May 24, 2006 Bridgewater, NJ -- Nistica, a new optical subsystems developer, today announced that it has received Series A funding from PA Early Stage, Technology Venture Partners, and other investors. According to the company, it has developed a new class of intelligent optical modules to enable edge networks to scale at healthy margins, and rapidly deliver bandwidth for the new wave of consumer multimedia and enterprise wavelength services.
Nistica was founded by telecom technology veterans Thomas Strasser and Jefferson Wagener and is led by CEO Ashish Vengsarkar. All three optical systems experts have experience in building network infrastructure products that deliver carrier-class reliability. William Cadogan, former chairman and CEO of ADC and investor in Nistica, is the chairman of Nistica's Board of Directors.
"The burgeoning applications of IPTV, Video on Demand, Gigabit Ethernet, and Multimedia Services make the edge of the network a lynchpin in the delivery of huge amounts of content to subscribers," explains Cadogan. "Only through optical switching between the network core and the access infrastructure can carriers meet this delivery challenge. Nistica will help operators affordably automate, simplify and incrementally scale WDM wherever they need it."
Industry analysts estimate that nearly 100% of central offices in the North American market will require more than one optical wavelength for meeting the projected growth in network bandwidth. Today only 10% of central offices can cost-justify expensive core reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) technology. Nistica's subsystem technologies are designed to fill this key cost-performance gap for telecommunications systems manufacturers.
"We provide the ability to automate the network edge at a small fraction of the cost of today's technologies that automate the network core," adds Vengsarkar. "While providing low-cost solutions, we deliver two essential qualities to the network edge: high optical performance, and telecom-class reliability. This combination is unique and is being met with great enthusiasm by our prospects."
Nistica will launch its initial product suite in two weeks at GLOBALCOMMU2006 in Chicago, IL.