Matisse Networks, the "optical burst" switching co., raises $45M

September 9, 2007 | Matt Marshall

Matisse Networks, a network infrastructure company based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised $45M in a third round of funding.

Backers are Merrill Lynch (which invested $35M of the round) and existing investors, including Woodside Fund, Menlo Ventures, Monitor Ventures and Walden International. To date, Matisse Networks has raised total financing of $80M.

The company makes what it calls a an “optical burst” switch, which it says uses light waves to pass packets of data using Internet protocol in a more efficient way than its competitors.

The company says its switch cuts the cost of both capital and operational expenses in half when compared with existing metro optical circuit systems.

According to the statement:

The worldwide installed base of over 400,000 synchronous optical network and synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) optical rings are incapable of meeting the bandwidth demand for packet services created by both the consumer’s appetite for high bandwidth applications such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and the enterprise’s migration to high speed carrier Ethernet services. For IP and Ethernet transport, these legacy SONET/SDH networks cost far more to deploy and maintain than newer Ethernet over wave division multiplexing (WDM) solutions like Matisse Networks’ EtherBurst optical switch.

Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research, forecasts the worldwide metro WDM market segment to grow at a 19 percent compound annual growth rate to $4.0B through 2010.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.