Hyperscale networking software vendor Arrcus closed the year 2021 with a tripling of bookings and a 30% headcount increase in the fourth quarter alone. CEO Shekar Ayyar attributes part of the growth to the strategy of winning customers from larger rivals — such as Cisco, Arista Networks, and Juniper Networks — through entry points.

“​​We have seen that the app world is evolving at a tremendously fast pace, but unfortunately the network world has become a much more rigid infrastructure in the past that doesn't allow for the app world to evolve as fast as it needs to,” said Ayyar, who previously served as EVP and GM for VMware’s telco and edge cloud business.

After taking over the Arrcus CEO role last September, Ayyar aggregated the vendor’s software systems to target the growing edge networking and cloud space with a goal to coexist with – and hopefully replace – equipment and software from larger rivals like Cisco, Juniper, and Arista. 

“In fairness, we're not going to go out there and on day one replace 10,000 switches or 500 routers,” Ayyar said, adding that instead, Arrcus wants to showcase its innovative, cost-effective, flexible, and manageable platform. 

“When people see all of that, they then give us a playground” in part of their network architectures, he said. “With that entry point, we have been very successful in showing results, in showing performance, in showing that there is no downtime. They then give us more and more of their architecture or their network to enable with our technology.”

In addition to the headcount and booking growth, Arrcus also announced its 10th U.S. patent in the area of hyperscale networking focusing on segment routing, which is part of its Connected Edge (ACE) platform.

The vendor already bundled its ArcOS, ArcIQ, and ArcOrchestrator products into the ACE platform. Ayyar claims this provides customers with a single platform to manage the deployment of applications and services in an edge-native way across a data center, enterprise, cloud, or 5G telecom environment.

Those recent developments and growth attracted “a tremendous amount of interest in wanting to invest in the company,” Ayyar said. He expects to raise the next round of funding at the end of this quarter or early next quarter.

Arrcus scored $30 million in a 2019 funding round, and it scored another $28.4 million last May, according to Crunchbase.