Lagrange Systems announced today that it’s using its software-defined networking (SDN) DNA to update its cloud-based application delivery controller (ADC).

By separating the control and data planes, Lagrange is able to build hooks into the application layer that sits just below the web-server layer. This gives Lagrange’s ADC, CloudMaestro, the ability to scale out, or in, for a cloud provider as demand dictates.

For instance, CloudMaestro can auto-scale the app layer of an e-commerce site so that shopping carts don't stall during periods of high user activity. With the app-centric approach, businesses don’t need to overprovision themselves with servers that they only use during high traffic times, and can also only use as much cloud as they need.

Traditional hardware-based ADC companies require weeks to months of network re-architecting in order to scale out, which also can lead to increased IT costs by customers, Lagrange CEO Sonal Puri says.

CloudMaestro works across single cloud, multicloud, and hybrid cloud environments.

CloudMaestro is also cloud-agnostic. If a customer decides to move to Amazon Web Services from Microsoft Azure, for example, CloudMaestro can move the entire application to the new location, Puri says.

CloudMaestro comes in two versions. The “lite” version that provides cloud-based ADC functionally is used by companies that have static websites with more predictable traffic flows. The “professional” edition includes the app-layer scaling functionality.

Lagrange was founded in 2012 and originally had its headquarters in Boulder, Colo. In February, Puri was hired as an advisor to Lagrange after leaving her chief marketing officer position at SD-WAN vendor Aryaka Networks the previous month. (Puri says Lagrange and Aryaka share some of the same investors.)

Puri was named CEO in July, which also marked the move of the company’s headquarters to Menlo Park, Calif., from Boulder, although the R&D team is still based in Boulder.

Lagrange raised about $7.5 million in seed and Series A funding two years ago and is the process of completing a Series B round, Puri says.

Among ADC vendors, Puri says Lagrange, which has around 40 customers, is in the middle of the market and is comparable to Avi Networks. On the high end, the market includes familiar names such as F5 Networks and Citrix; Puri describes them as ADC vendors that originally targeted data centers but are now moving into the cloud market. The low end is comprised by the likes of AWS, Azure, and others that provide basic load balancing functions.

The high end of the market features ADCs that go beyond load balancing or scaling to include optimization, caching, application acceleration, security, and firewalls. Lagrange offers high-end ADC functions and features through cloud architectures, which makes it an ideal fit for cloud-hosted companies that have web front-ends, according to Puri.