NEW YORK-Solid Information Technology, known for network synchronization software, has received $50 million in second-round private equity investment.
Robertson Stephens Inc. served as placement agent for the transaction, which is a precursor to taking the company public, said Pekka Roine, Solid’s chairman and chief executive officer.
With its roots and research arm in Finland and its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., the eight-year-old company “has no commercially available competitor right now,” Roine said.
“This is no gimmick. We know because what we offer is not a casual buy for a company.”
Customers include Agilent Technologies Inc., Alcatel Alsthom, Check Point, Hewlett-Packard Co., Nokia Corp., Nortel Networks and Sonera.
Solid has anticipated and is riding the wave that will transform the hierarchical telecommunications network infrastructure into one of distributed intelligence.
“The key component for us is the realization of a new paradigm for managing data. You can no longer work with centralized stores of information and everyone trying to access them. With 2 billion (anticipated) wireless customers, there never will be enough bandwidth in the world to allow this,” Roine said.
“There are data management companies like Oracle and Sybase, but they can’t synchronize network elements. We automate the synchronization process.”
The purpose of Solid’s SynchroNet software, which resides on top of the operating system and below the applications, is to enable carriers to offer service differentiation in a mobile wireless environment, said Jussi Harvela, executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Apax Partners and BancBoston Capital led the latest round of funding for Solid Information Technology. At least eight other investors participated, including the Intel Corp. IA-64 Fund and the Nokia Pension Fund.
In Finland, Conventum Corporate Finance acted as a placement agent for the private equity investment.
