Forward Networks’ flagship product, Forward Enterprise, delivers a vendor-agnostic “digital twin” of the network, designed for both cloud and on-prem networks
SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Forward Networks, the industry leader in network assurance and intent-based verification, announced today that its Forward Enterprise solution has been named a Gold Globee® Winner for the Network Management category in the 16th Annual 2021 IT World Awards®. This award is part of The Globee® Awards' premier business awards programs and ranking lists, which recognize information technology and cybersecurity vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products, solutions, and services that are helping raise the bar for others in all areas of technology and cybersecurity.
Forward Networks' Forward Enterprise won the Gold Globee® for Network Management solutions
Forward Enterprise helps network operations engineers be more efficient and effective while avoiding outages through its unique mathematical model. The platform creates a digital twin of the network (across on-premises devices, private and public cloud) enabling network operators to map all possible traffic paths, instantly troubleshoot, verify intent, predict network behavior and reduce MTTR (mean time to resolution). The platform helps large IT organizations make their networks more predictable, agile, and secure by providing a single source of truth for all teams. Companies using Forward Enterprise report significant time savings, cost reduction and improved ability to deploy new applications.
"We are honored that the Forward Enterprise platform is a Golden Globee recipient for Network Management solutions in the 2021 IT World Awards," said Chiara Regale, VP of product at Forward Networks. "Our purpose is to reduce the burden network operations engineers face on a daily basis by providing detailed analysis and verification of device state and configuration, visualization of all possible traffic paths and the ability to predict how changes will impact the network before they are made. Being recognized by the Globee Awards is validation that we are delivering on that promise."
More than 65 judges from around the world representing a wide spectrum of industry experts participated in the judging process. The IT World Awards are open to all Information Technology and Cyber Security organizations from all over the world and their end-users of products and services.
"The information technology industry continues to show its resilience," said San Madan, co-President of Globee Awards. "The tech sector is robust and innovative. And the pandemic has changed the way people live, work, shop, and socialize thereby accelerating demand for newer technologies and innovations everywhere."
Globee Awards are conferred in eleven programs and competition: the CEO World Awards®, the Consumer World Awards®, The Customer Sales & Service World Awards®, the Globee® International Best in Business Awards, the Golden Bridge Awards®, the Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards® and Security World Awards, the IT World Awards®, One Planet® American Best in Business Awards, the Globee® Employer Excellence Awards®, the Globee® Corporate Communications & Marketing World Awards, and the Women World Awards®. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind their success, the Globee Awards recognize outstanding achievements and performances in businesses worldwide. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com.
Forward Networks Names Denis Maynard as its New Chief Revenue Officer
Palo Alto, California – February 20, 2019 – Forward Networks, the industry leader in network assurance and intent-based verification, today announced the addition of Denis Maynard as its Chief Revenue Officer. In his new role at Forward Networks, Denis will be tasked with leading the company’s global sales efforts, while driving growth and revenue acceleration.
“We are pleased to have an industry veteran like Denis join Forward Networks and bring a key set of skills to our management team,” said David Erickson, CEO and co-founder, Forward Networks. “We have immense confidence in Denis and look forward to the next phase in our company’s growth.”
Denis brings more than 30 years’ experience as a CRO and global sales leader with a wealth of experience managing multiple enterprise sales teams within direct, indirect and OEM sales models. Before joining Forward Networks, Denis served as a Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer at Couchbase and as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at fast-growing companies, including Illumio, Ruckus Wireless, Omneon and QLogic. He also served at the Director of Worldwide Field Operations and was a Sales Operations Director at Cisco Systems.
“As more large enterprises consider the use of intent-based networking (IBN), I am excited to join Forward Networks at a time where IBN is on the rise and projected to go mainstream in 2020,” said Denis Maynard, Chief Revenue Officer, Forward Networks. “Our platform has proven to be essential to simplifying operations and improving the reliability of some of the most complex networks in the world. We look forward to the journey of helping our customers through this IBN transformation and accelerating our business.”
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks provides a robust network assurance and verification platform to reduce business risk and improve network operations. By enabling network and applications teams to verify intent and predict network behavior, Forward’s solution brings the benefits of intent-based networking to large enterprises: agility, predictability, and scalability.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, and A.Capital. For more information, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site.
Forward Networks Named Winner in Two Categories in the 15th Annual Info Security PG's 2019 Global Excellence Awards®
Palo Alto, California – February 5, 2019 – Forward Networks, the industry leader in network assurance and intent-based verification, announced today that Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named its Forward Enterprise solution a Gold and Silver winner in the 15th Annual 2019 Info Security PG’s Global Excellence Awards® in both the Innovation in Compliance and Network Security and Management categories, respectively. These prestigious global awards recognize cybersecurity and information technology vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products, solutions, and services that are helping set the bar higher for others in all areas of security and technologies.
Forward Networks’ Forward Enterprise solution is a revolutionary platform transforming the way large, complex, multi-vendor networks are managed. The company’s advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, avoid outages, and simplify network management. Forward Networks’ robust network verification platform enables stronger, more reliable networks, reduced outages, and reduced business risk.
“We are proud that Forward Networks has been recognized as a key industry player, and that our Forward Enterprise platform has been named a winner in two categories by Info Security Products Guide,” said David Erickson, CEO of Forward Networks. “Behind this distinguished success is our relentless drive to stay customer-focused by continuing to deliver cutting edge technology to simplify and enhance the capabilities of modern network operators.”
For more information on Forward Networks and its solution, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site.
About Info Security PG’s Global Excellence Awards
Info Security Products Guide sponsors the Global Excellence Awards and plays a vital role in keeping end-users informed of the choices they can make when it comes to protecting their digital resources and assets. It is written expressly for those who are adamant on staying informed of security threats and the preventive measure they can take. You will discover a wealth of information in this guide including tomorrow's technology today, best deployment scenarios, people and technologies shaping cyber security and industry predictions & directions that facilitate in making the most pertinent security decisions. Visit www.infosecurityproductsguide.com for the complete list of winners.
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks provides a robust network assurance and verification platform to reduce business risk and improve network operations. By enabling network and applications teams to verify intent and predict network behavior, Forward’s solution brings the benefits of intent-based networking to large enterprises: agility, predictability, and scalability.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, and A.Capital. For more information, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site.
Company Addresses Network Verification Need for Cisco ACI Customers to Realize Benefits of Intent-Based Networking
Barcelona, Spain – January 28, 2019 – Forward Networks, the industry leader in network assurance and intent-based verification, today announced at Cisco Live 2019 in Barcelona support for Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure). Organizations that use Cisco ACI as an SDN/network automation solution can incorporate Forward Enterprise into their environments. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, avoid outages, and simplify network management.
The nature of Forward Networks’ solution is to provide deep and intelligent analysis about network behavior based on device configurations and operating details. With the support for Cisco ACI, expected to be released in Forward Enterprise in Q2 of 2019, the company can provide insight into how the virtual networking platform works as well as the policies that are in place. Forward Enterprise analyzes networks based on ACI to confirm error-free network designs overall. This includes correctness for ACI infrastructure, as well as other network devices such as firewalls and load balancers that are connected to ACI, for an end-to-end multi-vendor solution across all network services.
“We continue to support leading network technologies, focusing on providing full coverage of our customers’ networks with our Forward Enterprise platform. The growing market presence and level of innovation that ACI brings to the industry are reflected in our decision to support it,” said David Erickson, CEO at Forward Networks.
ACI allows customers to define policies by assigning virtual applications to security groups, called end-point groups (EPGs). Virtual network policies are assigned to EPGs. Forward Enterprise verifies policies and displays how the network will behave and can translate the EPG policies from ACI into the Forward Networks’ system and show or verify the resulting network behavior. Forward Networks’ technology can then go on to compare the resulting behavior to intent and see if there are any deviations that should be addressed.
“With this new support for ACI, we are bringing the benefits of intent-based networking to all networks, no matter what vendors, technology, and protocols exist in the network environment,” said Chiara Regale, VP of Product at Forward Networks. “Accurately modeling the behavior of each device in a large network, across vendors, is an enormous problem. No other vendor is addressing this problem to the extent and scale that Forward Networks has, with a significant portion of the company’s engineering team dedicated to modeling third-party devices and technology.”
Forward Networks is vendor-agnostic, providing support for all major networking and security vendor devices. Forward Networks simplifies management of the entire network, by supporting not only on-premises data centers, but also public cloud and hybrid cloud networks.
For more information on Forward Networks and its solution, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site or stop by Booth B36 at Cisco Live in Barcelona to hear more about the announcement from Forward Networks’ experts.
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks provides a robust network assurance and verification platform to reduce business risk and improve network operations. By enabling network and applications teams to verify intent and predict network behavior, Forward’s solution brings the benefits of intent-based networking to large enterprises: agility, predictability, and scalability.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, and A.Capital. For more information, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site.
Palo Alto, California – October 4, 2018 – Forward Networks, a leader in network analytics, automation, and intent-based networking solutions, announced that it has been included as a Cool Vendor in Gartner’s 2018 “Cool Vendors in Enterprise Networking” report.
The report addresses challenges presented by “network complexity created by years of incremental, rather than innovative, technical changes; limited visibility into the network; and continued prevalence on manual network changes rather than leveraging network automation.”
Gartner analysts suggest that I&O leaders evaluate several software-based solutions as a way to improve the agility of enterprise networks critical to digital business.“Tools enabling network analytics and automation can improve agility and availability in advance of hardware refreshes by improving network performance and providing clearer insight into network architectures, costs and behaviors.”
David Erickson, Co-founder and CEO of Forward Networks, said “The team at Forward is thrilled with the recognition from Gartner. As we often hear from our customers, verification and network assurance are vital to reducing risk across the entire network. Intent-based networking solutions are the next major step forward for leading IT organizations.”
Forward Networks’ flagship product, Forward Enterprise, delivers a suite of network automation tools designed for large, complex, multi-vendor network environments. By creating, in software, a mathematical model of the network, Forward Enterprise enables companies to quickly visualize and search large networks, debug problems, verify policy correctness at scale, and predict network behavior prior to making changes to production equipment. Network engineers can also diagnose issues in a fraction of the time and isolate potential errors before they cause network outages.
In a recent ROI study across several customers, including several large financial services companies, Forward Enterprise enables 50% faster resolution of network trouble tickets, 90% faster fixes related to audit processes, and 33% reduction in aborted network updates due to identified errors.
Read a complimentary copy of the entire report: Gartner 2018 Cool Vendors in Enterprise Networking.
Source: Gartner, Cool Vendors in Enterprise Networking, Bill Menezes, Tim Zimmerman, Vivek Bhalla, Andrew Lerner, 7 May 2018.
Disclaimer
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our 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.
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks is the leading provider of solutions for intent-based networking and analytics for large enterprise networks, communications providers and network integrators. Using their flagship product, Forward Enterprise, customers reduce time to analyze and troubleshoot network issues, remove operational complexity and increase network availability. Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site
Presented by the editors of TechTarget’s Data Center Media Group, the Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards recognize the top products and technologies in essential areas of data center and cloud infrastructure
Palo Alto, CA. – Feb. 22, 2018 – Forward Networks, a leader in network analytics, automation and intent-based networking solutions, today announced that the company’s flagship platform, Forward Enterprise, has earned the prestigious 2018 Modern Infrastructure Impact Award for best software-defined infrastructure solution. Forward Enterprise helps network engineers and operators ensure that their intended networking and security policies are accurately implemented in their network designs and configurations, allowing users to proactively isolate errors that can lead to costly outages, while accelerating time to remediate issues and deploy changes.
Now in its fifth year, The Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards are judged by the Modern Infrastructure e-zine editorial staff in conjunction with users, readers, and industry experts. They recognize tools that help enterprise businesses run with efficiency and insight. Forward Networks was selected in the software-defined infrastructure category over solutions from Cumulus Networks, Big Switch Networks and VMware.
"Although it's a small company, I think Forward Networks' Forward Platform is pretty great," said Mark May, enterprise infrastructure specialist. "It basically imports your network configurations and lets you treat them like a sort of lab to predict network intent. For me, these guys are the most innovative." Readers were also impressed by the level of visibility Forward Platform provides into the network. It performs continuous verification to ensure the network follows the connectivity and security policies that you've defined. As one voter said, it "finally solves the underlay problem."
“We are thrilled to have been selected the winner of this Modern Infrastructure Impact award from such a distinguished set of finalists,” said David Erickson, CEO and Co-founder of Forward Networks. “Especially with the selection process involving a wide range of readers, users and industry experts. This is testimony to how quickly we have been able to gain market traction and recognition for a radically improved approach to identifying and diagnosing network issues and accelerating change processes.”
Forward Enterprise is the result of primary research the four founders developed at Stanford, growing out of their pioneering efforts in software-defined networking, OpenFlow, and intent-based networking. In addition to focusing on network automation, they developed ways to model complex networks in software to allow end-to-end path-based analysis, rather than traditional box-by-box methods to analyze and verify network behavior. The resulting intelligence can accelerate time to identify network issues by upwards of 60-90% while proactively eliminating configuration errors that could cause future outages.
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks is the leading provider of solutions for intent-based networking and analytics for large enterprise networks, communications providers and network integrators. Using their flagship product Forward Enterprise, customers reduce time to analyze and troubleshoot network issues, remove operational complexity and increase network availability. Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit http://staging4.nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site.
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DFJ joins existing investors, advancing Forward Networks' growth, as the company announces expansive additions to its product suite
Palo Alto, CA. – Aug. 23, 2017 – Forward Networks today announced $16 million in Series B venture capital, a new product, Forward Essentials, along with support for VMware ESXi virtual networking. Since launching last November, the company has significantly grown its customer base and deepened relationships with existing customers.
The latest round, which brings the company's total fundraising to $27 million, was led by DFJ, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and A.Capital Ventures. The round will allow Forward Networks to meet the high demand of its platform and continue its mission of becoming the leading software platform for error-free, robust and agile network operations. The Forward Platform, which launched from stealth last November, builds an accurate behavioral model of the network, no matter how large or complex. This behavioral model, and the applications built on top, eliminate and reduce manual, cumbersome, and error-prone activities that network operators must endure on a daily basis.
In addition to its Series B, Forward Networks is unveiling Forward Essentials, a new product which enables engineers and operators to easily access network state. The application enables network operators to reduce the time to root-cause network and security issues, as well as improve overall efficiency and time to market for network changes. Delivered as a modern web application, Forward Essentials provides instant search, a visual topology map, historical diff'ing, easy view sharing among teams, and full REST APIs for automation. For more details, see nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site/essentials.
Forward Essentials is currently available via a beta program, with immediate sign-ups, and will become generally available in Q4 2017. Forward Essentials is offered in two tiers:
Free – Full functionality, with usage limits
Standard – Unlimited licensed devices, unlimited daily network device snapshots, and one year snapshot retention - with a per-network-device per-month pricing model
Another significant enhancement to the Forward Platform is support for VMware vSphere virtual networking on ESXi hosts. Specifically, support for vSphere Standard and Distributed Switches on ESXi versions 5.5, 6.0, and 6.5. This new support extends the capability to visualize and search complex networks, debug problems, and verify intent and policy correctness, all the way into the virtualized environment, for truly comprehensive end-to-end network visibility and behavioral analysis.
Forward Networks will showcase their VMware ESXi support, along with Forward Essentials and the Forward Platform, next week at VMworld Las Vegas (Innovator Pavilion; Booth F).
Comments on the news
"David and his team have built a truly game-changing platform" said Andreas Stavropoulos, partner at DFJ. "Modern enterprise networks are larger, more diverse and more fragile than ever before. Forward has taken a critical and significant step forward in how organizations manage their networks."
"We are very pleased to witness Forward Networks' accomplishments. Three years ago we invested in the company because of the strength of the team, the differentiating technology, and the long-term vision of the company," said Bill Krause, board partner at Andreessen Horowitz. "The company's execution, vision and intense commitment to its customers is further proof that this was a smart investment."
"I am delighted to be part of the continued success of Forward Networks", said Ronny Conway, founder and general partner at A.Capital. "We saw the company's potential and believed in their vision at an early stage. I am excited to see the next phase of the company's growth that this new round of funding will accelerate".
"We are thrilled to have DFJ join us on our journey. Having their financial support and expertise, along with that of Andreessen Horowitz and A.Capital, enables us to accelerate execution of our vision for networking," said David Erickson, co-founder and CEO of Forward Networks.
About Forward Networks
The Forward Platform, which launched from stealth last November, uses advanced modeling and analytics to precisely analyze network behavior in networks with thousands of nodes. In addition to Forward Essentials, Forward Networks offers three applications: Forward Search, Forward Verify and Forward Predict. Working together, these applications allow customers to improve operational efficiency, reduce outage occurrence and duration. Forward Networks was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit nl1g1e2381-staging.onrocket.site.
