Accedian Lands $19.5M to Expand Sales

Accedian is gearing up for major growth in the use of Carrier Ethernet equipment in mobile backhaul networks by raising $19.5 million in equity funding. (See Accedian Raises $19.5M .)

The money will be put to immediate use in expanding Accedian's global sales team, which will be bolstered by the addition of industry veterans already familiar with the Tier 1 wireless operators, according to Craig Easley, marketing VP for Accedian. (See Easley Joins Accedian.)

"We are already profitable, but we need new management and sales resources to keep up with our double-digit growth rates," Easley says. "We will be immediately adding a few key hires, veterans who have relationships with Tier 1s in the US and in Canada, and on the heels of that will be expanding in Europe as well and getting ready, because that market is on the cusp of exploding as well." (See Accedian Boasts Stellar 2009 Growth.)

Accedian, which specializes in last-mile Ethernet access systems, is seeing a ramp in demand for Carrier Ethernet technology that can support the backhaul of traffic from mobile towers to aggregation points. In an already crowded backhaul equipment market, Accedian is pitching its EtherNID, which is deployed at cell towers, and MetroNID products, to operators, and believes its platform's in-built performance monitoring and Service Level Agreement (SLA) support give it a competitive edge. (See Accedian Touts Backhaul Demand.)

Accedian has billed itself as the only company that does traffic classification and OAM completely in hardware and at wirespeed, thus adding less latency than other service assurance options.

And it's having some success in the backhaul sector, having just announced a deployment at SureWest Communications (Nasdaq: SURW). (See SureWest Picks Accedian.)

The new funding round includes previous Accedian backers such as Rho Ventures and Skypoint Capital, but was led by Summit Partners, a venture firm known to specialize in later round funding for growth.

"They have a reputation for helping companies take off," says Easley. "Summit is on board not just as a funding source, but also for their expertise and relationships with a lot of Tier 1 telecom companies, and their guidance."

Accedian has raised more than $30 million since it was formed in 2004.

— Carol Wilson, Chief Editor, Events, Light Reading