Infoblox Inc., a major maker of networking equipment and software, today said that it has acquired California startup SnapRoute Inc. to add more depth to its product portfolio.

Infoblox is the biggest player in a niche but important segment of the networking industry. The company sells solutions that help enterprises manage their internet protocol or IP addresses and domain name system deployments, a product category in it which had an estimated 50% market share as of 2018. 

Infoblox this year expanded its focus to cybersecurity by launching BloxOne Threat Defense, a network protection service aimed at hybrid cloud environments. The acquisition of SnapRoute is intended to enable the company to grow its reach in the hybrid cloud business.

Founded by a trio of former Apple Inc. engineers in 2015, SnapRoute has developed a network operating system designed to run equally well on on- and off-premises infrastructure. The platform is delivered as a set of modular software containers. Administrators can manage their SnapRoute-powered networks using Kubernetes and, when making changes, only update the specific components that require modification rather than the entire deployment, which eases tasks like installing security patches. 

“If you have to security patch something or you have to fix something, you can replace an individual container and you don’t touch anything else,” SnapRoute Chief Executive Officer Dom Wilde (center) explained in a July interview on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile streaming studio (below). “You maintain a known state for your network and you don’t have to interrupt any kind of service.”

Wilde said a “couple” of customers had signed deals to buy the startup’s platform. One of those customers, AT&T Inc., was also a key investor. Together with the venture capital arm of Microsoft Corp. and Norwest Venture Partners, the carrier poured $25 million into SnapRoute’s coffers in early 2017.

The acquisition by Infoblox represents a fairly fast exit for the startup. It comes less than two years after SnapRoute’s initial 2017 funding round and just seven months after its platform officially launched. 

Infoblox didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal. The company will use SnapRoute’s technology to bolster its lineup of hybrid cloud products, which currently consists of the BloxOne Threat Defense service and BloxOne DDI, a cloudified version of flagship DNS and IP address management solution. 

“We recognize that the future is in the cloud, and to meet customer demands for flexibility, scalability, adaptability, enhanced security and speed, it will become increasingly important for network and security services to be cloud-native,” Infoblox CEO Jesper Andersen said in a prepared statement.

Photo: SiliconANGLE