Telstra leads $8m investment in Netflix tech provider

Telstra Ventures has announced an $8 million investment in NGINX, a US company known for its open source software.

The web engine vendor is behind some of the world's most well-known internet brands - such as Netflix that uses its web server and WordPress.com that uses NGINX load balancers. According to NGINX, over 40 percent of the websites running on AWS use NGINX. The company also delivers web services from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

NGINX claims to have its application delivery solution in use by more than 140 million sites around the world.

The telco lead a group of investors that also included NEA, e.ventures, Runa Capital and Index Ventures. According to Telstra ventures, the company is considering to use NGINX web engine services to improve some of its "heavy traffic websites". 

"When you look under the hood of many of the most popular websites around the world today you find NGINX’s technology. This business continues to grow their share of the web server market and has compelling value-add propositions to sell," said Telstra Ventures managing director Mark Sherman.

"We will be working with them on opportunities to reach our global customer base with their technology."

NGINX chief executive Gus Robertson said: "We see Telstra as an important partner in expanding our market reach to new geographies. Telstra has an extensive customer footprint, both in Australia and across Asia-Pacific. We are looking forward to working with them to bring our technology solutions to companies across the region."

Telstra this week added AWS as one of its cloud providers along with Cisco, VMware and IBM. The telco was also admitted this month as a CRN MVP for the second consecutive year.