Atrica Opens New Corporate Headquarters in Silicon Valley [2-20-2001]
Optical Ethernet Pioneer Prepares for Expansion
Santa Clara, CA. - February 20, 2001 - Atrica Inc, a new company that aims to be the leading provider of Optical Ethernet equipment for the $15 billion Metro networking market, today announced that it has opened a new corporate headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley. The 22,000 square foot facility, located at 3255-3 Scott Boulevard in Santa Clara, will house marketing, sales, customer support and administrative staff, and positions the company for continued growth.
"Atrica is growing rapidly, mirroring the activity in the Metro networking market, itself," said David Yates, vice president of marketing at Atrica. "The new facility will allow us to quickly add the staff we need to serve our customers."
He added, "Following our recent announcement of a strategic round of financing led by global service providers Telia, SBC Communications, France Telecom and Bezeq, the new facility is another important milestone on Atrica's road to success."
The new Silicon Valley headquarters is one of three Atrica locations. The company also maintains a development center in Israel and a business development and support center in Paris, France.
Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately-held company based in Santa Clara, California, with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris, France. The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corporation, a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital, and a second round led by four leading global service providers. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.
Leading Global Communications Providers Invest in Atrica [05-02-2001]
Atrica Inc, a new company that aims to be the leading provider of Optical Ethernet equipment for the $15 billion Metro networking market, today announced that four of the world's leading service providers - Telia (via Telia Business Innovation), SBC Communications, Inc. (via AurumSBC Ventures, an investment company whose shareholders are the Aurec Group and SBC Communications), France Telecom (via Innovacom) and Bezeq - have invested in the company's second round of financing. The four service providers join Atrica's other existing investors in the $18 million round.
Founded in February 2000, Atrica received seed funding from 3Com Corp, and first round financing of $16 million from investors including prominent venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners, and Innovacom. In September of 2000, the start-up announced its intent to deliver solutions based on Optical Ethernet, a combination of standard Ethernet technology, optical switching and carrier-class traffic engineering capabilities, that could revolutionize the economics of the Metro network.
"We're gratified by the interest and support shown by these leading service providers in Atrica and in our vision of Optical Ethernet as the foundation for the next-generation Metro network," said Avinoam Rubinstain, founder and CEO of Atrica. "We're also pleased that they view Atrica as an organization with the right mix of technology, talent and expertise to address the needs of this emerging market," he added.
About Atrica
Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately-held company based in Santa Clara, California, with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris, France. The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corporation and a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.
Atrica Launches On-line Resource Center for Optical Ethernet [12-12-2000]
New Site to Deliver Information, Industry Resources to User Community.
Atrica Inc, a new company that aims to be the leading provider of Optical Ethernet equipment for the $15 billion Metro networking market, today announced that it has launched a web site to promote the awareness and education of Optical Ethernet technology. Located at www.optical-ethernet.com, the site provides industry news, standards information, white papers and articles about Optical Ethernet, as well as links to hundreds of other sites that provide related information.
The site is designed to help end users, market analysts and others understand the benefits of Optical Ethernet-based services. To that end, the site focuses on the contributions of service providers, both emerging and incumbent, vendors and industry research organizations. These contributors will deliver educational and informational content including white papers, news items and articles. As an example, the site currently contains a Q&A session with Fred McClimans, Managing Director of McClimans Technology Partners and founder and CEO of Current Analysis.
Chris Nicoll, vice president at Current Analysis and a planned contributor to the site, agreed that on-line resource centers such as optical-ethernet.com are key to the overall education of the industry.
"We have agreed to contribute to the site because we believe that Optical Ethernet will play a major role in the next-generation of metropolitan area networks and helping the industry to understand this is a step in the right direction," Nicoll said.
"Optical-Ethernet.com is an excellent resource center for the industry," commented Mike Granieri, Senior Director, Public Relations for Everest Broadband, an integrated communications provider delivering in-building solutions to small and medium-sized business customers. "Optical Ethernet is clearly a technology that can deliver numerous benefits to providers like Everest and our customers. Therefore, we believe that educating the industry about this technology through initiatives like the optical-ethernet.com site is important."
Service providers, vendors and industry research analysts interested in contributing to the site should contact webmaster@optical-ethernet.com. Banner advertising is also available on all web pages and details are available by contacting webmaster@optical-ethernet.com.
"We are entering a period of rapid change in both the types of services that providers can offer to their subscribers, as well as the technology and infrastructure used to deliver those services," said David Yates, VP of marketing for Atrica. "The Optical Ethernet site gives providers an opportunity to share information about these new services with the industry and gives end users a single resource center for learning about these services and the technology behind them."
About Atrica
Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately-held company based in San Jose, California, with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris, France. The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corporation and a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.
Optical Ethernet Start-up Atrica Adds Former CheckPoint CFO to Executive Management Team [07-12-2000]
San Jose, CA. - September 26, 2000 - Atrica Inc, a new company that aims to be the leading provider of Optical Ethernet equipment for the $15 billion Metro networking market, today announced the addition of Hagi Schwartz, a former CFO for CheckPoint Software, to its management team. Mr. Schwartz joins Atrica as Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer.
Mr. Schwartz brings more than ten years of experience in financial administration, control and reporting to Atrica, having held the CFO position for a number of high technology companies including both start-ups and larger, publicly-held organizations.
Prior to joining Atrica, Mr. Schwartz was the CFO and Senior Vice President of Finance at Noosh, a provider of Internet-based, business-to-business collaboration services that focus on the needs of the enterprise communications supply chain. Before Noosh, he spent four years as the CFO for Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd., a leading provider of secure enterprise net-working solutions, where he was responsible for two successful public offerings. Mr. Schwartz has also held CFO and controller positions for Mercury Interactive and Lannet Data Communications.
"Hagi Schwartz rounds out the experienced team we have put together in sales, marketing, business development and engineering and will help us reach the next stage in the company's evolution," commented Avinoam Rubinstain, president and CEO of Atrica. "We are pleased to have someone with Hagi's expertise on board."
"Atrica has a compelling vision for revolutionizing the Metro market, combined with a veteran management team, top-notch investors and influential service provider partners," said Hagi Schwartz.
Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately-held company based in San Jose, California, with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris, France. The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corporation and a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.
Atrica expands its Paris office [05-02-2001]
Atrica is taking on new staff for its French office, and spelling out its European strategy
With the aim of setting up a new generation of Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN), Atrica is offering high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms for telecommunications carriers. In the framework of global launching of these platforms, in September 2000 Atrica opened a business development and sales office in France, managed by Fran?ois TOURNESAC, the Business Development Manager for Atrica in Europe and the Far East.
In order to boost its teams in France, Atrica announces the appointment of the following personnel:
Francois TOURNESAC started his career at France Telecom as a European Consultant in the framework of RACE (R&D in Advance Communication Environment) projects, where he specialized in the field of high?output networks. He was then appointed Production Manager at SMC, an automobile and industrial equipment manufacturing company. In 1992, he joined 3Com France as a Consultant Engineer in the Large Enterprises department, later moving to the ATM division of 3Com as European Marketing Engineer. Subsequently, he was based in Singapore for 5 years as the ATM Commercial Development Manager in Asia, and later as the Sales and Marketing Manager for 3Com in the Far East. During this period, he also served as ATM ambassador at the ATMForum.
Jiyang WANG (Senior Consultant Engineer) gained a degree in Engineering from the University of Tsinghua, and a Master's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China. He started his career as a System Engineer in Chipcom, Bay Networks, and 3Com. From 1996 to 1998, Jiyang was in charge of Product Marketing for 3Com in Beijing. Then, for a year, he was responsible for Product Marketing at Cabletron Systems, prior to being put in charge of the LAN and WAN Business Development at 3Com Asia in Singapore.
Guil YAZDI (in charge of Customer Service) is a graduate of the Institut Sup?rieur d'Electronique of Paris. He worked as a developer in the ATM laboratories of 3Com for 3 years. In May 1999, he joined Nomea Communication, a computer services-and-engineering company, specializing in the field of networks, which later became the Dimension Data Company. For 8 months he worked with large firms such as Caisse d'Epargne, Assistance Publique, and AXA Assurances. Before joining Atrica, he was responsible for the design, deployment, and support networks for Dolphin Telecom, a Pan-European mobile carrier.
The new team is responsible for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support in Europe and the Far East. Other European offices will be opened as the company expands. The primary aim of Atrica has been to help carriers benefit from the deregulation of telecommunications and to market its solutions to the incumbent and emerging carriers. Atrica's solutions, based on Optical Ethernet, offer carriers the opportunity to deliver network connectivity 50 -5000 times faster than the most commonly deployed technologies today - yet at comparable prices. One indication of the appeal of Atrica's vision has been the enthusiasm of some of the world's largest telecommunications carriers for Atrica. France Telecom (through Innovacom) invested in Atrica's first round of financing last summer and France telecom and three additional carriers invested in Atrica's second round, which has just been completed.
In order to provide more information to its users, in December 2000 Atrica launched a web site specializing in Optical Ethernet, called www.optical-ethernet.com, giving users a better understanding of this technology, and also offering a large number of White Papers and studies written by internationally renowned professionals, such as the American Office of Analysts, RHK. In addition, there are links permitting rapid connection to other Web sites dealing with Optical Ethernet.
About Atrica
Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately-held company based in San Jose, California, with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris, France. The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corporation and a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.
3Com Start-Up Atrica Poised To Bring Optical Ethernet to Metro Networks [18-9-2000]
Start-Up Closes First Round of Funding, Assembles Winning Team to Address Needs of Next-Generation Service Providers.
San Jose, CA. - September 18, 2000 - Atrica Inc, a new company that aims to be the leading provider of Optical Ethernet equipment for the $15 billion Metro networking market, today announced its successful graduation from 3Com's directed start-up program and launch as an independent company.
Based in Silicon Valley, Atrica announced that it has closed its first round financing of $16 million from prominent venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital, and from global investors including Innovacom, the venture capital arm of France Telecom. This follows an initial round of seed financing from 3Com earlier this year. In addition, the company announced that it will strengthen its board by adding 3Com Chairman Eric Benhamou (pending Board Resolution) and Benchmark Partner Alex Balkanski, and that it will add key technical visionaries to its newly created Advisory Board.
Founded in February 2000 and led by a team of entrepreneurs from leading companies including 3Com, Lucent Technologies and Nortel/Bay Networks, Atrica's mission is to revolutionize the $15 billion Metro networking market by delivering ultra-high performance yet cost-effective, Ethernet-based solutions to forward-thinking service providers who are building the next-generation public Metro network.
3Com co-developed Ethernet, initially, for workgroup connectivity, but the flexibility, simplicity and scalability of the technology has enabled Ethernet to dominate not only this market, but also triumph over FDDI and ATM in corporate backbones and ISP networks. Leveraging 3Com's unrivalled Ethernet technology and its own development efforts, Atrica is bringing Ethernet to its logical next step, as the foundation of the Metro network.
"Infused with the right characteristics and combined with advances in optical networking, Ethernet is ideal for the Metro environment," said Avinoam Rubinstain, co-founder and CEO of Atrica. "We envision a next-generation communications network that uses this new breed of Ethernet - which we call 'Optical Ethernet' - everywhere, from the LAN to the WAN. We believe it will eventually displace SONET and other legacy technologies. And we are gratified that leading service providers, both established and emerging, share our vision."
The Optical Ethernet Revolution
The next-generation public network must be optimized to support high speed, data-oriented traffic cost effectively. Optical Ethernet, which leverages the benefits of Ethernet - its low cost, ubiquity & ability to scale from 10/100 to 10Gbps and beyond - together with advancements in optical switching, management and other, carrier-required capabilities, is the ideal foundation for that network. The bottom line for service providers is that using a high speed, Optical Ethernet infrastructure will allow them to offer many times the amount of bandwidth they can offer today, with virtually no increase in cost.
"The current methods of addressing the metro network, particularly those based on SONET/SDH, are about to run out of gas," stated Fred McClimans, Managing Director of McClimans Technology Partners and founder and former CEO of Current Analysis.
"Long-term, SONET is expensive, difficult to scale and because it is TDM-based, it can't handle the rapid growth of data traffic taking place in the Metro today. Because of these factors, the Metro network is ripe for a revolution and with the innovations it is making in Optical Ethernet, Atrica is well-positioned to lead that revolution," McClimans added.
Wide Variety of Service Providers Support Atrica's Vision
A broad array of both incumbent and emerging carriers have found Atrica's strategy, and its soon-to-be-announced Optical Ethernet platforms, compelling. Jean Jacques Damlamian, group executive in charge of France Telecom's Development Branch which holds responsibility for strategy, R&D, international business development, and Information Systems, said, "Atrica's vision of taking Ethernet from its successful position in the enterprise environment and infusing it with the characteristics required for Metro networking is very attractive."
Added Frederic Veyssiere, Managing Director with Innovacom, France Telecom's venture capital subsidiary, "We feel that the combination of this strong vision with a very experienced management team, influential partners, expert advisors and a stellar board of directors, makes Atrica a very promising company."
Jeffrey Feldman, CEO of Everest Broadband, a new integrated communications provider of in-building solutions to small and medium-sized business customers, represents the new breed of carriers who are well-positioned to take advantage of the technology. "Ethernet is the highest speed, most cost effective interface we can give to our customers. I am looking for Atrica to push Ethernet to the next level of deployability, and reliability, enabling us to guarantee to each of our customers a variety of different service levels," Feldman said.
World-Class Team Enhanced with Prominent Industry Luminaries
Atrica brings together a top-notch management team with experience from a wide variety of industry-leading companies. Co-founders Avinoam Rubinstain, CEO, Zvika Bronstein, Vice President of R&D, and Amir Lahat, Director of Systems Architecture, all hail from 3Com and have broad expertise in networking and communications technologies. Completing the seasoned executive team are industry veterans David Yates, Vice President of Marketing, Michael Fox, Vice President of Business Development, and Yoav Kluger, Vice President of Architecture and Software.
Furthermore, Atrica will strengthen its experienced team significantly with the addition of both Benchmark Capital Partner, Alex Balkanski and 3Com Chairman, Eric Benhamou (pending Board Resolution), to its Board of Directors. Atrica has also created an Advisory Board signing on its first two members Dr. Fouad Tobagi, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University and Jeffrey Feldman, CEO of Everest Broadband.
"From the beginning, we recognized that Atrica's founders - the entrepreneurs who began hatching this idea at 3Com - were onto something big," commented Eric Benhamou. "Optical Ethernet is set to take the Metro network by storm and we believe that the team we've nurtured, funded and subsequently made independent, is in the best position to take advantage of this burgeoning market opportunity."
About Atrica
Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately-held company based in San Jose, California, with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris, France. The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corporation and a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.
Contacts:
David Yates
Atrica, Inc.
Tel: (408) 965-5533
E-mail : david_yates@atrica.com
Lori Hultin
LSH Communications for Atrica
Tel : (818) 879-4651
E-mail : lhultin@ix.netcom.com |
