was filing regulatory documents under the name Beaumaris Networks. At the time of the filing for the first round funding, Beaumaris had six employees, all of whom were former engineers at Motorola, a major maker of cable set top boxes and DVR devices. BNI now has 50 employees.
In the company announcement of today’s news Time Warner Cable chief technology officer Mike LaJoie said, “BNI’s technology is simple, flexible and scalable, and we look forward to working with BNI to develop more advanced video services for our customers.” But Clemson did not confirm whether Time Warner or Comcast are users of BNI’s product. He said the software is deployed with some cable companies, but declined to reveal who those are. “We’re very strategically aligned with both of our lead industry investors, but we’re not implying any commercial relationship at this point,” he said of the Time Warner and Comcast relationships.
BNI adds to the cluster of Boston-area companies working in the Internet video space, like Westford, MA-based Verivue, which makes network switches for streaming video and other content to different user devices. Companies in the sector complement one another’s technology, says Clemson, who previously worked as an entrepreneur in residence at Charles River Ventures. “They’re the data plane. They move the bits,” he says of Verivue. “We’re the control plane. We tell them where to move the bits to.”
