Where are they now?
We look back at 50 start-ups to watch, 1998-2003
By
Beth Schultz
,
Network World
, 04/21/2003
Recently fundedWith company entrepreneurs and their backers no longer eyeing the big IPO, staying in business means grabbing new capital.
These nine companies have closed funding rounds in the past 12 months.
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Arbor Networks
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Selected in 2001. |
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Security tools to prevent distributed denial-of-service problem. |
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A $22 million second round closed last August, bringing total funding to $33 million. |
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Update: Enhanced the Peakflow network anomaly-detection platform, expanded into Europe, and signed customers such as Telus and Rackspace
Managed Hosting.
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Egnera
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Selected in 2002. |
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Blade servers. |
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A $44 million third round closed in June, bringing total funding to $94 million.
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Update: Opened London and Tokyo offices, enhanced product and achieved a number of vendor certifications.
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ForeScout Technologies
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Selected in 2002. |
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Intrusion-detection wares. |
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A $10 million third round closed in September, bringing total funding to $24 million.
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Update: Ended last year with a new product and a fresh CEO. The product, ActiveScout Enterprise, allows centralized management of
50 of the company's perimeter defense devices. The CEO, T. Kent Elliott, hails from Nokia Internet Communications, where he
was the founding senior vice president and general manager.
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Grand Central Communications
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Selected in 2002. |
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Web services-based network services. |
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A $5 million second round closed in June, bringing total funding to $33 million.
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| Update: Signed customers such as CCBN, Thomson Financial and Xilinx.
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MeshNetworks
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Selected in 2002. |
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Products for self-forming, self-healing wireless networks. |
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A $13 million third round closed in October, bringing total funding to $40 million.
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Update: Is shipping commercial quantities of its Mesh Enabled Architecture mobile broadband and MeshLAN Multi-Hopping 802.11 products.
In 2003, will focus on creating a reseller channel.
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Proficient Networks
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Selected in 2002. |
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Route control devices that factor in business objectives. |
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A $13 million second round closed in September, bringing total funding to $19 million.
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Update: Added functionality to its Network Policy Engine line.
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SilverBack Technologies
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Selected in 2002. |
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Management tools for enterprises and service providers. |
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A $9 million fourth round closed in May, bringing total funding to $38 million.
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Update: Changed business model from management services to products; 2002 revenue reportedly increased 125% over 2001, with InfoCare
software in use at more than 300 sites.
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Top Layer Networks
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Selected in 2000. |
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Network security tools. |
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A $28 million sixth round closed in August, bringing total funding to approximately $94 million.
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Update: Still making an application-aware switch, but now emphasizes its other security wares, including a firewall load balancer,
and its latest product, an intrusion-prevention appliance called Attack Mitigator.
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Virtela Communications
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Selected in 2002. |
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Managed VPN services. |
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A $ 11-million third round in March 2003 brought total funding to $86 million.
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Update: Beefed up service offerings with the addition of Virtela SSL VPN, VirtelaVideo IP multicast and others.
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Key:
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= Year named to 10 to watch list |
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= Product/ services |
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= Financial information |
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