Big Switch Networks on Friday announced that Intel Capital has invested in the company’s Series B funding, bringing the total amount raised to date to over $45 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and others.

Cloud computing is driving the convergence of server, storage and network technologies, and there is a growing need for innovative networking solutions to support the dynamic nature of virtualized and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud data centers. Software-defined networking and merchant silicon Ethernet switches will enable all new levels of network agility and cost-effective operations for cloud and enterprise scale-out data centers.

“Data center operators need programmable and cost effective merchant silicon-based networking architectures to meet their data center economic and operational objectives,” said Bryan Wolf, Managing Director of Intel Capital. “At Intel Capital, we’re looking for companies creating the most disruptive data center solutions, and Big Switch Networks Open Software-Defined Networking product suite is a leading solution in data center network virtualization.”

“Dramatic changes in enterprise and service provider data center networks require novel networking architectures and products,” said Guido Appenzeller, CEO and co-founder of Big Switch Networks. “We are excited to have Intel Capital as a strategic investor to help deliver next generation software-defined networking solutions to the market.”

In 2012 Big Switch Networks shipped the first platform independent Open Software-Defined Networking(SDN) product suite, including network virtualization and network monitoring applications. Big Switch Networks products suite enables network programmability, flexibility and new levels of network service delivery. The Big Switch Networks Open SDN suite includes:

• Big Network Controller (BNC)-the Open SDN platform for network applications which scales to more than a thousand switches and 250,000 new host connections per second
• Big Virtual Switch (BVS)-a data center network virtualization application that makes the data center network as agile and dynamic as cloud compute resources and enables up to 50% more VMs per rack.
• Big Tap- a unified network monitoring application which provides cost-effective enterprise-wide network visibility