NGINX scored $43 million in Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs’ Growth Equity division. The latest round pushed the application platform provider's total haul of private funding to $103 million.

NGINX CEO Gus Robertson said the firm will use the new funds to boost its product lineup that is based on its NGINX Plus platform. He noted those efforts would include work on its Kubernetes Ingress controller, and products targeting the Istio service mesh and API gateways.

“Something like Istio is getting attention from customers that want to do microservices on containers, so we will work more with Istio on those efforts,” Robertson explained.

Istio provides developers with visibility into microservices without the need to change application code. The platform sits at the network level and uses a substrate for microservices development and maintenance. This allows for the decoupling of management from application development.

Robertson said the company was also in the process of rolling out its new Controller product that acts like a control plane on top of NGINX Plus. The Controller product also includes its Unit product that acts like an application server for microservices-based applications.

Beyond the product set, NGINX is also looking to expand existing partnerships in the microservices ecosystem. Those include deals with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker Inc., Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and IBM. The company is also looking to open new offices, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

Robertson said the latest funding round was different from past efforts in that investors were more focused on growth and efficiency of the business.

“They were more metrics driven,” Robertson said. “It was great to go through the process.”

NGINX was able to offer up metrics that included 100 percent year-over-year revenue growth for four straight years, and anticipation for similar growth through 2019.

The funding process will also see David Campbell, managing director of Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division, join the NGINX board.

As for looking ahead, Robertson said the company was focused on continuing to deliver a great customer experience and continuing updates to its platform. He did note that those efforts could eventually put NGINX at a revenue level that could lead to an initial public offering (IPO) opportunity, but that was “not the focus right now.”