Packet Island Receives First Round of Funding

September 20, 2006

Packet Island Inc., a provider of VoIP lifecycle management solutions for the SME VoIP market, received its first round of venture funding from a group of venture capital firms led by Startup Capital Ventures. The other VCs participating in the Series A round are Garage Technology Ventures and Rincon Ventures.

According to Andy Aczel and Preveen Kumar, co-founders of Packet Island, “We took two years to build a solid SaaS platform that had the architecture to support the deployment model and economic sensitivity of the SME market. By focusing our SaaS platform to solve the VoIP management needs of the IP Centrex market, we’ve been able to address a burning problem in a fast growing space, and gain industry recognition by means of key industry awards. We wanted investors who had the breadth and depth in the markets we were going after, and that’s exactly what we got with our VC syndicate led by Dr. John Davidson from Startup Capital Ventures.”

Dr. John Davidson, co-founder and CTO of LAN pioneer, Ungermann-Bass, and General Partner of Startup Capital Ventures, says “As a long time participant in the networking industry, I have seen the remarkable scaling down of the price and size of enterprise networking gear without seeing an attendant reduction in complexity. Small companies can now cost-effectively deploy all the networking functionality of a large company, but typically must rely on a Managed Service Provider to insure its smooth operation. Service Providers in turn need a scalable solution to manage and control client networks from a distance. Packet Island has architected a remote network analysis platform which it deploys in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model to meet the needs of MSPs. The company has correctly aimed its first service modules at the Perfect Storm in which a total absence of management tools for Voice over IP systems is met by the ready availability of these mission critical systems for small and medium sized businesses. With more than 17 million traditional Centrex lines converting to VoIP in the next few years and with over 7 million SMEs in the US eligible to participate in this conversion, Packet Island has chosen a fertile space in which to make its initial product thrust.”

Founded in 2004, Packet Island Inc. is located in Silicon Valley. Since its founding, Packet Island has pioneered the development of SaaS-based solutions for the remote management of SME networks. Packet Island’s core technology is based on a highly scalable SaaS platform called PacketSmart, and small 4”x4” plug-and-play micro-appliances that are used for deep packet inspection. The PacketSmart platform consists of a scalable cluster of software application servers that have been built from the ground up to deliver remote network management services to hundreds of thousands of SMEs from a single hardware infrastructure. The first set of network management service modules that Packet Island has launched on PacketSmart is targeted at the fast growing IP Centrex market. These service modules enable VoIP service providers to offer VoIP network assessment, VoIP installation verification, VoIP troubleshooting, and VoIP SLA Management services to the SME market without any truck rolls.

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