Google LLC and Andreessen Horowitz have jointly led a $29 million funding round into Isovalent Inc., a startup with a Linux-based networking platform that enterprises can use to manage the flow of data in their Kubernetes environments.

Cisco Systems Inc. also participated in the Series A round, which was announced today.

The networking software that orchestrates the movement of packets between servers is usually installed on top of those servers’ operating system. Isovalent’s platform, in contrast, embeds its network orchestration code directly into the operating system itself. The startup claims that its approach makes the network more efficient by reducing the number of additional software layers that need to be installed atop Linux to help manage data traffic.

Isovalent’s platform, called Cilium, facilitates this simplification by harnessing a low-level mechanism of Linux called eBPF. The mechanism makes it possible to embed networking code directly into the operating system’s kernel with less work and fewer security risks than traditional approaches.

Cilium has been adopted by Google to power the network data plane that powers its Google Kubernetes Engine. Other users include SAP SE, GitLab Inc. and Capital One Financial Corp., among others.

The extra efficiency that comes from embedding code directly into the Linux kernel isn’t the only reason companies are adopting the platform. Isovalent says Cilium facilitates a high degree of network programmability, allowing savvy enterprises to build automations to help manage their networks. This is a particularly big boon for Kubernetes clusters, which are Isovalent’s main focus with Cilium, since managing the data traffic between large fleets of software contains efficiency requires extensive automation.

Cilium also provides other staple networking features including monitoring capabilities, load balancing and security controls. 

“Kubernetes breaks a lot of the old-school networking and security tooling that assumed an immutable physical server,” Martin Casado, a general partner Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a blog post explaining his decision to invest in Isovalent. “We need a new networking and security layer that provides cloud native visibility, security and control of these high-level abstractions in a way that is secure, seamless to deploy and does not compromise application performance.”

Cilium is available under an open-source license. The new funding will help Isovalent draw customers to its newly announced commercial offering, Cilium Enterprise. It adds features not included in the standard version, including an expanded set of security features and extra tools for troubleshooting technical issues. 

Image: Isovalent