Network operations monitoring startup Forward Networks Inc. has raised $16 million in a Series B round led by DFJ, along with investment from Andreessen Horowitz and A.Capital Ventures.

Founded in 2013, the company offers a platform that provides network visibility, policy verification and change modeling. Designed to allow enterprises to eliminate network outages, the company’s platform enables network engineers to visualize complex networks, debug problems, verify network policy implementation and predict network behavior across cloud and hybrid environments.

The company came out of stealth mode with the launch of its first product to market in October 2016. It was described at the time as a platform that applies formal network traffic verification via three modules each focused on a different aspects of network operations. The first is called Forward Search and serves as a sort of discovery engine, modeling every possible way that traffic can move around in a given environment. The second module, called Forward Verify, checks the traffic statistics from Forward Search against network management policies to find inconsistencies. The third module, Forward Predict, sees how tweaks made to the network would affect the situation.

Working on that base, Forward Networks has launched a new product called Forward Essentials that it claims to allow network operators to reduce the time spent on root-cause network and security issues, as well as improve overall efficiency and time to market for network changes. The product provides instant search, a visual topology map, historical differing, view sharing among teams, and application programming interfaces for automation. The product is offered in two flavors: a free version with some limitations and a more traditional licensed version with all the bells and whistles.

Including the new round, Forward Networks has raised $27.15 million to date.

Photo: U.S. Airforce/Public Domain