OpenCloud receives $10million

OpenCloud receives $10million from Advent Venture Partners, Motorola and No 8 Ventures to accelerate global adoption of JAIN SLEE

Cambridge UK
8 January 2007

OpenCloud Limited, the supplier of next generation application servers to the telecommunications industry, today announces the completion of the first institutional funding round from Advent Venture Partners (“Advent Ventures”) (UK), No 8 Ventures (NZ) and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), through Motorola Ventures, its strategic equity investment arm, amounting to $10.25million. The funding will support OpenCloud’s sales, marketing, delivery and product development in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific to help bring the open standard JAIN SLEE (Java application programming interfaces (APIs) for Integrated Networks, Service Logic Execution Environment) to a global market.

JAIN SLEE is a generic application environment designed specifically for high performing event-driven applications. JAIN SLEE enables the take up of new applications in a standards-based converged network to be broader and faster than it can be today. This is particularly important as the telecoms industry is on the verge of enormous change with telecoms operators and service providers looking to develop and deploy new applications for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

JAIN SLEE is at the core of OpenCloud’s solutions, which leading analyst houses have praised. Gartner* said that OpenCloud’s leadership of JAIN SLEE with Sun Microsystems Inc. (NYSE: SUNW) is “a visionary contribution to the software industry, advancing event-driven application servers (EDASs) and event-driven architecture (EDA).” A carrier-grade JAIN SLEE implementation is also the foundation of OpenCloud’s service delivery platform that was recently ranked ninth in ABI Research’s Service Delivery Platforms (SDP) Vendor Matrix top 10 listing.

Martin McNair, General Partner at Advent Ventures, said: “Development and delivery of new applications for IMS and SIP is going to flourish in the next two years as telecoms operators and service providers worldwide seek to generate new revenues. To ensure faster time to market of new services, an open, commonly accepted standard is needed and industry leaders recognise that JAIN SLEE is the main candidate. We are supporting the development of OpenCloud’s JAIN SLEE-based application servers because they meet the industry’s need for high-performance platforms supporting "extreme" performance requirements. The company has strong growth prospects and, combined with its deployments at major telecoms operators, we believe it is well positioned to become a market leader.”

Stephen Newton, CEO of OpenCloud, said: “We are proud to receive the backing from Advent Ventures, No 8 Ventures and Motorola to help us achieve our full potential and bring JAIN SLEE to a global market. This investment is a strong endorsement of our commitment to open standards for the telecoms industry and our drive to become the market leader in this area.”

* Cool Vendors in Platform Middleware, Event-Driven Application Servers, Gartner, 2006

About Advent Ventures Advent Ventures is one of the most experienced technology venture capital firms in the UK. Established in 1981 it invests in both the Information and Communications Technology and Life Sciences sectors. Advent Ventures has over £500 million under management from institutional investors across Europe and the USA. ICT investments include UbiquiSys (fixed-mobile convergence technology), Snell & Wilcox (leading digital media infrastructure technology supplier), BridgeCo (Silicon for digital media home networking) and Qype (local search and user-generated city guide). For further information, see www.adventventures.com.

About No 8 Ventures No 8 Ventures is a New Zealand venture capital firm which invests in early stage technology companies. This is the 9th investment from No 8 Ventures No 2 fund and VIF Seed Fund. Other telecommunications technology investments include Argent Networks Ltd and Esphion Ltd. For further information, see www.no8ventures.co.nz.

About Motorola Motorola is known around the world for innovation and leadership in wireless and broadband communications. Inspired by our vision of Seamless Mobility, the people of Motorola are committed to helping you get and stay connected simply and seamlessly to the people, information, and entertainment that you want and need. We do this by designing and delivering "must have" products, "must do" experiences and powerful networks -- along with a full complement of support services. A Fortune 100 company with global presence and impact, Motorola had sales of US $35.3 billion in 2005. For more information about our company, our people and our innovations, please visit www.motorola.com.

About Motorola Ventures Motorola Ventures (MV) is the global, strategic venture capital investment arm of Motorola, Inc. MV actively invests at all stages in developing companies of strategic value to Motorola in order to accelerate access to new technologies, new markets and new talent. For more information: www.motorola.com/ventures.

About OpenCloud OpenCloud was formed in New Zealand in 2000 to create open standard software technology that would revolutionise the portability and interoperability of services in telecommunications specifically in the evolution to IP and 3G IMS. The company was founded on the vision that the use of Java in telecommunications would stimulate innovation, interoperability and simplicity in telecommunication systems. OpenCloud works with partners to deliver, integrate and support end-to-end solutions incorporating OpenCloud products to global network operators and service providers. OpenCloud has representatives in Cambridge, UK; Wellington, New Zealand; Madrid; Tokyo, and San Francisco. More information is available at www.opencloud.com.

ENDS

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