Oct 9 2007
BTI Photonic Systems, a global supplier of microWDM networking solutions for the delivery of gigabit services, announced today it has closed USD $12M in its Series D Financing. The round was led by a new, undisclosed, U.S.-based private equity investor and included existing investors Vengrowth Private Equity Partners, BDC Venture Capital, GrowthWorks Capital, Kodiak Venture Partners, Primaxis Technology Ventures and Lucent Venture Partners. BTI Photonic Systems will use the funding to support the expansion of its new global channel partners, the evolution of its Netstender microWDM platform, and growth of sales and marketing efforts.
The round was driven to support the rapidly expanding market for microWDM solutions to deliver high-bandwidth video services and applications at the Network Edge.
"Global metro WDM spending grew nearly 40 per cent in 2006 over the prior year to nearly $2 billion, due to the explosive growth of broadband distribution and backhaul applications. Emerging video and IP/Ethernet services are very bandwidth intensive and have stringent latency requirements that are best supported by WDM-based transport systems which will continue to drive metro WDM spending growth," said Ron Kline, Research Director Optical Networks, Ovum RHK. "Consistent with this trend, we forecast increased spending for edge/access solutions as operators rush to capture new revenue opportunities."
"As the lead of the current investors, Vengrowth is happy to welcome a strong private equity investor into the investor syndicate," said Pat DiPietro, Managing General Partner, Vengrowth Private Equity Partners.
"With BTI's strong foundation of partners and customers, plus the next phase of capital spending shifting to the Network Edge, we are very excited about the opportunities for our company," said Lance Laking, President and CEO, BTI Photonic Systems. "We are also pleased to announce the appointment of Gregory Koss to Executive Chairman. He will join the management team to enhance our growth and scaling initiatives."
Koss was former CEO of Internet Photonics, a spin-out of Bell Labs that became a leader in carrier grade Optical Ethernet and was sold to Ciena in May 2004. Koss was CEO of Sonoma Systems which was sold to Nortel in October 2000. He is now the Executive Chairman of BTI Photonic Systems providing leadership for BTI's continued market growth.
BTI provides the industry's first microWDM 2U system, the Netstender 2060 platform, enabling service providers to deploy 100-times the capacity at one-tenth the cost of legacy platforms for scaling of video at the Network Edge.