Cato Networks CEO on 'aggressive' European expansion
SASE vendor claims its valuation now exceeds $1bn in largest funding round to date
Cato Networks CEO has promised to step up the vendor's "aggressive expansion" in Europe after landing $130m in funding.
The secure access service edge (SASE) vendor recently announced that it has secured $130m in funding - its largest funding round to date.
CEO and co-founder Kramer, who also co-founded cybersecurity vendors CheckPoint and Imperva, told CRN sister title Channel Partner Insight (CPI) that the new funding would enable Cato Network to ramp up its "aggressive expansion" at a faster pace.
Kramer said Cato Networks is aiming to be a 400-employee-strong business over the next 12 months, up from a current team of 285.
He said the firm is looking to hire sales, marketing and engineering professionals in order to boost its customer base globally.
"We're going to end the year with $240m in the bank, and that is going to allow us to accelerate our hiring, especially on sales and marketing and on the engineering side. This is a big undertaking and will require a lot of resources. It will also allow us to consider strategic opportunities to accelerate our roadmap," he said.
"This funding is going to help us accelerate this already aggressive move. The market is there, the solution is great and ready and it is all about us getting in front of more customers and partners and that is what we are going to do."
The recent funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners as well as new investor Coatue.
Existing investors Greylock, Aspect Ventures, Acrew Capital, Singtel Innov8 and co-founder Shlomo Kramer also participated in the round.
It marks the second funding round for Cato Networks this year, having previously secured $77m in April.
The vendor has been ramping up its channel presence in Europe over recent months. In April it named Nuvias as its first pan-European distributor and EMEA and regional boss Luca Simonelli told CPI that he planned to at least double the firm's headcount before the end of 2021.
Cato Networks is widely regarded to be a pioneer in SASE technology since it was founded almost six years ago.
Kramer said that the latest funding round, and its $1bn valuation, indicates the potential for Cato Networks to capitalise on the SASE market.
The vendor claims it has seen remote access usage of its platform triple since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The CEO and co-founder added that Cato Networks' revenues will be roughly double this year than what they were in 2019, claiming its business is "well balanced" across North America, EMEA and APJ.
He added that more and more customers are choosing to go "all in" with Cato Networks rather than gradually shift their IT to its platform in stages.
"We are very well positioned to carve out a big piece of this opportunity," said Kramer.
Cato Networks competes with other vendors including VeloCloud and SilverPeak as well as the point solution bundles offered by many telcos.
Kramer said that he's noticed other cybersecurity and networking vendors jumping on the SASE trend over the last six months.
"We have seen lots of network security companies adopting it and rushing to assemble a solution. We're still the first and only pure SASE platform that was built from the ground up," he said.