The emergence of Arrcus Inc. from stealth mode and the release of its first product, ArcOS, represents an opening salvo in what could become major disruption in the networking world. The multi-billion networking industry has been dominated by a small yet powerful number of vendors, and Arrcus has a grand plan to change that situation.

The key is silicon, specifically advancements in the semiconductor space that allow for deployment of switch-on-a-chip capabilities that can enable highly flexible and scalable network operating systems.

“When you have that type of dominance, it leads ultimately to high prices and muted innovation,” said Devesh Garg (pictured, right), founder and chief executive officer of Arrcus. “There was a tremendous amount of innovation coming at the silicon component level. But the missing link was really an operating system that would unleash all of that innovation.”

Garg spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. He was joined by Steve Herrod (pictured, left), managing director at General Catalyst Partners, to discuss the company’s newly released software, a silicon-based technology to enable it, the importance of operating in multiple environments, and the team behind Arrcus.

A hardware-agnostic system

ArcOS is an independent, hardware-agnostic network operating system for physical, virtual and cloud environments. The goal is to enable open networking that addresses data center workloads, internet peering (interconnection of separate networks), resilient routing to the host, and massively scalable clusters in physical or container form factors.

“It reminds me of the early virtualization pieces,” Herrod said. “If you can take the advantages of hardware as it improves and really bring them into a company more quickly than before, then those companies are going to be able to have better economics on their networking.”

In partnership with Broadcom Inc., Arrcus has built its operating system on the StrataDNX Jericho+ and StrataXGS Trident 3 platforms. “We’re the world’s first operating system that’s been ported to the high-end Broadcom StrataDNX family,” Garg said. “We can ingest a full internet routing table, and as a byproduct of that, it can be used in the highest-end applications for network operators.”

Arrcus executives have begun discussions with a number of potential customers interested in its networking technology. Those conversations have focused on how ArcOS can be used for data center, edge, or cloud-centric applications.

“Whether it’s cloud or internet of things or everything, networking is literally the core to all of this working going forward,” Herrod said. “The opportunity to rethink it in a new design and in a software-first mentality felt kind of perfect right now.”

Flexibility to meet use cases

Arrcus founders were insistent that deployment of the operating systems had to accommodate different environments, such as containers or the cloud. Protocols are captured in a modular, microservices-based architecture.

“That allows us the flexibility and extensibility to be able to compose it in a manner that’s consistent with what the end use case is going to be,” Garg explained. “It’s designed from the onset to be very scalable and very versatile in terms of where it can be deployed.”

Garg has assembled a significant team at his startup company, which also announced $15 million in Series A funding from Herrod’s General Catalyst and Clear Ventures. Advisers include Pankaj Patel, former chief development officer at Cisco Systems Inc. and Amarjit Gill, who co-founded a number of companies later acquired by Apple Inc., Intel Corp. and EMC.

“When you have a great team and many capable people surrounding you, it really comes together,” Garg said. “We have a very robust roadmap to continue to augment and add capabilities to what we’ve brought to the market.”

Watch the entire video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE