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Networking - Monday, March 28, 2005

Atrica - Profile

HQ: Santa Clara, CA

Founded: February 2000

Management: CEO is Vivek Ragavan who was previously CEO of Redback Networks - the company he founded, Siara Systems was acquired by Redback in March 2000. Founder Avinoam Rubinstain was a VP at 3Com.

Investors: In July 2003, Atrica closed a $17M fourth round. Its third round in February 2003 was a $75M whopper for a total of $134M to date. Investors include: Intel Capital, Bezeq, Telia, Vesbridge Partners JK&B Capital, Investor Growth Capital, Saturn Venture Partners (an affiliated fund of Telecom Italia), Gemini Israel Funds, Lehman Brothers, Part'com, Challenge Fund, Young Associates, Triton Ventures, CDIB, Hotung, Ascend Technology Ventures, SBC Communications (via AurumSBC Ventures), France Telecom (via Innovacom), Benchmark Capital, St. Paul Venture Capital and Accel Partners.

Business Model: The company sells carrier-grade optical ethernet platforms - aka Metropolitan-area ethernet or Wide-area Ethernet. Its system can scale networks from 1 Gbps, 10Gbps and ultimately 320 Gbps. Atrica's competition are SONET/SDH products. As with many networking innovations, selling points are reduced costs over prior generation and better quality. Biggest sales wins to date have been in Europe with France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, but SBC's investment and Cox Communications deployment bodes well.

Competitors: Cisco, Nortel.

Dirt: WAN ethernet has been on the table for ages, but telecoms as usual have been slow to act. By all accounts Atrica has nailed the timing and has the team, funding, products and customers in place to make a killing. Sector watchers expect an IPO or liquidity event in the next 12-18 months.