Hammerhead Systems, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, raised $25 million in Series B financing, bringing its total funding to $43 million. Hammerhead Systems is developing a next generation "edge migration switch" to help service providers transition Frame Relay/ATM services to an MPLS backbone. Hammerhead's platform is currently in trials with a Tier 1 RBOC and a leading U.S.-based network service provider. Product details have not yet been announced.
Pequot Ventures led the round with new equity participation and Pequot General Partner Greg Rossmann joins Hammerhead's board of directors. All first round VCs participated including Mayfield, Foundation Capital, and Enterprise Partners.
"We're initially targeting the sweet-spot of corporate data services -- the $20 billion Frame Relay/ATM market -- which represents the carriers' most profitable data services as well as the primary method for transporting mission critical applications among the Fortune 1000," said Joe Sigrist, Hammerhead's President and CEO. http://www.hammerheadsystems.com
- Hammerhead Systems was founded in January of 2002 by Rob Keil and John Yu. Keil previously served as VP of Marketing at optical networking start-up Zaffire, and before that spent 5 years working with the original StrataCom/Cisco engineering group. Dr. Yu previously was Director of Network Architecture at Zaffire and is credited as co-author of 10 IETF/OIF drafts on GMPLS and Optical UNI. Prior to Zaffire, Yu spent 4 years as the Principal Data Services Architect for SBC/PacBell's Frame Relay, ATM and ADSL service deployments.
- Hammerhead is headed by Joe Sigrist, who previously served as President of Lucent Technologies' Edge Access Systems division. Prior to the Lucent acquisition of Ascend, Joe was the Vice President of Product Management for Ascend's remote access business.
