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Venture Capital News: BTI Systems Secures $23M Growth Equtiy

2012-02-01
OTTAWA, CANADA, Networking infrastructure company raised $23 million in growth equity funding led by blue-chip investor Bain Capital Ventures.
BTI Systems, redefining the service delivery infrastructure for network operators around the world, continues the company's five-year growth surge, marked by new customers, market expansion, additions to the senior management team and a round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures.

Corporate News

- Opened a new U.S. Headquarters located in Littleton, Mass., just outside of Boston. The new Center of Excellence will serve as a major customer briefing center as well as focus on packet technology development, capitalizing on the high concentration of telecommunications and networking expertise in the region. The U.S. HQ will complement the Company's longstanding HQ in Ottawa, Canada to help accommodate robust worldwide growth plans.

- Executive team appointments of industry veterans Paul Crann as senior vice president of product management and business development, Mike Grady as senior vice president of engineering and Sally Bament as senior vice president of global marketing. The trio brings significant carrier market experience - earned by working closely with the world's leading network operators - and having held executive-level roles with companies that include BigBand Networks, Nortel, Wellfleet/Bay Networks, Omnipoint Communications, Ascend Communications, Argon Networks, Avici Systems, Convergent Networks and Motorola.

- Investment of $23 million in growth equity funding led by blue-chip investor Bain Capital Ventures, further ensuring BTI Systems will continue as the metro network leader for the decade ahead and enabling the company to drive revenue and customer growth by expanding its direct and channel sales development, marketing, product development and customer service.

- Named to the prestigious Deloitte Technology Fast 50(TM) of Canadian companies and Fast 500(TM) in North American Technology, propelled by the Company's 367% growth in revenue from 2006 to 2010.

Market Expansion

- With a global customer base of close to 400, packet optical expanded to more than 60% of BTI deployments in 2011, bolstered by customer demand for the Company's market-leading mobile backhaul, Ethernet business and Internet services solutions.

- Increased momentum across all major geographies - including more than 60% growth in North America and more than 70% in EMEA. Additionally, operations expanded to support the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) region to leverage trends that include strong growth in Ethernet business services; a shift to optimize operations by converging mobile and fixed traffic into the same network; and the expansion of companies such as Netflix into CALA, adding to the already critical demand requiring service providers to overcome the congestion bottlenecks that degrade the networks' quality of service and customer experience.

- Strengthening commitment to grow market share in the North American Multi System Operator (MSO) segment with investments in sales and business development to expand in the cable sector.

- Partnership with DragonWave to broaden offerings to support the massive adoption of advanced 3G and 4G wireless services.

- New customers from around the world that include Digiweb - Ireland's leading independent telecommunications company; Epsilon Telecommunications - to upgrade its Singapore metro network using BTI's Dynamic Optical Layer; S.I. Net - Cambodia's leading service provider; and TelEm Group - the government-owned incumbent telecom provider on St. Maarten. This complements the Company's expanding market penetration in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). North American IOC new customers included South Slope Cooperative Communications, the largest rural independent operating company in Iowa.

Industry Innovations

- The first integrated mobile backhaul solution that supports the explosive growth of 3G and 4G deployments in metro and regional networks by ensuring scalable capacity to meet ever-increasing tower bandwidth requirements driven by unprecedented consumer demand for mobile applications.

- An intuitive Web-based Service Level Assurance (SLA) solution - the proNX(TM) SLA Portal - that exceeds industry requirements and enables wholesale-based providers to win more business by assuring mobile service providers that their customers will always have a high-quality experience.

- The Dynamic Optical Layer that redefines how metro networks are designed and managed - enabling service providers to establish optical network connections simply and in seconds, significantly reducing operating costs and increasing new revenue-generating opportunities.

Executive Quotes

"Focused on meeting the business challenges and opportunities of our customers, BTI continues to deliver game-changing solutions for service and content providers to capitalize on global, multihundred billion-dollar business, consumer and technology trends such as mobility, over-the-top Internet video, cloud computing and smart devices," said BTI Systems President and CEO Steve Waszak. "As the only company to integrate application-aware intelligence and end-to-end service visibility within its dynamically scalable packet optical solutions, we look forward to another year of strong growth worldwide. From mobile backhaul and broadband Ethernet business services to Internet/cloud service delivery, our innovative metro service infrastructure solutions enable providers to monetize opportunities and overcome obstacles quickly, confidently and profitably."

"The opportunity within the metro network is enormous - fueled by a dramatic increase in bandwidth-intensive video and content distribution," said Deepak Sindwani, Partner, Bain Capital Ventures. "BTI is uniquely positioned to benefit from this high-growth opportunity through its carrier-grade, content-aware solutions that help service providers drive profits; experienced executive and engineering leadership team; and an expanding global footprint. We look forward to helping the Company continue its extraordinary growth trajectory."

"With BTI, we have gained a strong and competent partner in helping us to make optimal use of our network resources to establish connections for our customers in a market where bandwidth consumption for optical services is exploding faster everywhere around the world," commented George Sziosarek, CTO, Epsilon Telecommunications.

About Bain Capital

Established in 1984, Bain Capital is one of the world's leading private investment firms managing approximately $60 billion in assets under management. Our affiliated advisors make private equity, public equity, leveraged debt asset, venture capital, and absolute return investments across multiple sectors, industries, and asset classes. Since our inception, our competitive advantage has been grounded in a people-intensive, value-added investment approach that has enabled the firm to deliver industry-leading returns for our investors.

About BTI Systems

BTI Systems is the innovative networking company that creates high-capacity, application-aware service infrastructure for metropolitan networks. With a suite of packet optical networking, application intelligence software and service-centric management platforms, BTI enables service and content providers to scale capacity and profitably deliver a mix of high-value applications, services and content to subscribers and businesses around the globe. More than 350 customers rely on BTI to monetize, accelerate and simplify service delivery. Headquartered in North America, BTI operates regional sales, marketing, and R&D centers of excellence throughout the world. For more information, visit www.btisystems.com.
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