May 17, 2018

Forward Networks a Gartner Cool Vendor in Enterprise Networking

by Charlie Elliott

We were very excited to be selected as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Enterprise Networking for 2018 according to their report (download now) released on May 7. We believe this recognition reflects the innovations we've made around intent-based networking, network operations and IT automation over the last year, as well as the continued traction we are seeing with customers in the market.

Forward Networks is improving our customers’ network agility by accelerating their ability to make network changes, automating the verification of network designs and dramatically shortening analysis and remediation cycles. Some of our customers are taking the opportunity to better align their accelerated DevOps processes with a more agile and efficient NetOps process where application requirements can be tested and verified in the network in a fraction of the time.

Forward Networks has helped pioneer an intent-based networking (IBN) approach. We think what separates us from other emerging vendors in this space, though, is our completely vendor-neutral approach with support for all major networking hardware vendors, including firewalls and load balancers. In systems like ours, accurately modeling the behavior of each device to perform path-based analysis and identify configuration errors is critical, and we can do it for 90% of any multi-vendor network out their today.

Another key factor is our completely agent-less approach, so we can provide a completely non-intrusive, non-disruptive solution that takes minutes to get up a running on your network. This allows us to add value today, right-away, on existing networks, and to not require a fork-lift to new hardware or only be used in greenfield environments.

Forward Essentials a cloud-hosted solution, allows you to map your network, manage and search configuration files and allows customers to gain experience with collecting data from their network devices. Forward Enterprise layers on the full network search/analysis and policy verification features required as part of an intent-based networking approach. Users can sign-up for Forward Essentials here.

[Note: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.]

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