vrsn putting some of their money to work?
(COMTEX) B: Aventail Secures $48 Million in Mezzanine Financing From
B: Aventail Secures $48 Million in Mezzanine Financing From Elite Investors
SEATTLE, Feb 29, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
Pivotal, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, InterNAP, and Others Fuel
Largest Private Equity Investment in an Extranet Service Provider
Aventail Corporation, a recognized leader in building and managing
business partner networks, today announced that it has secured $48
million in mezzanine financing from Pivotal Asset Management, Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter & Co. (NYSE:MWD), Fidelity Ventures, XMLFund,
Madrona Venture Group, InterNAP Network Services (Nasdaq:INAP), and
VeriSign Inc (Nasdaq:VRSN).
Existing Aventail investors, including Trinity Ventures, PS Capital,
and a number of prominent angel investors also participated in this
round of financing.
Aventail has delivered the world's first managed business partner
network service. The META Group has identified this market space under
the banner of "Extranet Service Providers," or "ESPs", which enables
corporations to quickly activate and manage online partnerships. The
$48 million private equity investment is the largest in the ESP market
to date and will reinforce Aventail's ability to maximize its first
mover advantage. This round of financing will be instrumental in
propelling the rapid enhancement and expansion of Aventail's managed
service, branded Aventail.Net(tm), both domestically and abroad.
Aventail currently supports some of the world's largest enterprises,
including half of the Fortune 10.
"Business partner networks are fundamental to building competitive
advantage for any organization that wants to win in the Internet
economy," stated Christopher Lord, general partner at Pivotal Asset
Management. "Aventail's vision of building the first
business-to-business (B2B) dial tone holds the promise of changing the
way corporations conduct business over the Internet, and we are excited
to help Aventail make this vision a reality."
Aventail's vision of B2B dial tone could change the way companies do
business by enabling enterprises to create more productive, flexible,
and interactive Internet-based partnerships. The Internet-driven
economy has fundamentally altered the competitive landscape, and
Aventail believes that the old model of self-contained business will
quickly become obsolete. In order to survive, companies must break
through barriers of geography, infrastructure, and finite resources to
reach new levels of creative collaboration and productivity.
Aventail delivers on this vision through its Aventail.Net service, the
first managed service to rapidly activate Internet-based business
partner networks. Aventail designed the service for progressive
enterprises that need to manage large, dynamic partner communities,
require comprehensive Service Level Agreements, and on-demand
deployment. The Aventail.Net service handles all aspects of a business
partner network -- from the support of users and underlying
infrastructure to the enforcement of policy -- so that corporations can
focus on core competencies and business strategies.
"Having recently forged a strategic service alliance with Aventail,
this investment further demonstrates our shared vision of the Internet
as a medium for business collaboration," said Tony Naughtin, president
and CEO of InterNAP. "This next level of business-to-business commerce
is being enabled by an infrastructure that provides high levels of
reliability, performance and security -- uncompromised uptime when it
comes to working with partners, suppliers or customers over the
Internet. Not only has Aventail built a key component of that
infrastructure, but it is already delivering it to its customers."
Aventail serves more than 300 leading corporations. Enterprises such as
Aetna, Bear Stearns, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Kodak, IBM, and
Xerox rely on Aventail to provide their foundation for scalable
business-to-business commerce and collaboration.
Aventail's investors have played a leading role in the funding and
successful public offerings of industry leading companies such as
Akamai (Nasdaq:AKAM), Ariba (Nasdaq:ARBA), Priceline.com (Nasdaq:PCLN),
Chemdex (Nasdaq:CMDX), InterNAP, and Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN).
Strategic Investors:
-- InterNAP Network Services Corporation: InterNAP provides Internet
connectivity that is faster and more reliable than conventional
Internet service. InterNAP's patented route management technology
provides direct data transmission across the major Internet
backbones through a single connection from a customer's network
to one of InterNAP's Private Network Access Point (P-NAP)
facilities. Currently serving clients from 14 locations
throughout the U.S., InterNAP's clients include Amazon.com,
NASDAQ and WebTV.
-- VeriSign: The leading provider of Internet trust services
including authentication, validation and payment -- needed by Web
sites, enterprises, and e-commerce service providers to conduct
trusted and secure electronic commerce and communications over IP
networks.
Financial Investors:
-- Pivotal Asset Management, LLC: Founded in 1998, Pivotal Asset
Management, LLC is a leading emerging growth technology crossover
investor. Pivotal invests in late stage private and post-IPO
technology enterprises that are focused on defining the new IP
based economy, with specific focus on communications, software
and services entities. Pivotal's investors include leading
entrepreneurs, technology executives and venture capitalists.
-- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.: Morgan Stanley Dean Witter &
Co. is a global financial services firm and a market leader in
securities, asset management and credit services. The company has
offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other principal
financial centers around the world and has 475 securities branch
offices throughout the United States.
-- Fidelity Ventures: Fidelity Ventures is the venture capital arm
of Fidelity Investments, the nation's largest mutual fund
company. In the last five years, Fidelity has invested over $300M
of its own capital in privately-held companies in the software,
networking and telecommunications industries. Companies which
have received venture financing from Fidelity Ventures include:
GeoTel (now part of Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO)), Nexabit Networks (now
part of Lucent (NYSE:LU)), InterNAP (Nasdaq:INAP), and COLT
(Nasdaq:COLT). Fidelity Ventures has offices in Boston and Hong
Kong, and can be contacted at www.fidelityventures.com
( fidelityventures.com).
-- XMLFund: XMLFund is the first XML technology fund, fostering the
growth of emerging companies that use XML technology. XMLFund was
formed in 1999 by Dave Pool who founded Data Channel and Spry
Inc.
-- Madrona Venture Group LLC: Madrona Venture Group LLC is a venture
capital firm focused on the Internet economy in the Northwest.
The firm has a $250 million venture fund directed at emerging
Internet, telecommunications and software businesses. Some of
Madrona's investments include Amazon.com, HomeGrocer.com and
Nordstrom.com.
About Aventail
Aventail is a foremost provider of Internet-based business partner
networks. As a pioneer in the emerging Extranet Service Provider
market, Aventail has received industry praise from Arthur Andersen,
Computerworld, Giga Information Group, Infoworld, International Data
Corporation, Network Computing, and Open System Advisors.
Aventail Corporation is privately held and headquartered in Seattle,
Wash. For more information on the company, please contact the company
directly at 206/215-1111, 877/AVENTAIL, or info@aventail.com.
Information on Aventail can also be obtained through Yahoo
(Nasdaq:YHOO), Infoseek (Nasdaq:SEEK), Lycos (Nasdaq:LCOS), and Excite
(Nasdaq:XCIT).
Aventail, Aventail.Net, and their respective logos are trademarks,
registered trademarks, or service marks of Aventail Corporation. Other
trademarks and company names mentioned in this release are the property
of their respective owners.
Copyright (C) 2000 Business Wire. All rights reserved.
Distributed via COMTEX.
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CONTACT: Aventail Corporation
Troy Zaboukos, 206/808-0202
troyz@aventail.com
WEB PAGE: businesswire.com
GEOGRAPHY: WASHINGTON
INDUSTRY CODE: SOFTWARE
PRODUCT
COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS
INTERNET
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