Rockport Networks, which created a buzz across the networking sector in recent weeks promoting a “switchless” fabric concept, is in the news again this week with the announcement of $48 million in funding and the naming of industry veteran Marc Sultzbaugh as Co-CEO of the company.
Rockport’s new funding came from Northern Private Capital and existing investors, the company said. The new funds will help the company accelerate its go-to-market plan and expand its sales and marketing efforts for its switchless network architecture, which relies on software-driven intelligent end points to manage congestion and route traffic to maintain high performance.
Sultzbaugh, who spent 20 years of his 30-year career in executive jobs at Mellanox, which was acquired last year by Nvidia, has served on the Rockport board of directors since December 2020, and will continue to do so. He now joins Rockport Co-Founder and Co-CEO Doug Carwardine in leading the Ottawa, Ontario-based company.
Rockport said in a statement that Sultzbaugh will be responsible for all aspects of Rockport’s growth, including technology and product management, marketing, sales, manufacturing and customer relationships. Meanwhile Carwardine will continue to oversee research and development, people and culture, and finance at Rockport.
Getting companies to eliminate switching infrastructure in which they have sizable, multi-year investments may be no easy task, but Rockport may find some favor at a time when many industries are becoming more driven by need to sharply cut energy consumption and focus on performance-per-watt. A Rockport spokesperson claimed the switchless solution “requires between 34% and 69% less energy consumption when compared to switch-based technologies and eliminates up to 72% of cabling requirements.”
However, Rockport mainly positions its architecture as a performance improver. The latency of complicated, switch-centered infrastructures is keeping companies from maximizing workload performance, and in many cases is actually “hobbling” performance, the spokesperson said, adding “There may be limited real estate, in some cases, and by removing the switching infrastructure they can add more compute or storage to their racks.”
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