Lance98
Not sure exactly what is not clear but here goes……….. First this background………..
A Dune deal: $24M (EDITED)
by Clifford Carlsen
Updated 01:21 PM EST, Aug-21-2002
[Just after CWNT appeared for the last time in public at Supercomm 2002]
A group of Israeli technology veterans who struck out on earlier ventures in the slumping telecommunications market have landed $24 million in first round funding for their latest venture, Dune Networks Inc., hoping they have better timing by aiming lower down the food chain.
Veterans of battered equipment makers Charlotte's Web Networks Inc. of Israel and Andover, Mass., and switch developer Zuma Networks Inc. of Israel and West Hills, Calif., turned their eyes to the components market this time. They formed Dune in October 2000 to develop high-speed chips for use in the next-generation of telecom network equipment.
The group landed the current funding in a first institutional round from Aurum-SBC Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners and Pitango Venture Capital, all of Israel, with additional money from Alta Berkeley Venture Partners and Elwin Capital Partners, both of London. The company would not provide details on the funding or discuss its technology, but chief operating officer Moti Weizman said all funding before this round has come from founders.
Dune was formed to develop chips for a telecom equipment market that was just beginning to collapse. Founder and CEO Eyal Dagan came from core router developer Charlotte's Web, and technology chief Ofer Iny came from switch developer Zuma Networks. Both received substantial early funding but hit the market during a horrific slump that has produced a 40% decline in capital spending by telecom carriers this year.
Zuma and Charlotte's Web typify companies formed in the late 1990s to ride a wave of spending by telecom and Internet service companies but that were hit hard when that wave crashed. With the telecom slump expected to last through the end of 2003, companies aiming to get funded in the current market are shooting for early development on a new round of next-generation equipment. "In 2003 capital spending by the carriers will be down, but not as much. Then it probably will start climbing in 2004," said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst with Infonetics Research Inc., a Woburn, Mass., market research firm.
Mitchell said that companies developing new network equipment products to hit the market in 2004 will begin system development later this year. Dune will not disclose the timing of its product development, but the company raised its hefty initial round to "aggressively pursue its development and marketing goals for introducing its first generation of products," it said in a release. A Dune spokesman said the new money is expected to last two years.
Dune would only acknowledge that it is developing application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for Internet and communications backbones. Those products are becoming more necessary in network boxes as speeds increase and system-slowing software programs can no longer perform specific network functions.
Oded Rose, managing director of Aurum-SBC Ventures, a joint investment company of the Aurec Group and SBC Communications Inc., said in a statement that the firm's investment is based on confidence that there is still high growth potential in the market
thedeal.com
October 19, 2004.
DUNE NETWORKS to Provide End-to-End, Packet Forwarding Switching Solution Based on the Intel® IXP28XX Network Processor
Dune Networks, leader in switching fabric and traffic management solutions, announced interoperability with Intel® IXP28XX network processors to provide a solution that builds on the companies' growing number of customer design-wins. Dune's SAND Traffic Manager and Switching Fabric chipset, the FAP10V, FAP20V and FE200 devices, in combination with the Intel® IXP28XX network processors, provide an end-to-end packet forwarding switching solution.
Following its introduction of the FAP20V and FAP10V devices earlier this year, Dune is continuing to build on its position as the leading provider of integrated traffic management and switching fabric solutions.
In the solution, the FAP10/20V device performs the ingress/egress traffic management of the system, allowing the IXP2800 more resources to perform the ingress/egress packet forwarding tasks. The solution enables customers to design systems with truly scalable switch-fabric and traffic management devices, and with the flexibility of upgrading line-card forwarding functions via the IXP2800.
June 2003.
Marvell® Introduces Complete Multi-Service Fabric Chipset, Enabling System Vendors to Develop Service Platforms and Extend Product Life Cycles
New Prestera™-FX Fabric Chipset Provides Increased Scalability and Supports Multiple Traffic Types to Implement Comprehensive Service Schemes
See Dune site for these releases... dunenetworks.com
Now consider this ………….
Dune senior management includes many ex MRV, CWNT and Zuma engineers (who still aspire to build big powerful routers).
Mrv owns 10% of Dune
Dune has been developing and now makes the FE200 and FAP10 and 20 chipsets..
Marvell markets these chips as the Prestera 930 and 9130
The GOBI, a 1.2 Terabitpersecond design, is constructed using these flexible and powerful chipsets
MRV’s 'nextgen Optiswitch' may also use these same Prestera chipsets from Marvell.
Adopting this approach has given MRV a new start in the terabit router space with maximal benefit from lessons learned at Zuma and Charlotte's at a much lower development cost. In this way, MRV also appears to have abandoned the incubator model while fairly easily attracting VC capital thus giving the venture credibility combined with independence while still doing exactly the same thing and at the same time minimizing any perceived competitive threat by obscuring actual MRV links.
In addition, Dune’s chip development efforts gain wider acceptance and Dune has a marketable product where last time at this point, CWNT was only just beginning (it took almost 2 years to validate the hardware and launch basic software).
Finally, the implications of this Marvell/Prestera/Dune/MRV connection are tremendous scalability from mbits to terabits, from the lowliest Optiswitch to powerful Core Routers and long product life through line card and software upgrades without ripping out the existing hardware and rebuilding the network every two or three years..
So those who expect CWNT to appear back onstage with another Aranea (at least in the old sense) are mistaken and misunderstand what has been going on at Dune and CWNT in the last two years..
When Noam said, “We have a tremendous team there. They're working on next-generation products, and we are extremely excited about what we hope to accomplish there. Obviously I cannot discuss it at this moment, but we anticipate that there will be product introduction probably a year from now, maybe 3/4 from now. [Q1-Q2 of 2005]”, he didn’t mean the Aranea II.
I believe what Noam meant was Dune’s GOBI.
In this hiatus, CWNT has not been quietly building a new machine but has been in "hibernation" (his word) only maintaining a small sales and support staff, waiting for Dune to complete its SAND chipset development efforts.
The development Noam alluded to will be, I believe, a MRV/CWNT announcement in the near future to market the GOBI or a machine very much like it (based on the FE200 and FAP20 Dune/Marvell/Prestera chipsets and maybe called the Aranea II) to carriers as a core router for their Metro Ethernet networks in conjunction with MRV's DaVinci switch and the rest of their Metro Ethernet Access product line. Maybe such an announcement will come at next month’s Supercomm in Chicago..
These are only my speculative conclusions based on watching MRV pretty closely for some time now..
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