Strong fiscal growth, visionary innovation leads hundreds of companies to transform their networks with Cato's converged SD-WAN 

TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Cato Networks, provider of Cato Cloud, the world's first secure, global SD-WAN as a service, reported today significantly increased sales velocity with sequential booking growth accelerating to 100 percent, quarter-over-quarter in 2017. Average deal size increased 400 percent. Hundreds of customers with thousands of branch locations across all verticals now rely on Cato Cloud to connect and secure their corporate networks.

"This past year was an incredible success for the Cato team," says Shlomo Kramer, co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks. "We built an amazing, networking and security platform that's been endorsed by customers across the globe. Our expanded executive team and channel relationships set the stage for an even stronger 2018."

Cato Cloud Increased Capabilities and Global Network Footprint

Cato Cloud securely connects all enterprise locations, people, and physical and cloud datacenters into a global, encrypted and optimized SD-WAN in the cloud. During 2017, Cato enhanced Cato Cloud with:

• Secure Global SD-WAN — Cato Cloud became the first secure, global SD-WAN for building wide area networks (WANs) based on MPLS services and Internet connections.
• IPS as a Service — Cato delivered the first IPS integrated with an SD-WAN, bringing context-aware protection to users anywhere.
• Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) — Cato used MFA to improve the security for administrative, fixed user, and mobile access to Cato Cloud with MFA.
• Comprehensive Cloud Connectivity — Cato used its global network to optimally deliver traffic to cloud datacenters and cloud applications.

Today, Cato Cloud has a larger network footprint than than any other global, cloud-based SD-WAN with 39 points-of-presence (PoPs) around the globe, including two locations in China, Beijing and Shanghai, and twice the number of PoPs in North America as its closest competitor.

Cato Customers Publicly Endorse Cato

Cato's strong fiscal and functional growth mirrored strong customer growth. Pet LoversCentre Pte Ltd, the leading Asian pet products and services retailer, runs more than 100 sites on Cato Cloud. "I would recommend Cato to a friend, and that's a big deal for me to say," says David Whye Tye Ng, CEO & Executive Director at Pet Lovers.

With Cato Cloud, Fisher & Company, an automotive components manufacturer, reduced its annual networking spend by a third when switching from MPLS to Cato Cloud, and  all without compromising VoIP quality or application responsiveness. "Users definitely feel it in their user experience. Things, like screen refreshes of our ERP system, seem to be a lot quicker with Cato," says Kevin McDaid, systems manager at Fisher.

In addition, more than 30 customers attested to Cato's value and simplicity on the popular, G2 Crowd recommendations site:

• "I do appreciate that by using our Cato Sockets to connect our companies together. It helps alleviate dropped packets and very slow connection speeds from one site to another," says Taylor
• "If you are looking for secure low latency global secure SD WAN solution that includes Threat Prevention, look no further," says Bhavin. He replaced his public WAN with Cato's secure SD-WAN that includes low latency backbone.
• "We're using Cato for our headquarters, AWS, and one IPsec tunnel and what we like the most is the simplicity of connecting different sites and VPN users. We don't have to worry about the encryption, security or configurations. It's almost plug and play," says Yassine.

Awards and Industry Acknowledgement

Gartner and other leading industry influencers acknowledged the innovation and maturity of Cato Cloud in 2017. Cato earned numerous awards for its pioneering work in simplifying security and networking including: 

• Gartner Cool Vendor —  Cato was named a "Cool Vendor" in the Gartner "Cool Vendors in Security for Midsize Enterprises, 2017" report. The report suggests that IT leaders in midsize enterprises (MSEs) responsible for security and risk management should "Favor the selection of a product, when all else is equal, with a low total cost of ownership (TCO) that can be implemented, managed and supported with minimal IT resources."
• SD-WAN Excellence Award — Cato's unique offering earned the recognition of the SD-WAN community, winning a 2017 Excellence Award from Internet Telephony Magazine.
• UX Award — Cato became the first SD-WAN provider to win a UX Award, the premier award for user experience (UX) design. The UX Awards are community-driven, independent awards for the UX profession selected by public crowd-voting and a rotating panel of expert judges from the top designers in the industry.

Executive Team Expansion

To support this incredible growth, Cato Networks expanded its executive team in 2017 with key sales and finance leadership positions:

• Alon Alter was appointed Vice President of Worldwide Sales — He brings 18 years of experience in leading global sales, business developments, operations and software development of cloud and cyber-security solutions. Previously, Alon served as Vice President of Global Sales at Incapsula, now Imperva Incapsula.
• Nick Fan was appointed Vice President of Sales in the Americas — He brings more than 15 years of experience in the networking and telecommunications industry. Nick previously served as Vice President and General Manager, Americas at Aryaka Networks, and has held sales leadership positions at Masergy Communications, and XO Communications.
• Tomer Wald was appointed Chief Finance Officer — He brings more than 15 years of leadership experience in global companies across all aspects of financial management. Previously, Tomer served as the CFO at Juno Inc, which was acquired by Gett, CFO at Vizrt Ltd which was acquired by Nordic Capital, and executive finance roles in Attunity Ltd, and Ernst & Young.

Strong Channel Growth

Cato grew its channel relationships in 2017, particularly in North America. Cato signed agreements with large distributors, master agents, and ISPs, such as Avant, CNSG, Macnica, Microcorp, and Viewqwest.

The partnerships will allow agents, resellers, and ISPs to expand their service portfolio with the only cloud-based and secure, global SD-WAN service. They will be able to offer a highly differentiated service that helps customers increase agility, improve security posture, reduce costs, and support future growth.

"From the very beginning, we argued that the cloud and the mobile workforce were not only changing the shape of business, but of the WAN itself. Traditional networks can't keep pace with these changes and IT pays the price in terms of spiraling complexity and cost," says Kramer, "What's needed is a simpler, inherently secure, network — not a more complex one. Our momentum is a clear testament to the accuracy of that vision."

To learn more about Cato Cloud visit here.

About Cato Networks
Cato Networks provides organizations with a cloud-based and secure global SD-WAN. Cato delivers an integrated networking and security platform that securely connects all enterprise locations, people, and data. Cato Cloud cuts MPLS costs, improves performance between global locations and to cloud applications, eliminates branch appliances, provides secure Internet access everywhere, and seamlessly integrates mobile users and cloud datacenters into the WAN. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Cato Networks was founded in 2015 by cybersecurity luminary Shlomo Kramer, co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies and Imperva, and Gur Shatz, co-founder of Incapsula. Visit www.catonetworks.com and Twitter: @CatoNetworks.

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SOURCE Cato Networks