Every security tool in a data center wants to see the same traffic, and there are only so many places to plug in. Gigamon sold the box that solved that fight. Its gear took copies of everything moving across a network, sorted them, and sent each tool only the slice it needed. By 2013 Gigamon counted more than 1,000 customers, including 60 of the Fortune 100. The Milpitas company filed to go public as networks grew too fast to watch.

Four Founders and a Tap

Gigamon was founded in 2004 by four people, among them Ted Ho, who became CEO, and Patrick Leong, a former Ciena engineer who became chief technology officer. It sold its first products in 2005. Their bet was that monitoring would need a network of its own. Gigamon called its product a Traffic Visibility Fabric, a layer that sat between the live network and the tools that watched it, from security scanners to performance monitors.

The Watchers' Network

Gigamon priced its IPO at $19 a share in June 2013 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as GIMO. Rising fear of cyberattacks kept demand strong for a few years. Then growth slowed in 2017, and activist investor Elliott Management took a stake. In October 2017 Gigamon agreed to be bought by Elliott's tech arm, Evergreen Coast Capital, for $38.50 a share in cash. The deal closed in December 2017.

Cover: The Arcueil Aqueduct at Sceaux Railroad Crossing, Jean Baptiste Armand Guillaumin. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an aqueduct crossing a railroad (traffic over traffic).