. Our AWS marketplace listing was one such event. It was the cherry on top of the sundae that we’ve been working so hard to build in the previous months.
NetFoundry AppWANs use pre-built, easy-to-deploy components within our orchestration console called virtual gateways that enable instant creation of cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-edge connected solutions across the internet, using any access provider, eliminating the costs of expanding private networks and infrastructure to each cloud without sacrificing security or performance. NetFoundry’s Gateway for AWS allows you to spin up your gateway directly from the AWS Marketplace.
The AWS Marketplace listing underscores the maturity and robustness of our award-winning platform, giving us a well-deserved sense of accomplishment.
Looking Ahead
So much has happened in the past 12 months, it’s hard to imagine that 2018 could be a bigger year, but we expect that it will be. We have developed some incredible partnerships with companies like Micron and Integron, and we have big plans to change how the world sees networking.
For a taste of what’s to come, click the button below to download our latest whitepaper. Happy holidays, happy new year, and stay tuned, we’re just getting started!
