Kentik, formerly known as CloudHelix, launched from stealth, offering a cloud-based network visibility and analytics solution capable of processing trillions of network data records per day and providing critical network intelligence at multi-terabit scale in real time.

The Kentik Detect service is the only platform to enable full visibility across an unlimited number of networks of any size for real-time, actionable insights into network traffic activity, DDoS attacks and peering efficiency -- and the only platform making these capabilities available instantly via public or private-cloud SaaS to Web-scale customers today.

Kentik also announced the closing of a $12.1 million Series A funding round led by August Capital, and with increased support from Kentik's seed investors, to position the company for continued, rapid growth.

Kentik delivers granular insights leveraging flow, SNMP and BGP data, via a single system and at terabit scale, with powerful portal access and rapid SQL-standard querying on real-time and historical terabit-scale Internet traffic. Kentik Detect is already gaining early traction in the market, with large-scale Internet service providers (ISPs), cloud-delivered security companies like OpenDNS, and Web companies like Yelp and Box deploying the SaaS solution.

"Establishing clear visibility is critical for operating today's networks, but that depends on being able to gather and analyze huge, ever-increasing volumes of data," said Christian Renaud, Senior Analyst of 451 Research's Enterprise Networking Practice. "The use of technologies such as big data and SaaS to solve this challenge holds great potential, but there are few product or service options today that are truly fit for purpose. Kentik designed a solution on just such technologies, applying and optimizing them specifically to meet the needs of network operators."

"Modern networks are under extreme stress, bearing the brunt of burgeoning traffic loads and constant security threats," said Vivek Mehra, General Partner at August Capital. "Real-time network visibility is essential for any organization to achieve resilience. Until now, there has been a glaring gap in the network management space for meeting that need. Kentik offers a compelling answer, and our investment in the company reflects our confidence in Kentik's technology and future growth."

Kentik Detect can be deployed in under an hour by organizations with even the largest-scale infrastructures, and equips service providers, Web enterprises and network operations teams with the rapid insights they need to keep their networks up and running smoothly. With unparalleled raw data retention and fast query responses combined with proactive real-time alerting, Kentik Detect puts operators in control to understand how their networks are behaving, reveal root causes of issues, and plan for growth based on reality rather than guesswork.

"As we've worked on scaling the modern Internet, content delivery, and application infrastructures over the last 25 years, my peers and I have directly experienced the pain of having sub-standard tools for network visibility and analytics. As the volume and complexity of networks has grown, the data handling and analytics required have become so complex that traditional network management tools have been unable to scale and innovate," said Avi Freedman, Co-founder and CEO of Kentik. "We intend to make Kentik the single, unified source of intelligence for all infrastructure data. By bringing the SaaS model and unparalleled analytics to network and infrastructure management, we are redefining what it means to have true operations visibility, and providing the insights needed to drive real-time, data-driven operations."

In addition to August Capital's lead investment, seed investors, led by First Round Capital and Data Collective (DCVC), more than doubled their commitments to Kentik as part of the Series A raise.

Founded as CloudHelix in January 2014, Kentik announced $3.1 million in seed funding in September 2014 from investors including First Round Capital, DCVC, the Webb Investment Network, Tahoma Ventures, Central Electric, Engineering Capital, and a roster of angel investors including infrastructure industry founders, executives, and luminaries from Google, Facebook, Rackspace, SoftLayer, Akamai, Salesforce, and Netflix. With the $12.1 million Series A round, Kentik has now secured over $15 million in financing as it continues to gain top-performing ISPs and Web companies as its earliest adopters.

The Kentik solution accepts flow data from network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers or appliances at any scale, from a single flow source to thousands. Kentik Detect is available now as public SaaS or on-premise private SaaS. Pricing is subscription-based and the service is offered worldwide.