SD-WAN startup Bigleaf Networks secured $21 million in Series B funding. Leading the second round were Updata Partner, Oregon Venture Fund and the SeaChange Fund.

Bigleaf plans to invest these funds into accelerating development of its SD-WAN platform.

The Beaverton, Oregon-based company has taken a different approach to the crowded SD-WAN market. Rather than compete with industry leaders like Cisco, VMware, and Aryaka at the top, the company has instead turned to a segment of the market its says has been largely ignored by the major players: small-to-medium-size business.

“These SMB and mid-size enterprise businesses are struggling to address their connectivity issues with traditional networking technologies,” said Joel Mulkey, founder and CEO of Bigleaf, in a statement. “The other solutions available on the market today aren’t effective for many SaaS and cloud apps, require too much management, and aren’t intelligent enough to adapt to the pace of change in today’s businesses.”

Current networking technologies have been built for the large enterprise use-case of site-to-site networking and small-to-medium-sized companies are left behind, says Bigleaf.

And according to Jon Seeber, general partner at Updata, cited in Bigleaf's funding announcement, this market has more than $2 billion in untapped potential.

Since its initial January 2018 funding round, in which the company walked away with $4.9 million, Bigleaf has managed to capitalize on these businesses selling its SD-WAN through a network of service providers and telcos rather than marketing it directly.

The company reports that in the last year and a half it has seen both its staff and recurring revenues triple.

Much of this growth can be credited to the continued adoption of software-as-a-service SaaS and cloud technologies by smaller businesses.

This year the fledgling SD-WAN vendor took its business international breaking into three major European cities: London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam in April. Bigleaf also teased plans to continue its expansion with service in Paris and Australia in the second half of 2019.