14 July 2003 Santa Clara, CA Lightwave--Atrica Inc., a provider of optical Ethernet equipment for the metro networking market segment, today announced that it has raised $17 Million in the first close of its fourth round of funding. The first close includes funding from existing investors ¿ Accel Partners, Ascend Technology Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Challenge Fund, Innovacom (the venture capital subsidiary of France Telecom), Gemini Israel Fund, Investor Growth Capital, JK&B Capital, and St. Paul Venture Capital; and from new investors such as Intel Capital, Intel Corporation's strategic investment program. Atrica will use the fourth round investment as working capital to meet increasingly strong demand for its optical Ethernet systems worldwide, especially in Asia.
This round of funding builds upon the $117 million Atrica has already received from industry notables such as 3Com and from global service providers such as BellSouth Corporation, Bezeq, SBC Communications, Inc. (via Aurum-SBC Ventures), Saturn Venture Partners, and Telia.
"We are pleased to announce continued support from many of our existing, world-class investment partners, and we are happy to welcome Intel Capital as a new investor," said Vivek Ragavan, president and chief executive officer of Atrica. "This round of funding will allow us to continue leveraging our industry-leading technology to best meet the business and technology needs of service providers worldwide."
"In addition to the Intel Capital investment, Atrica will be able to benefit from Intel technology developments in opto-electronics targeted at meeting the requirements for large scale metro Ethernet deployments," said Mike Ricci, vice president, Intel Communications Group and general manager, Optical Products Group, Intel Corporation.
Atrica's suite of carrier-class optical Ethernet systems is comprised of the A-2000 family of optical Ethernet edge switches, the A-4000 family of optical Ethernet aggregation switches, the A-8000 family of optical Ethernet core switches, and the Atrica service platform for Ethernet networks, an integrated service provisioning and management system. Unlike modified SONET/SDH platforms that attempt to retrofit technology designed primarily for voice traffic, or most Ethernet solutions that are based on enterprise-class equipment, Atrica's optical Ethernet systems were developed specifically for the service provider environment.
Atrica's optical Ethernet systems--including 10 Gigabit Ethernet and integrated WDM technology--offer better price/performance than SONET/SDH-based equipment, according to the company. In addition, the technology delivers carrier-class attributes including guaranteed service level agreements, sub-50 msec resiliency, integration with circuit switched networks, Ethernet circuit emulation services for support of TDM traffic, and point-and-click operations, adminstration, maintenance, and provisioning that meets and exceeds what carriers have been accustomed to in legacy networks.
Atrica is based in Santa Clara, CA, with research and development facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific.
