StackPath, a global provider of CDN and secured edge computing services, has announced a round of equity financing for the company. Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) and Cox Communications have led this Series B funding round, bringing the total amount of equity raised by StackPath to $396 million, including an earlier Series A round led by Abry Partners.
The additional capital would help accelerate the growth of StackPath’s product development, engineering and go-to-market activities.
Kevin Hutchins, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development for Juniper Networks, and Sujata Gosalia, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Cox Communications, have joined StackPath’s board of directors.
Started by SoftLayer founder Lance Crosby, StackPath delivers edge compute products including virtual machines (VMs), containers and serverless, as well as edge services products such as content delivery network (CDN), web application firewall (WAF), managed DNS, containers, object storage, service monitoring and DDoS protection.
45 Edge Locations Globally
“We are so excited to have Juniper and Cox join us in setting the direction and turbocharging the success of StackPath,” said Wen Temitim, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for StackPath. “We’ve laid the technology and operational foundation for StackPath to be the default edge-computing platform. Juniper and Cox join us at the beginning of the next phase of our strategy – which is to deliver more on our foundation and move it even closer to end users and devices.”
“It’s impossible to imagine how diverse the applications of edge computing will be. Until now, the edge was home only to managed services – having compute at the edge completely changes the game,” added Temitim. “We are already working with customers in virtually every industry vertical. Digital audio and video and gaming companies, in particular, have found it extremely straightforward to leverage our capabilities.”
With 45 edge locations spanning the world, all connected by a secure private network backbone, StackPath is trusted by customers ranging from Fortune 50 enterprises to one-person startups that want to develop, distribute, protect, and accelerate their cloud workloads.
Edge-Cloud Functionality
“Edge computing brings an evolution of network security and performance to the cable industry. It will give our residential and business customers access to the next generation of connected services and experiences by bringing valuable processing power closer,” said Sujata Gosalia. “Cox continues to invest in companies and technologies like StackPath that enhance network performance and improve the experience for our broadband customers.”
Emerging from stealth in 2016, StackPath has already built a diverse customer base that includes Fortune 500 enterprises, as well as individual developers in industries ranging from digital media and digital gaming to advertising technology, software development and ecommerce.
“When Juniper began working with StackPath on its infrastructure needs, we were blown away by how well their vision maps to our own. Further, we found that StackPath is one of the only companies that has a scalable, high-performance edge cloud already running in the market with mission-critical customer workloads,” said Kevin Hutchins. “Edge computing and edge-cloud functionality are critical as enterprises, service providers and cloud providers transform in the cloud era. In this new world, applications are increasingly dependent upon the network.”
“The transformation of the edge complements the cloud and on-premise solutions to ensure cost-effective performance, global scale, security and high quality of experience for mission critical applications including next-generation content delivery, interactive gaming, data management, analytics, IoT and 5G, among many others,” added Mr. Hutchins. “The edge will be a critical dimension of every service provider and enterprise operation. We are committed to helping our customers leverage the edge with solutions that will scale, grow and deliver increasing value.”
5G Networks
The rapid growth of edge would be due, in part, to the advent of 5G digital cellular networks. 5G stands to reduce wireless network latency significantly and increase volume capacity over 4G. This would provide the levels of throughput necessary for commercial applications of promising technologies such as autonomous devices (including driving, delivery drones and robotics), haptics-enabled web interfaces and even extended reality (a unified application of augmented reality and virtual reality). These applications would require processing power and other computing at the first network hop.
All StackPath services can be delivered and scaled in any StackPath location, which are geographically closer to more end users and devices than traditional public cloud data centers. This would give developers and enterprises the building blocks, tools and proximity essential for cloud-centric workloads requiring ultra-low network latency and high security.
