Bivio Brings In $16.5M

Data center startup Bivio Networks has clinched $16.5 million in its fourth funding round, bringing the companys total funding to date to $54 million.

Goldman Sachs & Co. participated in the round, along with InterWest Partners, Storm Ventures and Venrock Associates.

Execs at Bivio hope that the cash will carry the company to profitability in the second half of 2006. The bulk of the cash will help the company ramp up marketing and manufacturing for Bivio’s application delivery devices, chief executive Elan Amir tells NDCF.

“Eighty percent of it is going to sales and marketing expansion and manufacturing, all those things that you need to do to grow the customer base,” he says.

Bivio has changed shape a number of times since the company was founded back in 2000. The firm started life selling application delivery devices for carriers, and then, when this market ran into trouble, became a reseller for Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.'s (Nasdaq: CHKP) firewall technology.But last year, the company decided to get back to its application delivery roots. ”It’s difficult for a small company to succeed direct-selling someone else’s software,” Amir says.

The core technology from the carrier days now forms the basis of Bivio’s flagship B2000 a two-rack-unit high, PowerPC processor-based appliance targeted at the mid-high-end enterprise. According to Bivio, the B2000 can boost performance on a range of Linux-based applications including firewalls and voice over IP (VOIP).

Amir says Bivio is fully committed to the OEM model. Two OEM deals have already been announced, with Sourcefire and Demarc Security, with more in the pipeline, Amir promises.

”We’re working with about half a dozen (OEMs) now,” he says. “We will probably sign three more formal relationships in the next three or four weeks.”

The B2000 only came onto the market recently, although Amir says Bivio has shipped between 60 and 70 units of a predecessor device, the B1000. New versions of the technology are in the pipeline for 2005 and 2006, according to the CEO. “We will be introducing models this year that will be scaled down in terms of price/performance points,” with high-end extensions to come in 2006, he says.Naturally, Bivio is not the only company playing in this space. Rival vendor CloudShield Technologies, Inc., also founded in 2000, launched its flagship CS-2000 in mid-2004.

Pleasanton, California-based Bivio has around 40 employees, although Amir expects this figure to grow to 65 by the end of next year.

There are also plans to expand internationally. “We’re looking to expand geographically outside of North America in the second half (of 2005), primarily in Asia,” says Amir.

So, who are the people behind Bivio? The company was founded by former Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) execs Junaid Islam and Homayoun Valizadeh, although neither is still involved with the company. Amir, who founded FastForward Networks, joined Bivio in 2003. FastForward Networks was sold to Inktomi Corp. (Nasdaq: INKT) for $1.2 billion in 2000 (see Inktomi to Acquire FastForward ).

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum0