Dive Brief:

• A group of former Apple networking engineers launched a new company dubbed SnapRoute, according to a Recode report. 

• SnapRoute helps companies manage internal or external cloud systems, enabling them to make changes to meet demand more quickly and cheaply through software defined networking.

• The engineers reportedly came up with the idea while working to help Apple figure out how to end its dependence on third-party cloud providers.

Dive Insight:

At Apple, the group worked a "secret internal project to break the company’s reliance on cloud services from outside vendors," according to Recode. The team was apparently successful in doing so. In March, Apple said it was bucking the trend of moving fully to hosted cloud services and was instead looking to rely more on its own infrastructure in order to save money and improve efficiency and security.

Now, the team has taken their efforts out on their own, with the launch of SnapRoute after leaving Apple last year. 

"We didn’t create SnapRoute to take a bite out of anyone’s profits," a post on the company’s website reads. "Rather, our goal is to free talented network engineers to do their job to the best of their ability, unconstrained by vendor lock-in."

"We think—no, we know—that this could accelerate innovation and reduce costs for thousands of companies," the company said.