Swan Dives Into WAN Acceleration

The man who brought the PIX firewall to Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) is taking on the WAN accelerator market with what he claims is a unique approach to the problem of speeding up enterprise applications.

Swan Labs, founded by CTO Andrew Foss and carrying 25 employees, announced a $15 million funding round today. Its products include new concoctions that Foss won't reveal until October, but as a staging block, the company has acquired the Netcelera product from ITWorx Inc. (see Swan Intros WAN Accelerator).

Swan is really loading up on the celebrity factor, having signed 3Com Corp. (Nasdaq: COMS) chairman Eric Benhamou to be Swan's chairman as well. His Benhamou Global Ventures had provided some of Swan's seed capital.

The new funding, Swan's Series A, came from Norwest Venture Partners and Doll Capital Management (DCM).

Swan is coining its own term, Enterprise Application Shaping, for its brand of traffic management, which Foss claim is a breed apart from the approaches on the market. Details are slim, but Foss is willing to discuss what EAS isn't.