Aiming for Third-Time Charm, San Diego's Astute Networks Raises $12M | Xconomy
Summary
San Diego’s Astute Networks, which reinvented itself almost two years ago by focusing on flash-based technology for accelerating virtualized computing systems, has closed on a $12 million Series B financing led by Samsung Investment Corp. The deal reflects the merits of the company’s new strategy, says Astute CEO Steve Topper, who likens raising capital for tech companies in San Diego to “trying to find water in the desert.” Astute Networks was founded in 2000 as a fabless chip design company, but later shifted its focus to advanced telecommunications computing architecture as a manufacturer of blade storage equipment for telecommunications, aerospace, government and other “mission critical” markets. “We address the issues that arise with server virtualization and the I/O [input/output] needed to sustain performance to storage,” Topper says. Topper estimates there are now 60 million virtual machines (desktops and servers) in the U.S., and he cites IDC projections of strong growth in the multi-billion dollar global market for solid state disc (SSD) technology. But Topper says virtualization can pose significant challenges by penalizing network performance and bogging down user applications.
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