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Silver Peak made cheap connections worth trusting
The internet was cheaper than a private network. The awkward part was making it behave. Silver Peak turned that problem into EdgeConnect - and a $925 million acquisition by HPE.
CommandLink and the cost of passing the ticket
A network can have plenty of suppliers and nobody in charge. CommandLink sells a way out: one platform, a dedicated engineering team, and someone to own the troublesome space between vendors.
Lingo and the phone lines nobody remembers
The cloud gets the applause. Lingo works in the awkward space where Teams calls, restaurant networks and elevator phones all have to keep working.
AmZetta wants your old PC to earn its keep
The company born from American Megatrends is giving existing computers a second job - and tackling the networks, access rules, and storage that make that job possible.
Scale Computing and the art of making IT boring
A supermarket checkout is a terrible place for an infrastructure experiment. Scale Computing has built a business around keeping the complicated machinery small, local and out of the way.
Global Data and the luxury of a boring connection
On a Gulf of Mexico workboat, a better network bought something unexpected: a way to call home. Global Data Systems makes its living managing the technology behind ordinary moments in difficult places.
The Network That Followed the Device
ZeroTier began as one engineer’s objection to the paperwork of networking. A parking-garage customer shows what happens when a network can travel with its devices.
The Network That Learned to Take Another Road
When a branch office has two internet links, the question is no longer which one is primary. VeloCloud built a business around choosing the better path, packet by packet - then carried that idea through VMware, Broadcom and, finally, Arista.
Bigleaf Networks Bet That Your Internet Should Fix Itself
The Oregon networking company built a business around an unglamorous promise: when a circuit coughs, the cloud applications, phone calls and card payments should keep moving before anyone opens a ticket.
TPx Built the IT Sidekick for 25,000 Businesses. Then a $1.1 Billion Debt Load Became the Villain
TPx spent a quarter-century turning phone lines into an all-in-one technology service. Its 2026 restructuring reveals both the value of that model - and the price of financing growth with too much debt.
Clear Rate’s Bet: The Best Telecom Upgrade Is One Human Who Answers
For 25 years, the Michigan provider has sold a gloriously unsexy idea: one bill, one number to call, and fewer vendors to blame. Its opportunity is the mess between national carriers - and its risk is whether local service can stay personal as the platform grows.
Cisco
The company that quietly wired the internet is now betting its next chapter on securing and connecting the machines that run artificial intelligence.
Lightyear
Lightyear is a New York-based enterprise software company building a 'Telecom Operating System' that digitizes how large organizations buy and manage network services. Founded in 2019 by Dennis Thankachan and Ryan Schrack, the platform automates telecom procurement, network inventory management, and bill consolidation across a marketplace of 1,000+ carriers, replacing a process that has traditionally relied on phone calls, spreadsheets, and weeks of waiting. It serves 300+ enterprises and 5,000+ users, including Palo Alto Networks, Five Guys, Alo Yoga, Pandora Jewelry, and Teladoc.
Extreme Networks
Extreme Networks is a Nasdaq-listed enterprise networking company that designs wired and wireless infrastructure - switches, Wi-Fi access points and SD-WAN - and pairs it with cloud-managed, AI-driven software. Built around ExtremeCloud IQ and the newer Extreme Platform ONE, the company delivers cloud and increasingly AI-native networking to more than 50,000 customers worldwide, from NFL stadiums and hospitals to schools, factories and retailers. Headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina, it competes with Cisco, HPE Aruba, Juniper and Arista by pitching a single, simpler platform that unifies networking, security and analytics.
Riverbed Technology
Riverbed Technology is a San Francisco-based IT software company that helps large enterprises see, optimize, and troubleshoot the digital experiences their people and customers depend on. Originally famous for the SteelHead WAN-optimization appliance, Riverbed has reinvented itself around AI-powered unified observability - stitching together network, application, and end-user telemetry, then layering predictive, generative, and agentic AI on top to spot problems and increasingly fix them automatically. Founded in 2002, taken private by Thoma Bravo in 2015 and again by Vector Capital in 2023, it serves thousands of global organizations across finance, government, healthcare, retail, and beyond.
Zayo Group
Zayo Group is a Denver-based communications infrastructure company that owns and operates one of North America and Europe's largest fiber-optic networks - over 150,000 route miles after its 2026 acquisition of Crown Castle's fiber business. It sells the physical layer of the internet: dark fiber, wavelengths, Ethernet, IP transit, dedicated internet access, colocation and managed edge services to wireless carriers, hyperscalers, enterprises, governments and ISPs. Founded in 2007 on a contrarian bet that bandwidth demand would only explode, Zayo has spent its life buying and building fiber, and is now positioning that network as the backbone for AI workloads moving data between data centers.