Aiming for Third-Time Charm, San Diego’s Astute Networks Raises $12M

the company in October 2010, shortly after Astute Networks was recapitalized. Using proprietary technology the company had developed for its data storage equipment, Astute Networks developed technology that it calls a DataPump Engine to optimize the performance of virtualized networks by accelerating both data storage (iSCSI) and network (TCP/IP) traffic.The engine runs on a proprietary flash architecture in a series of network appliances that make up its ViSX product line, with unit prices ranging from under $20,000 to about $70,000.

“I got 100 percent benefit of a fully built and tested IP [intellectual property] that I didn’t have to spend a nickel to develop,” Topper says. “We’ve integrated it into a new user-based appliance without spending literally tens of millions of dollars in development.”

Whether the third time will be the charm is another question. Before joining Astute Networks, Topper was the founder of JumpStart Partners, a business advisory firm, and previously served as the CEO of Cerebra, an enterprise software developer in Carlsbad, CA; as an entrepreneur-in-residence at eCentury Capital Partners; and as CEO of New Hampshire-based Platypus Technology (a maker of solid-state storage systems) and other technology companies.

One advantage to the company’s strategy is that its technology is relatively non-denominational, and operates on VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and Red Hat RHEV. “We know the VMware ecosystem, and focus on VMware because it represents 70 to 80 percent of the market,” Topper says.

“Our target customer is an organization that has virtualized the enterprise [network],” Topper says. “About 30 percent of enterprises have hit the glass ceiling in terms of deploying mission critical systems into virtualized networks.” The core market would not necessarily be small-to-medium businesses, he said, but rather mid-market and small-to-medium enterprise companies.

Including its $12 million B round, Astute has raised a total of $17.5 million since 2010. In addition to Samsung (a leading provider of NAND flash memory), current investors include Tallwood Venture Capital, Narra Venture Capital. Other new investors are Ayala Capital, ICCP Venture Partners, and The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF).

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.