By Ann Bednarz
Network World, 04/29/02

Boingo Wireless Egenera ForeScout Technologies Grand Central Communications Intelliden Maranti Networks MeshNetworks Proficient Networks Redline Networks Virtela Communications How last year's picks are faring

Company name: Combines "vir" for virtual with "tela," the Latin word for web, to suggest "virtual Web."

Origin: Founded in April 2000 by Vab Goel, a partner at Nor-west Venture Partners and former Qwest Communications executive.

Funding: A $35 million second round closed in April 2001, bringing the total to $75 million.

Key investors: Juniper Networks, New Enterprise Associates, Newton Technology Partners, North Coast Technology Investors, Norwest Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures, RSA Security and Symantec.

CEO: Christopher Clark, former Sprint executive.

Services: Managed global network services, including Virtela VPN, VirtelaVideo, VirtelaVoice and Virtela Security Services.

A few things distinguish Virtela from other VPN service providers. One, the cast: Founder Vab Goel and his engineers built Sprint's IP backbone and Qwest's frame relay/ATM and IP networks.

Two, its business model: Because Virtela leases backbone capacity rather than building its own infrastructure, the Greenwood Village, Colo., carrier says it can offer VPN services at half of what it costs a company to run its own VPN or use a managed corporate frame relay service. (Virtela's core VPN service costs $300 to $1,500 per month, including local-loop charges, for each U.S. site.)

Three, its service-level agreements: Virtela SLAs cover latency, packet loss, network availability and packet jitter, among other attributes. For redundancy, each point of presence is connected to two IP WAN backbones.

Four, its menu, which includes voice, video and security services.

Five, its customer base: Virtela has more than 50 corporate and federal government customers, including AT&T Wireless, CACI, Extreme Networks, IBM and Winphoria Networks.

The fact that Virtela doesn't own its infrastructure could prove to be the company's greatest challenge, however. It could face delays resolving network problems, and it might need to buy more expensive bandwidth to honor SLAs should the "extra" capacity it consumes on carrier networks disappears.

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