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Networking - Friday, May 20, 2005

Sandvine - Profile

HQ: Waterloo, Ontario

Founded: N/A

Management: Dave Caputo is CEO. Prior to co-founding Sandvine, Dave was the vice president of marketing for PixStream, one of Canada's most successful technology companies. Launched in 1997, Pixstream was sold to Cisco Systems in 2000 for more than $500 million. Prior to Cisco, Dave was the Product Marketing Manager for Hewlett Packard's Storage Systems Division in Colorado. Brad Siim is the multi-titled Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer and Vice President, Engineering - he also worked at PixStream, as did several other members of the management team.

Investors: Just raised $15M in a round led by Newbury Ventures, a U.S.-based venture capital firm, joined by existing investors, BDC Private Equity Partners, Celtic House Venture Partners, Tech Capital Partners, and VenGrowth Capital Partners.

Business Model: Broadband networks can’t distinguish between applications like VoIP, P2P file sharing, and online gaming. So service providers work in the dark, unable to control the quality of service (QoS) for individual applications, price them fairly or protect subscribers from the effects of worms and spam, says Sandvine. The company provides new controls that help service providers better understand subscriber behavior and address network threats. Sandvine claims it products are already deployed in over 100 ISP networks, including six of the top 12 broadband service providers.

Competitors: Redback Networks, Dyband

Dirt: Another high-flying networking start-up founded by a bunch of ex-Cisco guys. You know the drill. They'll probably sell this thing off for untold millions. For all you kids out there: go to networking school - it'll make you rich.