Avaki (formerly Applied Meta) raises US$6 millionCambridge 04 June 2001 Avaki Corporation, formerly Applied MetaComputing, has closed US$6 Million in its first venture capital funding, led by Polaris Venture Partners. The funding enables Avaki to commercialise its Internet-scale enterprise-class Grid middleware platform, which converges distributed, pervasive, and peer-oriented computing. The platform, in development for seven years at the University of Virginia, unifies multiple work platforms in multiple locations, robustly and securely extending enterprise capabilities to the edge of the Internet.
Due to its new focus on enterprise middleware, Applied Meta has changed its name
to Avaki Corporation. The word "avaki," which comes from the Polynesian language
spoken in the Marquesas Islands, connotes a distribution of resources in a
manner in which everyone takes part.
In addition, Avaki announced the appointment of David Fish as chief executive
officer. Formerly chief operating officer of Engage, Inc., a CMGI company,
Fish's managerial, technical and entrepreneurial experience in high-tech
includes executive positions at both start-up and public companies. Fish will
also serve on Avaki's board of directors.
"Every five years or so we have seen a sea change in enterprise network
architecture, which drives an explosion of new applications and gives rise to
significant middleware/infrastructure requirements," said Fish. "The current IT
infrastructure is being challenged as people, processes, and computing power
move to the edge of the enterprise and beyond. In turn, we see this driving
another relatively rare, yet major, middleware opportunity. I believe that Avaki
is at the forefront of this next evolution by allowing enterprises to perform
critical business functions in a manner and at a pace that otherwise would never
have been possible."
Widely viewed as ahead of his time, Professor Andrew Grimshaw, founder and CTO
of Avaki, foresaw the coming revolution of the networked world. Developed by a
team led by Grimshaw in 1993 at the University of Virginia, Avaki's technology
allows robust and secure cooperation among networked resources. It has been in
production for over three years and is currently used at over 20 university and
government sites. Grimshaw built the technology around the principle of masking
and managing underlying complexity, developing an integrated infrastructure that
would allow all types of digital devices and resources - regardless of scale,
physical location, language and underlying operating system - to work seamlessly
together.
Grimshaw stated, "For several years, Avaki's technology has been proven to
successfully help large organizations distribute data and information in a way
that helps them research and develop massive projects that require the use of
many different computer resources. The same can be done for enterprises. As
processing power increasingly moves to the 'edge of the network,' the ability to
distribute information across hardware resources takes the strain off the
network and enables companies to do business more efficiently and effectively."
Avaki also announced other additions to its board of directors, including three
from Polaris: General Partner Mike Hirshland and Venture Partners Bob Metcalfe
and Dave Barrett. Polaris Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital
firm with investments across information and medical technology, and is the lead
investor in Avaki. Professor Anita Jones, former director of DOD Research and
Engineering, remains on the board of directors.
Ad Emmen |
 |