Startup Profile: Augtera Unveils NetOps Automation Tools

Startup Augtera Networks emerged from stealth mode in August of 2021 and has been recently ramping up its market strategy in the telecommunications and enterprise networking market with new features for network operations based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Augtera’s core focus is using AI/ML to improve network operations. Last week at the ONUG conference in New Jersey, Augtera announced a new natural language processing (NLP) feature to detect zero-day anomalies by analyzing syslog files.

“There is an incredible amount of operations data in networks,” Mark Seery, Augtera’s VP of marketing told us. “We are integrating national language processing into anomaly detection.”

Looking for a NLP Edge

Augtera analyzes the reams of streaming log data that are produced by network devices and applications. The company believes the evolution in log analysis needs to move to NLP to gain a more sophisticated view of network activity. It does this by moving from text matching to understanding meaning, both the semantics and the context of text, in real-time, to generate proactive insights. The company believes that NLP combined with other AI/ML techniques can take network automation to the next level.

"Operators increasingly want to move away from reactive historical mining of log data to proactive real-time insights,” said Rahul Aggarwal, Founder & CEO of Augtera Networks, in a recent statement.

Aggarwal is not one of the most famous founders in the networking industry, but he has a solid track record of building technologies. As co-founder and CEO of user engagement software Arktan, he built a company that was sold to Janrain, which was in turn purchased by Akamai in 2016. Prior to that, he was a distinguished engineer at Juniper Networks and a software engineer at edge routing pioneer Redback Networks.

NetOps Piece of Mind

One of Augtera’s goals is to “give operators peace of mind,” according to Aggarwal. By using Augtera’s NetOps software, they can detect unknown hardware or software issues automatically before they impact the infrastructure.

The company says it has a heavy portfolio of internal R&D and intellectual property, including 100+ patents and 40+ RFCs with the IETF. It built the product by partnering with 9 largescale networks where it tested its software with production data.

"Augtera has leveraged the team's experience in embedded software development, to write from scratch, high-performance and cost-effective AI/ML algorithms, that scale to billions of streaming log messages per day, without message loss,” says Bhupesh Kothari, co-founder & VP of Engineering for Augtera Networks.

You can see a live demo of Augtera in action here.

Augtera’s investors include Bain Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital, and Acrew. The company has raised $17 million to date.

Startup Profile: Augtera Networks

HQ Location: Palo Alto, Calif.

CEO: Rahul Aggarwal (Arktan, Inc., Juniper Networks, Redback Networks)

Target Market: Network Operations, Network Performance Monitoring

Prominent Investors: Bain Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital, Acrew

Funding Raised to Date: $17 million