NEWS & EVENTS
Financial Times Mergermarket
SpiderCloud to consider strategic partnerships in months ahead
02/23/2010
SpiderCloud, the privately owned Santa Clara, California-based wireless technology firm, plans to evaluate seriously various strategic partnership opportunities in the months ahead, according to Vice President for Marketing Ronny Haraldsvik.
The firm's technology purportedly extends mobile broadband deployments inside places like office buildings without putting an increased burden on wireless carriers.
SpiderCloud recently closed on a USD 25m financing round that it will put for pushing its products into general availability for mobile operators this year, Haraldsvik said. The firm has raised a total of USD 40m since it was founded late 2006, and has no concrete plan to seek more venture capital.
The firm has received a "tremendous amount of interest" from larger strategic players interested in establishing partnerships, Haraldsvik said. It expects to engage in more serious consideration of such partnerships in the months ahead as it scales distribution.
"We are very pragmatic. We will do what it takes to bring the product to market faster," he said. "If that means a relationship, that will be entertained." Potential partners include SpiderCloud's wireless operator customers and the existing infrastructure providers who currently sell to them as well.
SpiderCloud has not mandated an investment bank to advise on its potential partnership negotiations or other deals, Haraldsvik said, noting that the company already has a savvy executive team and board in place. Several members of the SpiderCloud management team have experience in mergers and acquisitions as well as initial public offerings.
Haraldsvik declined to comment on whether any future partnership could lead to M&A, noting that the company is currently focused on its near-term revenue push. "All the players on the board have known each other for years and years," he said. "They are fully behind [CEO] Mike [Gallagher] and building a company with staying power, so there have been no talks about liquidity yet ... right now, it's just heads down, building the product." The company remains open to the prospects of both an IPO or a sale to provide a return to its investors, he said.
SpiderCloud's venture capital investors include Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Matrix Partners.
by Colleen Taylor in San Francisco
VentureWire
SpiderCloud Wires $25M For Optimized Networks
02/03/2010
SpiderCloud Wireless Inc. said it has raised a $25 million Series B round from new and returning investors as it seeks to sell its bandwidth-boosting hardware to wireless operators.
New investor Opus Capital led the round, joined by Charles River Ventures, Matrix Partners and Shasta Ventures. Shasta is a new investor in the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company. Charles River and Matrix provided SpiderCloud with an earlier $15 million Series A round, said Ronny Haraldsvik, the company's vice president of marketing.
Launched in 2006, SpiderCloud is doing what many Wi-Fi providers and femtocell companies are doing: boosting cellular and Internet coverage inside of buildings. But SpiderCloud is taking a different approach.
"Instead of dragging a signal in from outside, we have an optimized network that leverages the Ethernet infrastructure that's already in place," Haraldsvik said. "What we are doing is replicating outdoor coverage indoors, for enterprises."
Among the advantages of outdoor coverage are the lack of interference with signals, and the seamless hand-off of a signal between one access point and another if a user is roaming.
SpiderCloud makes nodes and controllers that are similar to a Wi-Fi system, he said. But the difference is that the nodes - essentially access points - run on licensed spectrum operated by wireless carriers.
Because they use licensed spectrum, a small number of these nodes can provide reliable coverage to a large area, Haraldsvik said.
The company aims to sell its hardware system, which it calls the Enterprise Radio Access Network, to the world's top wireless carriers, who will in turn offer the system to enterprise customers looking to boost their signals, he said.SpiderCloud's system is being tried out by European carriers. The company's next step will be to approach the top carriers in the U.S. and elsewhere, Haraldsvik said.
He declined to give details about the volume of production at the company, which has more than 50 employees. He also declined to give details on revenue, or a valuation.
The company was founded by retired Juniper Networks Inc. executive Peter Wexler and Allan Baw, co-founder of broadband gateway maker Stoke Inc., Haraldsvik said.