Network management and automation startup NetBox Labs Inc. is looking to fly out of the gates after closing on a $20 million round of funding today.

The Series A round was led by Flybridge Capital and saw the participation of Grafana Labs Inc. Chief Executive Raj Dutt, Mango Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, IBM Corp., the Founder Collective and Entrée Capital.

NetBox Labs is the creator of the open-source NetBox platform that’s designed for modern network automation and infrastructure resource management. It offers feature-rich and application programming interface functionality for IP address management, data center infrastructure management and other networking tasks. More than seven years old, the project helps companies to reduce their dependence on messy spreadsheets, serving as the foundation for drive device provisioning, automated testing, monitor updates and more.

The platform has proved to be a big hit, earning more than 12,000 stars on GitHub and seeing thousands of enterprise installations and hundreds of technology integrations. It boasts hundreds of users, including organizations such as Dartmouth College and Chewy Inc., which rely on NetBox as a “network source of truth” that powers automation.

NetBox Labs launched as an independent entity recently after being spun out of NS1 Inc., a networking company that was recently acquired by IBM. NS1’s former CEO Kris Beever has assumed the same role at NetBox Labs, which he co-founded along with lead maintainer Jeremy Stretch. It has created the NetBox Cloud platform, a managed version of NetBox that eases the administrative overheads associated with hosting and managing NetBox instances. It boasts other features around compliance, reliability and security, too.

“NetBox has become a linchpin technology enabling organizations to accelerate their automation journeys and take back control of their networks,” Stretch said.

“NetBox is unequivocally the dominant network source of truth on the market today, and we are committed to making sure it’s the first choice for every networking professional on the planet, whether they are an open source or commercial user,” Beevers added.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said it’s good to see NetBox Labs attracting funding, because networking remains one of the areas with the highest costs for enterprises. “With layers and layers of networking technologies and infrastructure baked over each other, the cleanup is risky and offers little reward,” he said. “New solutions that can reduce complexity, lower the cost of operations and reduce the operational management burden are key, and it’s no surprise that the innovation here is coming from startups.”

The funding from today’s round will help NetBox Labs to scale the development of the open-source NetBox and NetBox Cloud.

Flybridge Capital’s general partner David Aronoff said it’s a rare opportunity when you stumble across an organization whose technology has such widespread adoption even before it has raised Series A funding. “NetBox Labs is such a company,” he said. “We believe its role as a network source of truth is critical to the future of network automation and will fundamentally change the industry.”

Image: NetBox Labs