More details on Campio Communications Inc.
lightreading.com
Location: Milpitas, CA
Web site URL: campio.com
Market segment: IP switching in optical networks
VCs:
Alliance Ventures
Ignite Group
NEA
Needham Capital Partners
Redwood Venture Partners
Key personnel:
Raj Singh, interim CEO (ex-Fiber Lane, Cerent, Siara Systems)
Raj Parekh, chairman of the board (ex-Sun Microelectronics)
Prasad Vepa, president (ex-Solectron)
Heng Te, principal technologist (ex-HP telecom division)
Ramesh Neelmegh (ex-Bell Northern Research)
Amar Senan, vice president business development (ex-Volpe, Welty, & Co. investment bankers)
Campio is trying to keep a low profile these days as it readies an IP switch for the optical networking market. But anonymity won't be easy for Campio, since it's headed by Raj Singh, the optical networking impresario who co-founded Fiber Lane, Siara Systems, and Cerent and now heads up Redwood Venture Partners, a new VC. Singh's presence is a screaming multimedia billboard for interesting startups.
And it looks like he's on to something yet again. Campio is developing an IP switch with provisioning capabilities that will enable carriers to configure and control an array of IP-based services, such as virtual private networks and firewalls, at speeds that aren't yet supported in carrier IP switches. Specifically, Campio's product will support IP at OC-48 (2.5 Gbit/s) and OC-192 (roughly 10 Gbit/s).
"Carriers want to provision and manage new services without assigning personnel to do it," says Amar Senan, VP of business development. "That's the idea. Automated provisioning at optical speeds."
To help the cause, Campio has enlisted a raft of experts with strong backgrounds in service provisioning and management, as well as systems and ASIC design. Principal technologist Heng Te, for instance, was general manager for Hewlett-Packard's SS7 switching division. Board chairman Raj Parekh is a semiconductor expert.
And of course the helm is held by Singh, whose Redwood Venture Partners contributed an undisclosed sum to Campio's latest round of financing. (The round raised approximately $27 million and was led by NEA.)
But Singh is acting only as interim CEO. Campio is on the lookout for a permanent replacement, even though Singh will remain on the board of directors.
Meanwhile, Campio must work hard to ramp up. It faces stiff competition from existing IP switch vendors like CoSine Communications Inc. cosinecom.com as well as makers of multi-service provisioning platforms. But its chief competition may come from other startups, such as Crescent Networks crescentnets.com, which seems to be developing a similar product and just closed a first round of financing for $12 million.
Senan says he thinks Campio is at least nine months ahead of Crescent--even if Campio is still months away from releasing a product. Year-end is slated as earliest for an announcement.
-- by Mary Jander, senior editor, Light Reading lightreading.com
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regards,
dkg |
