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NEWS & PRESS RELEASES
Just another dull online storage service? Not Streamload, which is better described as an online media center, a place to house, share, and — true to its name — stream your music, movies, photos, and the like. Of course, it’s also a fine place for presentations, work files, and backups, but that stuff is, like, so boring. Whatever you use it for, Streamload is awesome. It’s a snap to sign up for an account (four fields and you’re done!), and the file-management interface manages to be simultaneously hip and elegant. Novices may find some of the terminology intimidating — what the heck are site crawls? — but for the most part Streamload is easy to navigate. There’s a utility you can install for drag-and-drop uploading and downloading, but we didn’t bother, as the browser-based interface couldn’t be simpler. Streamload generously offers a free account with 1GB of storage, the only caveats being that you can’t download more than 100 files or 100MB per month, nor any file larger than 10MB. When you upgrade to a paid account, you get an unlimited storage ceiling, though your downloads are still limited depending on the plan. If all you need is a basic file repository, Basic should do it for you. -Rick Broida SPECS:
WITH RECORD REVENUES AND NEW CUSTOMERS San Diego, CA – October 12, 2004 – Akonix Systems, Inc., the premier provider of business solutions for secure, managed and integrated multi-network enterprise instant messaging (IM), announces record revenues in Q3 2004 and a doubling of both revenues and new customers from the previous quarter. Akonix added 190,000 new seat licenses, making significant inroads in the US, Europe and Latin America. Akonix ended the third quarter with over 400 customers and more than 500,000 seats deployed. The company’s success has been driven by enterprise-wide deployments of Akonix L7 Enterprise and Enforcer within a wide range of industries including Energy, Technology and Financial Services. Akonix customers are securing and managing public and enterprise IM within their networks, protecting against IM security threats such as viruses and malware, meeting regulatory requirements and monitoring internal controls – while giving their employees access to the benefits of instant communications with customers, suppliers, partners and co-workers. In addition to deploying a record number of new customers in the quarter, Akonix also saw a significant increase in demand from existing customers as they expanded their use of IM. Established Akonix customers extended IM access to more users, comfortable that IM use is secure, compliant and subject to active enforcement of corporate policies with Akonix’s solution. “Companies are getting the message that when IM is secure and managed, it is a productive and beneficial business tool used to communicate in real-time with partners, customers and co-workers,” said Michael Osterman, analyst at Osterman Research. “We anticipate this industry will continue to grow rapidly as innovative companies like Akonix help organizations secure their use of IM, and meet stringent compliance, security and policy demands.” Customers in a wide-range of industries and markets chose Akonix solutions over competing products for IM management. Akonix was overwhelmingly selected for its sophisticated capabilities and security foundation, displacing competitive solutions and end-of-life offerings from IM networks. Highlights included: • Three leading energy trading and distribution firms • One of the world’s largest IT consulting and outsourcing firms • Four publicly traded, established technology firms • Two large government agencies In addition to customer wins, record revenues and accelerating growth, some other key company achievements over the past quarter include: • Established European headquarters in the UK, following the overwhelming success of its European market channel sales program. • Expanded critical industry partnerships, receiving certification from AOL for BOTs and IM applications and announcing support for Microsoft’s upcoming Live Communication Server 2005 • Selected by Network World as the Clear Choice for IM management in a head to head review against all competitors, recognizing Akonix L7 Enterprise’s technology superiority and unmatched feature set • Launched Enforcer 3.1, adding new capabilities to the first perimeter security solution specifically designed for stopping unauthorized IM and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing. Version 3.1 added detection and blocking for the BitTorrent P2P network, a new file sharing system rapidly gaining in popularity for access to copyrighted video and movie content • Provided automatic protection for customers from IM viruses, malware and adware being spread over public networks with the industry’s only dynamically updated Spim and Malware Filter • Attracted industry leaders to its executive team, appointing Kip Quackenbush as VP of Worldwide Sales and Timothy Breidigan as VP of Business Development “Akonix’s record quarter and the momentum we have generated is evidence that leading global enterprises look to Akonix for proven, innovative, market-leading solutions for IM management, security and compliance,” said Peter Shaw, CEO of Akonix. “I am excited by the market adoption of our solutions because it reflects our commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.” Akonix Extends IM Management Market Leadership with Record Revenues and New Customers “Customers are choosing Akonix L7 Enterprise and Enforcer over competing solutions for their unparalleled track record of offering the most complete real-time management and security capabilities for IM. This award-winning functionality meets the immediate needs of global corporations while providing the flexibility and scalability to respond to future requirements as IM becomes critical to daily operations,” added Shaw. For further information on the company and its IM management and security solutions, please visit www.akonix.com.
Over the decades, traditional Corporate America has seemed to take a backseat to enterpreneurism in San Diego, fueling stellar innovation and success across the region. Ernst & Young has captured and celebrated that entrepreneurial spirit through its annual Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) Awards. The event, in its eighteenth year in San Diego, gives kudos to entrepreneurs in the high-tech, life sciences, software and IT, real estate and construction, consumer products, and general business sectors. The San Diego EOY awards, which will be held on June 16 at the Hilton Torrey Pines, is part of Ernst & Young's national program, which honors entrepreneurs in more than 36 American regions and in 50 countries. Several past San Diego award winners have moved on to become some of the best in their field, including the legendary Qualcomm, which received top honors in the early 1990's. "This program and the selection process is good for identifying up and coming companies that will be some of the drivers in the future," says Niki Krutop, partner with Ernst & Young in San Diego and director of the local EOY awards program. Krutop says San Diego is an excellent environment for entrepreneurs to launch companies, mainly due to the large pool of talent, available resources, and advice from sage professionals. Another unique San Diego asset is most of the key business leaders in town are young or represent first-generation businesses, he adds. "San Diego, just by its nature, has not been a big Fortune 500 town," Krutop says. "The individuals who are key movers and shakers are from entrepreneurial companies that aren't 50-100 years old, as you might see in Chicago or Minneapolis or even Atlanta. If you look at our group of judges, the oldest company represented is SAIC, which is only 35 years old." Judges for this year's San Diego EOY Awards included Dr. Bob Beyster, founder of SAIC; Greg Lucier, CEO of Invitrogen; Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway; Masood Tayebi, founder and chairman of Wireless Facilities; Drew Senyei, general partner for Enterprise Partners; Steve Francis, founder and CEO of AMN Healthcare, and Ralph Rubio, founder of Rubio's Restaurants. The judges had to narrow down 70 applicants to 18 finalists, who were chosen in part for their solid management teams, unique ideas and business models, positive financial performance, and contributions to the community. "These entrepreneurs are really making a difference in San Diego," Krutop says. "During the most recent downturn in the marketplace, San Diego did fairly well. It's because of the entrepreneurial activities and the breadth of industries we have. We need to be grateful for the business and economic impact that these entrepreneurs have created." UCSD CONNECT caught up with three of this year's San Diego EOY finalists. Here are their remarkable tales: Entrepreneur No. 1: Steve Iverson, cofounder and CEO of Streamload. Steve Iverson's experience raising money for an Internet start-up in the late 1990's was vastly different than what had been reported in the media at the time. The Pomona College computer science grad found out that not every dot-comer with a so-called business plan received mounds of money within weeks of conception. It took 18 months for Iverson to score his first round of angel funding ($400,000) for his online storage company, Streamload. "The fact that anybody with a business plan could raise money made for a much better story in print," says Iverson, now 28. "But I don't think that reflected reality. There was a lot of money being invested but there were also a lot of entrepreneurs seeking money." It's that sense of reality, and business and technology know-how that has steered Iverson through the thick and thin of doing business in cyberspace. While his business partner, Michael Balloni, had another full-time job to make ends meet, Iverson relied on his savings for the first three months after Streamload's June 1998 launch. Then he broke out the credit cards - nine of them, to be exact. After working in his home for nine months, Iverson moved his company to the San Diego Technology Incubator at San Diego City College, which eventually led him to the EmTek Fund, a public revolving loan fund managed by the City of San Diego's Community & Economic Development Department that participates alongside outside private equity investors to provide pre venture capital stage growth capital to local promising entrepreneurs In the meantime, Iverson watched competitors, such as San Diego-based @Backup and Los Angeles-based Xdrive raise millions of dollars. "One of the challenges we had was competing against these over-funded companies offering similar services for free. Fortunately, we've found that customers are willing to pay for a premium service," Iverson says. Streamload may have initially lagged behind in the finance arena but the company has created something much more valuable - success and sustainability. Xdrive has since declared bankruptcy and is attempting to rebuild, while @Backup no longer exists. "One of the core differences between us and a lot of these other companies is we are a technology company at heart," Iverson says. "We developed a unique data storage technology that offers our customers virtually unlimited capacity, whereas a lot of these companies bought off-the-shelf storage technologies." The concept behind Streamload's software was born out of an undergrad thesis Iverson wrote on data compression algorithms. The technology has since evolved into a service that allows users to send, receive and access their files online, including video and music collections. Streamload makes it easy to upload and provide access to files from anywhere, and to send and receive files that are too big for e-mail attachments. "Five years ago people were wondering, 'Why do you want to store music online?' Now, that makes total sense with the mass market adoption of MP3 players and iTunes-like services," Iverson says. "Two years ago we started seeing the first people storing TiVo recordings, digital video recordings, and DVDs on our service. Now, that too is starting to become mainstream with the newer digital video recorders and digital video cameras." Streamload, which has 10 employees in its downtown San Diego headquarters, is starting to make sense and cents to more and more people. The firm, which turned its first profit three years ago, recently closed its first round of institutional financing from San Diego's Windward Ventures. While Streamload has been flying under the radar screen, Iverson is ready to launch the company into the spotlight. "Everything changes once you become profitable and you can survive on your own," he says. More information about Streamload can be found at www.streamload.com. Entrepreneur No. 2: Ali Kiran, founder, president and CEO, Exametric, Inc. In 1998, Wells Fargo asked five software teams to forecast transaction volumes and optimal staffing levels at seven of the bank's branches over a two-month period. The winner was San Diego-based Kiran Consulting Group, which provides manufacturing, financial and consumer consulting services to Fortune 500 companies. The firm's founder, Ali Kiran, quickly saw a need in the financial institution market so he launched a separate company called Exametric, which has taken the banking industry by storm with its workforce management software. "We saw there was a lack of sophistication in the financial industry in terms of the modeling side of the business," says Kiran, an internationally recognized authority in industrial and systems engineering, particularly in the fields of advanced simulation and scheduling. Exametric's Click2Staff software works by accurately forecasting branch transaction volumes by transaction type for every 30 minutes over a set forecast period. The system then translates these volumes into full time staffing loads, which allows individual branch managers to schedule employees to match customer traffic demands. Since its Wells Fargo win, Exametric has signed up loads of other banking customers across the nation, including Bank of America, Mission Federal Credit Union, First Fidelity Bank, American Savings Bank and First Hawaiian Bank. Although Exametric was surrounded by money, so to speak, Kiran decided to go the small investment route. "I did not go out and look for venture money like many people did at that time," says Kiran, a former industrial engineering professor at the University of Southern California and Texas Tech University. "One of the larger venture companies in San Diego offered us a much larger investment for a larger share of the company but I didn't think that would have been a very good idea for us. We wanted to do everything right. We didn't want to be driven by unrealistic performance goals." Some of Kiran's early angel investors and mentors included veteran tech entrepreneurs Don Cooksey, Jim DeLapa and Paul Colton. Meanwhile, longtime San Diego entrepreneurs Rich Amen and Bill Carpenter pushed Kiran to create Exametric, which officially launched in September 2001. "One of the nice things about San Diego is you can talk to people and exchange ideas," Kiran says. "I believe San Diego is one of the best climates for running a company. ... It is much easier to launch a company here than it is in San Francisco or the Silicon Valley. People here still like to help each other and it has more of a community feel." Kiran also credits his 30 brilliant and dedicated employees for Exametric's success. "We need to give a sense of ownership to all the people working in this company," he says. "Without the people here I wouldn't even be a candidate for (the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards). I can't claim the whole thing to myself." Kiran says the EOY event will provide critical visibility for his company. "This presents a great opportunity for us to go to the next level, which is to become a major player in other industries," he says. "Maybe now we are ready to become a larger company." For more information about Exametric, log on to www.exametric.com. Entrepreneur No. 3: Jim Sweeney, founder, chairman and CEO of CardioNet When Jim Sweeney talks about wireless medicine, the 62-year-old entrepreneur gets to the heart of the extraordinary impacts this technology will have on global health. Wireless medicine is the basis of Sweeney's company, which has created, for the first time, a technology that allows people to be wirelessly monitored in real time for their heart activity around the clock. The company, CardioNet, has combined cardiac monitoring, wireless communications, GPS and proprietary information management technologies for its highly-regarded mobile outpatient telemetry system, which provides real-time ECG monitoring, analysis and response for patients who are at home, work or on travel. With CardioNet mobile cardiac telemetry, patients wear a sensor that transmits each heartbeat to a PDA-sized monitor. If the monitor detects an abnormal heartbeat, it transmits the patient's ECG to the CardioNet Monitoring Center, using wireless communications when the patient is away from home, and normal telephone lines when the patient is at home. Certified cardiovascular technicians in the CardioNet Monitoring Center analyze the transmissions 24/7 and respond appropriately. Routine response involves issuing daily telemetry reports to the physician. CardioNet received FDA marketing approval for its system in February 2002. CardioNet's technology was born out of an idea from two San Diego scientists - Karl Kail and William Bloom - whom Sweeney met in early 1999. The pair had an idea for a monitor for the elderly; Sweeney narrowed the technology down to a monitor that focused on cardiology. Sweeney spent about $75,000 of his own money on market research before launching CardioNet later that year. During his research, Sweeney hooked up with San Diego telecom giant Qualcomm, Inc., which invested a significant amount of engineering time to help develop the infrastructure that allows CardioNet to utilize Qualcomm's CDMA wireless network. "We are an example of a company that probably would not have existed without being in San Diego because of our connection with Qualcomm," says Sweeney, a San Diego State University alum. "The connection with Qualcomm has enabled us to do what we're doing. ... There's a good chance that there will be dozens of other companies that will be created in this health care space using this type of technology." When Sweeney began raising money for CardioNet in 1999, he says investors told him they wouldn't even consider his company because he was not a dot-com. Despite the lack of availability of abundant capital in the health care sector, Sweeney has managed to raise roughly $55 million over the last four years for CardioNet. Success, however, can present unique challenges. CardioNet has been Sweeney's fastest growing company to date, which has put the company and its executives in high-speed mode. "When you're growing at the pace we're growing, you're scrambling to keep up with the growth, and the margin for error is very tight," Sweeney says. "Health care is not an easy industry to create a business in. You have the additional burden of convincing the health care providers of the technology; the better mousetrap doesn't always work in health care." You can bet, however, that Sweeney is up for the challenge. After all, he has a successful history of baiting believers and adopters of his ideas and technologies. Sweeney's entrepreneurial debut was in 1979 with the creation of a home health care business, Caremark, Inc., which he sold eight years later for $586 million. The serial entrepreneur has raised more than $1 billion in venture financing, debt and in public markets for a handful of health care-related companies he founded. "To be successful at creating new ideas requires a very careful degree of explanation of all the factors that are against you," says Sweeney, who had his first taste of the health care field at the age of 15 while working in Sharp Hospital's storeroom. "When you're doing something that's never been done before, the odds of it being successful are fairly low. It's an interesting combination of ego and insecurity." More information about CardioNet can be found at www.cardionet.com. Other Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award finalists include Bruce Geier, president and CEO of Technology Integration Group; Vic Wintriss, president, Wintriss Engineering Group; Kenneth Kalb, chairman and CEO, Continuous Computing; David Driggers, founder and CEO, Verari Systems; Leslie Cross, president and CEO, dj Orthopedics, Michael Walsh, director and consultant, Prometheus Laboratories; Bruce Hansen, chairman and CEO, ID Analytics; and Dennis Mudd, chairman and CEO of MUSICMATCH. For more information about the EOY program, visit www.ey.com/us/eoy. For reservations for the well-attended June 16 awards banquet in San Diego, call (619) 235-3700 or e-mail Irene.Veca@ey.com by June 9.
San Jose, CA, May 17, 2004 - JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU) today announced the acquisition of E2O Communications, Inc. As a result of the acquisition, JDS Uniphase expects to strengthen its position in the optical data communications market with an expanded customer base and important new technologies, while gaining greater operational efficiencies. Under the terms of the agreement, which closed today, JDS Uniphase acquired E2O Communications for approximately $60 million in cash. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Calabasas, CA, E2O develops and manufactures optical transceivers to support Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 1X-4X Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Fibre Channel, ESCON, ATM and SONET. E2O is a supplier to major datacom customers, including seven that are additive to JDS Uniphase's customer base. E2O revenue in recent quarters has been in excess of $5M. "E2O has been an excellent supplier to us and we now look forward to continuing and expanding that relationship with JDS Uniphase," said Bob Finley, vice president of manufacturing for McDATA Corporation. "We have already met with members of the JDS Uniphase integration team, and have taken the first steps in planning for the acquisition." The data communications market has been one of the fastest growing areas in optical communications. Ethernet and Fibre Channel unit sales are expected to increase from about 10 million units in 2003 to about 14 million units in 2005, according to the 2003 forecast of optical communication industry research firm RHK, Inc. The acquisition of E2O provides a complementary customer set to JDS Uniphase, immediately enhancing its leadership position in this important market. "JDS Uniphase is committed to leadership in the data communications market," said Don Bossi, president of JDS Uniphase's Transmission Products Group. "The acquisition of E2O provides JDS Uniphase with additional expertise in low cost manufacturing, greater economy of scale, and other infrastructure cost synergies that we believe will lower costs now and for the future. We believe these synergies and the strong cultural fit between the two companies make this a lower-risk path to expand our role in one of our fastest growing markets."
San Diego, California, March 22, 2004 - Astute Networks, a leading provider of intelligent silicon-based protocol acceleration solutions, today announced that it has closed a $15M round of venture capital funding. The funding will be used to boost Astute Networks’ global sales and marketing initiatives amidst strong market demand for products that increase performance and lower costs in protocol processing applications. Astute Networks’ Intelligent Protocol Processor (IPP) offerings represent the industry’s first product category to address the need for “smarter” protocol processing. With a full suite of IPP-based hardware and software solutions presently shipping, Astute Networks will use the funding to assert its standing as a premier developer of protocol processing accelerators. Astute Networks’ second-round financing was led by new investor ComVentures and includes existing Astute Networks investors: U.S. Venture Partners, BA Venture Partners, Windward Ventures and Dali Hook Partners.
San Diego, CA, December 9, 2003 - Akonix Systems, Inc. closed its second institutional round of equity financing in an oversubscribed $11 million round led by Menlo Ventures. Akonix’s total funding to date now exceeds $21 million. H. DuBose Montgomery, who founded Menlo Ventures in 1976, joins Akonix’s Board of Directors. Mission Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Windward Ventures, who provided Akonix’s series A financing all participated in the round. The funding follows a record third quarter for Akonix, where it added over 50,000 licensed customer seats and achieved a greater than 100% increase in revenue over Q2. Growth has been driven by further demand for instant messaging (IM) management and security solutions across a variety of industries, in addition to the initial IM logging and compliance demands for financial services customers. “The use of IM in corporate networks is growing rapidly, and therefore the need to operate IM in a secure and managed environment has never been greater. Akonix has already delivered their products to major financial services, technology and other companies, and is well positioned to take advantage of this great business opportunity,” said H. DuBose Montgomery, founder of Menlo Ventures. “Akonix offers a real-time management platform with broad enterprise capabilities. This sets it apart from its competitors and is the driving factor behind its success. We were impressed by Akonix’s large, diversified customer base, the vision behind the product strategy and the quality of the management team. We have committed ourselves to making this investment in Akonix to help it build and maintain its market “There are now almost 65 million business users of instant messaging worldwide, and those numbers will increase dramatically over the next few years,” said Paul Ritter, senior analyst for collaboration research at the Yankee Group. “Enterprise IM is expected to post a compound annual growth rate of more than 150% through 2005. Most corporate IT managers now realize that securing and controlling IM is a critical business need. Scalable IM management solutions like Akonix’s L7 Enterprise are becoming essential for managing real-time communications, and Akonix Systems is emerging as a strong player in the enterprise-wide IM management space.”
Santa Barbara, CA, November 20, 2003 - Occam Networks, Inc. (OTCBB: OCCM), a supplier of Ethernet and IP-based loop carrier equipment to telecommunications companies, announced today that it has secured $16.1 million from existing investors in the first closing of its previously announced Series A-2 Preferred Stock financing. Occam previously announced that its Board of Directors had finalized a memorandum of terms concerning the sale and issuance of up to a currently anticipated maximum of $20 million of Series A-2 Preferred Stock. Occam may sell additional shares of Series A-2 Preferred Stock in subsequent private closings. In addition, as previously announced, Occam expects to conduct a rights offering to holders of its common stock after completion of the private placement transactions. The Series A-2 Preferred Stock was sold at a price of $10.00 per Series A-2 share. Based on the conversion features of the Preferred Stock, the Common Stock equivalent price at which the shares were sold was $0.11 per share.
Westlake Village, CA, October 16, 2003 – Strix Systems, Inc. announced today it has secured an additional $15 million in preferred stock financing, bringing the total investment in the company to $34 million. Southern California-based Windward Ventures and San Francisco-based CMEA Ventures co-led this round with participation from UV Partners and existing investors Palomar Ventures and El Dorado Ventures. "Strix Systems will benefit from the knowledge and insights our new partners provide," said Bruce Brown, CEO of Strix Systems. "The demand from the venture community exceeded our expectations. We expect this round to take us to profitability." CMEA Ventures is a San Francisco based venture capital firm that was established in 1989 and specializes in high technology and life sciences investments. CMEA invests in both early and late stage companies, and actively partners with its extended network of companies, other VC firms, institutional investors, strategic partners as well as entrepreneurs. UV Partners, established in 1986, with offices in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, is a leading early stage private equity investment group. UV Partners provides the foundation for the development of early-stage entrepreneurial concepts into tomorrow's industry-leading Information Technology and Life Science companies.
San Francisco, CA, August 20, 2003 - Micromuse Inc. (Nasdaq: MUSE), the leading provider of business and service assurance software, announced today that it has acquired NETWORK HARMONi (NHI), a San Diego, California-based software company, for approximately $23 million in cash. The acquisition did not include any stock, debt, or earnout components. Micromuse's acquisition of NHI culminates a successful business partnership that began in April 2002, when Micromuse and NHI entered into an OEM reseller agreement. NHI's HARMONi suite of intelligent agents provides the core data collection technology within Netcool®/System Service Monitors™ (Netcool/SSMs) and Netcool®/Application Service Monitors™ (Netcool/ASMs), which gather realtime information about distributed systems, servers, and applications across the IT infrastructure. More than 90 Micromuse customers - in industries such as banking, manufacturing, retail, eCommerce, wireless, and cable - currently use Netcool/SSMs and Netcool/ASMs to manage their distributed Windows, Linux, and UNIX servers, web servers, databases, and other key business applications. "Since our company's founding in 1996, NETWORK HARMONi has focused on building the best agent technology in the marketplace," said Craig Farrell, Ph.D., NHI's president, CEO, and Chief Technology Officer, who is joining Micromuse as Chief Technology Officer, effective immediately (editors' note: see related press release dated August 20, 2003). "Our advanced agent technology for application and system monitoring, combined with Micromuse's network-layer expertise and scalable, realtime management platform, creates a tour de force in the infrastructure software market. We are very excited to be joining with the industry's leading provider of business and service assurance software." In addition to the extensive library of intelligent HARMONi agents, Micromuse will inherit NHI's OpCenter product, a lightweight, centralized IT management and problem resolution system that is ideally tailored for mid-sized enterprise IT infrastructures. Micromuse will also assume several pending patent applications that have already been filed by NHI.
Westlake Village, CA. May 29, 2003 - Toika Networks, Inc., the pioneer of the Network Storage Services Platform approach to SAN-based intelligence, announced that it has raised a $13M round of financing. Anthem Ventures Partners led the round, which included previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Dynafund Ventures, and Windward Ventures, as well as new investor Hamilton Apex Technology Ventures. This additional funding will allow Troika to capitalize on the many marketplace opportunities created by being first to market with the leading platform for accelerating network-based storage services. Troika’s Network Storage Services Platform (NSS Platform) promises to be one of the most attractive ways to add intelligence to the SAN. Troika's NSS Platform provides a very simple deployment model for storage applications, such as volume management, migration, mirroring, snapshots, copy services and asynchronous replication. "The appliance approach to adding intelligence to the storage network is easy but adds latency. The switch based approach kills the latency problems but will take a long time to develop. NSS platform players like Troika give users the best of both worlds - easy to implement and really, really fast," observes Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group. Troika’s platform enables customers to non-disruptively move business critical applications into the network. Troika's platform is complimentary to existing Fibre Channel fabrics and is compatible with storage area networks regardless of choice of SAN switches. Customers do not need to replace their switches, disturb their infrastructure, or deal with complex driver compatibility issues in order to add new capabilities with wire speed performance. Multiple disparate applications can be hosted on a single NSS Platform simultaneously, reducing management burden, cost and complexity.
Irvine, CA. April 7, 2003 - Kofax, the world’s largest information capture vendor, has acquired San Diego-based automated text classification and extraction developer Mohomine in a cash transaction. Kofax is the product-development subsidiary of DICOM Group plc. “This acquisition will accelerate growth in our traditional capture markets by further automating the capture of unstructured textual data, whether paper-based or electronic, which will greatly enhance the economic feasibility for unstructured data capture,” said Kofax President Rick Murphy. “Until now, unstructured data capture required heavy use of expensive, labor-intensive classification and indexing, making many projects infeasible. Mohomine technology changes the equation. “It will also extend our reach into the large and rapidly expanding markets for these technologies which overlap little with our traditional markets.” According to research firm Gartner Group, approximately 80 percent of all enterprise data is unstructured. Unstructured data are documents where the location within the document of salient information cannot be easily predicted. Examples of unstructured data are e-mail, Web pages, PDF files and paper contracts. Capture technology has been able to address an extremely small percentage of this data and a somewhat larger proportion of semi-structured and structured documents such as forms.
Irvine, CA, January 14, 2003 - SolarFlare Communications, Inc., a developer of high-performance semiconductor products for physical layer connectivity, today announced it has closed its second round of financing. Anthem Venture Partners led the $17.5 million round, which also included previous investors Foundation Capital and Sequoia Capital, and new investors Intel Capital, Miramar Venture Partners, and Windward Ventures. The new capital will be used to help bring the company's initial products to production. SolarFlare has now raised $29.8 million in two rounds of funding. "The exceptional round in current tight market conditions reflects the value of SolarFlare's deep intellectual property and product opportunities in migrating enterprise LANs to the next level," said William Woodward, Managing Director and founder of Anthem Venture Partners. "The company is clearly driving the industry towards creating open solutions for 10Gbps Ethernet over structured copper wiring through technical leadership and by making important contributions to standards bodies." SolarFlare's architectural and algorithmic techniques simplify the complexity of building high-performance physical layer (PHY) transceivers. The company is currently applying its expertise to building PHY products for running 10Gbps Ethernet over structured Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) copper cabling for Local Area Network (LAN) applications. This technology, called 10GBASE-T, solves bandwidth bottlenecks in data-centers and wiring-closets of enterprise LANs where gigabit Ethernet aggregation is being used for switch, server, and storage connectivity over inexpensive UTP cabling. The IEEE 802.3 Working Group, which develops standards for Ethernet based LANs, recently approved a Study Group to investigate the development of a standard for 10GBASE-T technology. "The key issue to be addressed is backward compatibility with the existing infrastructure, tools, installation practices, and skill sets of corporate IT staff, " said George Zimmerman, CTO and CEO at SolarFlare. "Our products are designed to work on the same LANs that support 1000BASE-T (1Gbps Ethernet over UTP cabling) today."
San Diego, California, May 2, 2002 - Windward Ventures today announced it has invested in a first round of venture capital financing for Akonix, Inc. of San Diego. Akonix raised a total of $5.0 million from Windward Ventures and Mission Ventures. Peter Shaw, a Venture Partner at Windward, has joined the Akonix board as Acting Chairman. Akonix has developed a fully integrated software applications suite to enhance the appeal and functionality of websites. “We were quite impressed that this team has been able to develop the product and launch three customers in less than one year,” stated Peter Shaw. The software is used by large ebusiness sites that wish to communicate and interact with their customers, suppliers and visitors.
San Diego, California, October 12, 2001 - Windward Ventures today announced it has led a second round of venture capital financing for Xifin, Inc. of Carlsbad, California. XIFIN has developed a next generation billing system and service for clinical laboratories that targets errors that lead to denials, delays, write-offs and compliance violations. "With over four years in development and new funding we're well-positioned to aggressively introduce the first new approach to billing management for clinical laboratories in over 10 years," said Lale White, CEO and founder of XIFIN. “Despite a turbulent market, we continue to see a strong flow of excellent investment opportunities such as Xifin,” said David Titus, General Partner of Windward Ventures. Ms. Renee Masi of Windward Ventures has joined the board of directors of Xifin. The company previously raised venture capital from Enterprise Partners and Boulder Ventures, who also participated in the financing.
San Diego, California, February 27, 2001 - Windward Ventures today announced it has added two companies to its portfolio of venture capital investments. The firm also completed follow-on investments in two existing portfolio companies. "We continue to see outstanding opportunities to invest at attractive valuations," stated David Titus, co-founder and Managing Partner of Windward. Astute Networks of San Marcos, California is developing semiconductor solutions for the next generation of Internet infrastructure systems. Windward Ventures participated in a $16 million first round of financing for Astute. Jim Cole, co-founder and Managing Partner of Windward, will join the board of Astute. "We are excited about this team and their ability to design circuits to speed the flow of data and transactions across the internet", stated Cole. US Venture Partners and BankAmerica Ventures also participated in the financing. |
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