Aerohive Networks Cops $25 Million Funding Round

Aerohive, a fast-rising wireless LAN upstart

The Series D round, according to Aerohive, was led by VC firm New Enterprise Associates, and saw participation from all of Aerohive's previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Northern Light Venture Capital. The round brings Aerohive's total venture capital financing to more than $70 million since Aerohive emerged in 2007.

Aerohive's metier is what it calls "cooperative control architecture": deploying 802.11n access points (AP) in a controller-less approach that moves wireless controller functions onto the APs themselves and moves jobs like data forwarding away from a single point of failure. No controller purchase, Aerohive argues, means lower price points than competitive solutions with comparable features.

As its technology has entered the market, Aerohive has also focused on a structured channel program, adding channel management and beginning new recruitment efforts more than a year ago. More recently, Aerohive added cloud networking capabilities with the January acquisition of Pareto Networks, integrating Pareto's routing, VPN and cloud services offerings into his own platform.

David Flynn, Aerohive's CEO, called the Series D round a "strong commitment" by investors, and said it would help Aerohive accelerate growth and position itself for more acquisitions and new markets.

"Our innovation in controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-enabled networking has put Aerohive in an enviable position in the market, growing substantially faster than the Wi-Fi market and able to expand into the cloud-enabled router and VPN markets," Flynn said in a statement.

Aerohive is frequently mentioned among networking companies eyed for initial public offering (IPO) potential. The most recent public debut directly relevant to the wireless LAN channel was Meru Networks' IPO in March 2010.