Brain4Net Programmable Networks
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Programmable Networks (Brain4Net trademark) is a developer of data network management systems, network traffic processing virtualizations and service applications based on Software SDN Defined Networks NFV and Network Function Virtualization architectures.
The company is developing a platform that includes an orchestrator, an SDN controller, a high-level VNF manager and the necessary APIs for integration with OSS/BSS operators. As part of the development of projects, the company provides consulting services for partners and customers to develop a strategy for migrating solutions built on SDN/NFV architectures, integrating them with existing networks and OSS/BSS systems.
The company is accredited by the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation in the register of organizations operating in the field of IT.
The target customers of the company's solutions are fixed and mobile operators, large corporate networks.
History
2021
Kaspersky Lab disclosed the cost of buying Brain4Net ($10.599 million) and the exact share in the company (82.2%)
December 1, 2021 it became known about the cost of the deal to sell Brain4Net "." Kaspersky Lab According to Kaspersky Labs Limited (the parent company for Kaspersky Lab ON), $10.599 million was paid for the purchase of 82.2% of the developer for telecom operators. Thus, the entire Brain4Net company is valued at $12.89 million.
Buying Brain4Net Kaspersky Lab, probably, first of all, acquired "a high-quality product and technology than the customer base and revenue," said Advance Capital Vice President Arthur Shubaev. Based on open data, the revenue of the LLC in 2020 fell almost four times compared to 2019, to 18.3 million rubles, he said.
According to Artyom Inyutin, managing partner of the TMT Investiantin venture fund, the transaction is beneficial for Kaspersky Lab in terms of increasing the company's customer base and the average check due to new products.
As a result of the takeover of Brain4Net, Kaspersky Lab, according to the press service of the antivirus company, will be able to introduce a completely new SASE class solution - a platform that combines best-in-class security solutions and technologies with the process of automating the management of Brain4Net networks. It is planned to include a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), a Secure Web Gateway (SWG), a solution for unifying the management of services of several cloud providers (Cloud Workload Protection Platform, CWPP Network), network access with Zerina ZERNA. Thanks to this strategic step, Kaspersky Lab will be able to offer customers not only information security services, but also secure telecommunications solutions, the company noted.[1]
Kaspersky Lab bought Brain4Net
On October 27, 2021, it became known about the sale of Programmable Networks LLC (Brain4Net brand) to Kaspersky Lab. The latter bought an 80% stake in the developer of solutions for operators from Rostelecom and venture funds Typhoon Digital Development and LETA Capital. The remaining 20% will be retained by the founders of Brain4Net Maxim Kaminsky, Alexander Rumyankov and Sergey Romanov.
The deal was reported by Kommersant with reference to its participants. The financial side of the agreement is not disclosed. Alexander Aivazov, vice president of business development at Rostelecom, in a conversation with the newspaper, only called Brain4Net a successful venture project, from which the telecom operator came out with a profit.
Kaspersky Lab expects to increase its offer by buying Brain4Net, add a set of cloud security services and a system for detecting and responding to threats at enterprises.
The general director of the Evotor IT company Andrei Romanenko notes that Rostelecom tested the capabilities of Brain4Net after acquiring a stake in it, and the current transaction confirms that the project was successful.
Independent expert on information security Denis Batrankov calls the market for cloud security services promising, "since in many companies a significant part of the staff works from home, there is no need to protect offices, so it is logical that the security service is immediately located somewhere on the Internet."
According to Anton Shulgi, Deloitte's partner in the CIS, the integration of Brain4Net technologies will increase the security of Kaspersky Lab software. At the same time, the expert noted that it is unclear how much the issue of security is critical for potential buyers. Brain4Net most likely had plans for foreign sales, to which there will be more questions given the difficult political situation around our cybersecurity developments, he added.[2]
2019: Investments of 300 million rubles from Rostelecom and VEB Ventures
On June 7, 2019, Rostelecom announced the investment of 300 million rubles in Brain4Net together with VEB Ventures. The latter will invest 200 million rubles, and the telecommunications operator will transfer 100 million rubles through its venture fund KommIT Capital.
KommIT Keital previously invested a total of 200 million rubles in Brain4Net in 2016 and 2018. In the framework of the previous round in August 2018, Brain4Net raised $2.5 million (about 170 million rubles) of investments made jointly by KommIT Capital and the Typhoon Digital Development venture fund.
The Russian developer of solutions in the field of software-defined networks virtualizations and network functions SDN(//) SD-WANNFV collaborates with Rostelecom, integrating its technologies with partner products and services.
Maxim Kaminsky, CEO and one of the founders of Brain4Net, says that the first investments from KommIT Capital helped the company grow its technical team and develop product versions that are ready for testing and have the minimum necessary functionality.
 | Cooperation in 2018 made it possible to significantly increase the dynamics of business development, strengthen product areas and bring products to readiness for commercial operation, "Kaminsky said. |  |
According to him, by 2020-2021, Brain4Net expects to earn $20 million in revenue and conclude more than 30 large contracts, including thanks to Rostelecom orders.
In 2018, Rostelecom completed pilot operation of a segment of the regional network built on the basis of switches using SDN technologies. The existing subscribers of the company were gradually transferred to the new infrastructure.
Investments in Brain4Net, which were announced in early June 2019, will be aimed at modernizing and improving the efficiency of the current product and expanding sales, including outside of Russia. Brain4Net also deals with technologies for promising networks, including 5G.
2017
Partnership with Jet Infosystems in SDN/NFV Solutions
Jet Infosystems, a Russian system integrator, and Brain4Net, a Russian developer of IT infrastructure management systems based on service lifecycle orchestration, announced on September 28, 2017 a partnership in the field of creating ready-made commercial solutions in the field of software-defined networks (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV ). It is planned that the systems will be available for testing in their own integrator laboratory from October 2017. More details here.
$1 million investment from Leta Capital
In March, Brain4net announced the attraction of investments in the format of convertible notes in the amount of $1 million. The investor in this issue was the venture fund Leta Capital. Brain4net plans to direct the funds received to improve its solutions and develop the product line, support projects being implemented, expand the partner ecosystem in Russia and abroad.
Regarding solution improvement, Brain4Net plans to expand the functionality of its flagship software product - B4N Service Platform and hardware-independent software agent B4N SwitchOS. According to the developers, this should ensure the possibility of significant disintegration of software solutions from hardware.
With this approach, Brain4Net expects to extend the hardware and software lifecycles of customers and make these components almost independent of each other. According to company estimates, it can allow customers to save up to 50-70% of the project's IT budget.
In 2017, Brain4Net intends to offer telecommunications companies, cloud and Internet service providers a number of solutions that allow customers to manage a portfolio of client services in real time. Developers say that with these solutions it will be possible to activate, scale, change and disable services in seconds instead of days.
2016
Partnership with Mellanox Technologies
Brain4Net and Mellanox Technologies joined forces in August 2016 to create software-managed network fabrics for converged data centers based on SDN/NFV technologies and Open Ethernet switching equipment.
The rapid development of Open Networking technologies (separating the software part of network equipment from the hardware platform), SDN and NFV offers a new paradigm for building a data center based on standard x86 servers and high-performance Ethernet switches with an open architecture (Open Ethernet). At the same time, the software is "separable" from the hardware, and the data center infrastructure constitutes a single "technological platform," represented by two main levels: a converged computing platform; a unified network fabric that combines both physical and virtual switches, managed centrally using an SDN controller.
The strategic partnership between Brain4Net and Mellanox is aimed at creating comprehensive solutions for building a software-controlled data center network factory based on SDN technologies and high-performance network equipment with an open architecture, allowing you to abandon the division of the network into overlay and underlay. In addition, the partner solution works in VMware and OpenStack environments, allowing you to combine different management and virtualization systems into a single integrated network.
Partners offer the market a competitive solution consisting of the following components:
- Mellanox Spectrum switches based on a proprietary chip - a 100 gigabit ASIC with a 6.4Tb/s non-locked switching matrix and support for 32 100/40GbE ports or 64 50/25/10GbE ports, providing stable and ultra-low delays of 300ns, as well as ensuring no packet loss in the network at any load and any packet size (Zero Packet Loss);
- Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx network adapters with 10/25/40/50GbE ports with advanced hardware offloading of server central processors;
- The Mellanox NEO monitoring and management system, which provides initial configuration of Mellanox switches, as well as additional network statistics and software updates on switches and network adapters;
- The B4N SwichOS Virtual Switch is a high-performance OpenFlow switch, accelerated by Intel DPDK, for the x86 platform;
- B4N Service Platform components that implement the functions of programming physical and virtual switches and orchestrating network and services implemented "over" the network fabric.
This approach will simplify management and scale-out, optimize network resource utilization, and unify the hardware platform. In addition, the possibility of abandoning specialized network devices will reduce equipment costs and is a powerful driver for creating an open converged infrastructure.
MEF Consortium Member
Testing NFV Solutions on OPNFV
Brain4Net, in collaboration with the Russian distributor of telecom and IT solutions, Marvell, is creating a laboratory where developers of virtual network functions will be able to test their solutions on the new OPNFV Brahmaputra platform.
Brain4Net sees potential in the development of open source solutions and their promotion in Russia. The result of this activity was a joint initiative with Marvel Distribution to build a test laboratory in Moscow, where each Russian developer of network functions will be able to work out the possibility of virtualizing their solutions and test their work within the framework of the OPNFV platform.
"We observe a serious interest of Russian telecom operators in developments in the field of NFV and, in particular, in virtual network functions (vRouter, vNAT, vFirewall, etc.). For its part, Brain4Net is doing everything possible to accelerate the adaptation of new technologies and contribute to the development of the domestic software industry. We are trying to create all conditions so that Russian developers have all the necessary tools to test their products in conditions close to "combat," and can offer a comprehensive solution that meets the requirements of Russian operators, "says Oleg Shchapov, CEO of Brain4Net.
The development of NFV architectures in the world leads to the emergence of both new commercial products and open source solutions created by leading open source communities. One of these communities - OPNFV (Open Platform for NFV), part of the Linux Foundation, is developing the "NFV reference architecture" and open source software based on it.
In March 2016, OPNFV announced the release of the second release of the NFV platform, called Brahmaputra. According to the community, this version provides not only a lot of tools for testing cases for the application of NFV architectures, but also includes serious extensions in functionality. Among the new tools for testing are:
- NFV Application Compliance Test Group (Yardisk Project);
- Comprehensive solution performance (virtual network features plus NFV platform);
- Identify bottlenecks affecting overall performance
- Test virtual switch performance against multiple metrics.
Functional enhancements include L3VPN configuration and creation, minimal IPv6 support, troubleshooting, and first implementation of Service Function Chaining.
The Brain4Net initiative involves not only the ability to test ready-made virtual functions, but also obtaining company expertise in the field of NFV and helping partner developers port software to work in a virtual environment.
Investments from KommIT Capital
The corporate venture fund Rostelecom"" Comitas Capital"" invested in the spring of 2016 about 100 million rubles in the Russian developer ON under the Brain4Net brand in the field of managing carrier-class data networks virtualizations and network functions. The co-investor in the deal was a fund Leta Capital created by Leta IT-Group. Together, the partners invested $1.75 million in Brain4Net and will receive a 25% stake in the company. In dollar terms, Commit Capital invested $1.45 million in Brain4Net and will receive a 20.3% stake in the company,
According to Alexei Basov, vice president of Rostelecom and chairman of the Board of Directors of KommIT Capital, this transaction is an investment in ensuring Rostelecom's strategic technological advantage. "Brain4Net solutions are focused on building operator and enterprise networks based on the SDN architecture and related NFV technology. Rostelecom will be able to use them to gradually transform its network, optimize its network infrastructure and provide new services to its customers more flexibly and quickly, he said. - The company has high export potential and has every chance to take significant positions in this new and promising market. "
"The transaction is the first round of financing for Brain4Net, in which KommIT Capital acted as the lead investor," commented Alexey Kupriyanov, general director of the Rostelecom corporate venture fund, "The second co-investor is the LETA Capital venture fund. The total volume of attracted investments amounted to $1.75 million. "
"During the transaction, investors placed Brain4Net shares of an additional issue, the founders of Brain4Net retained control over 75% of the company. The funds raised will be used to improve and further develop the product line and expand the sales channel, both in Russia and abroad, "said Oleg Shchapov, founder and CEO of Brain4Net. "Participation in the transaction of such a strategic partner as Rostelecom means for us a high assessment of the expertise of the team and the development potential of the company. We expect this cooperation to be mutually beneficial and help us accelerate the development of innovative solutions based on the SDN/NFV architecture that are competitive in the global market, "he stressed.
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