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Networking - Monday, May 23, 2005

Caspian Networks - Profile

HQ: San Jose, CA

Founded: 1999

Management: Brad Wurtz is president and CEO. He was formerly vice president and GM of Cisco's carrier packet voice business, where he oversaw the company's packet voice strategy and products. Prabhat Mishra is VP of Engineering - this dude has been around the block. He's worked at Sun, Intel, Tandem, Alteon WebSystems (purchased by Nortel Networks), and Mips Computer Systems.

Investors: Just closed a round of $55M in funding. Investors include Oak Investment Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Alloy Ventures and ABN-AMRO.

Business Model: Caspian builds routers that help service providers control, manipulate, and monitor IP-based traffic on their networks. More simply put, the company helps to insure that packets aren't dropped. This is of particular importance to clients like Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor that works with the US military.

Competitors: Juniper Networks, Cisco Systems

Dirt: Matt Marshall at the Merc reports that Caspian has raised close to $300 million since 1999, including $120 million in 2002, when a new set of investors restarted the company after the bubble burst. According to a 2001 Wired profile by our pal Josh McHugh, the jerks at Caspian used to "tell the people it offered jobs to that they had to give an answer before they left the building. Caspian says 97 percent of its offers were accepted." Kudos to the 3 percent who told Caspian to bugger off. Let's hope the joint is now being run with a bit more humility.