$17.5 million funding for Neoteris

Tuesday, 25 March 2003, 20:30 IST
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An Indian American's IT securities firm has received multimillion dollars in additional funding to expand its product offerings.

WASHINGTON: Krishna "Kittu" Kolluri's Neoteris closed $17.5 million in funding to expand instant, secure application access product offerings, the round being led by Battery Ventures, which joined existing investors Jim Clark, The Barksdale Group and NEA in this Series C round. The money will be directed towards new product development initiatives, as well as scaling sales, distribution, and support divisions to meet rapid growth and customer demand, Kolluri said. He noted that the company had made "significant progress" in contributing to the rapid growth of the Secure Socket Layer (SSL)-based secure access market. "With the support of our investors, we will increase our rate of investment in product, distribution, and support in order to extend our leadership position, as well as drive the evolution of our product category," Kolluri said. Mark Sherman, general partner at Battery Ventures, joins the board of directors of Neoteris as part of the funding agreement. "This is a company that has executed flawlessly its plans in a very tough economic climate, and we are pleased to join a fantastic group of investors to support the company as it enters its next stage of development," Sherman said. Since introducing its first award-winning Instant Virtual Extranet (IVE) products in November 2001, Neoteris has secured over 250 enterprise-class customers, the company said. Over 25 percent of its IVE appliance customers are included in the Fortune 1000 or Global 1000, and currently more than 600,000 users around the world use secure access through a Neoteris IVE platform. "We thoroughly studied the companies in the application-layer access space, and Neoteris clearly showed it was the leader through both its market acceptance and technical achievement," said Sherman. "We have been very impressed with their innovative technology, their customer traction, and the enormous return on investment that their customers receive over traditional network-layer remote access solutions." Neoteris claims to have introduced a novel category of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-based secure access appliances in November 2001 that changed the way employees and partners access corporate information. Through the Neoteris Access Series of IVE appliances, authorised users can gain secure remote access to network resources from any standard web browser. As a result, they no longer have to use specific machines or to work from designated locations; they can work from anywhere they can get an Internet connection and a web browser. There is no need to install, configure, or maintain a client. Given the reduced support overhead implied companies using the system believe IT, human and capital resources can be reallocated to other areas. Founded in May 2000, Neoteris is a privately held company headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has international offices in London, Frankfurt, and Hyderabad, India. Kolluri has successfully built a Technology Partner Program with top application and security vendors to ensure interoperability. The Neoteris Access* Series is currently sold through more than 65 channel partners in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.
Source: IANS