Tacit Networks, a start-up based in South Plainfield, New Jersey, secured $16.9 million in its second round of financing for its enterprise remote office IT solutions.
Tacit has developed an enterprise storage caching appliance designed to enable low-latency file sharing among geographically dispersed locations. The platform leverages a unique Storage Caching/ Internet Protocol (SC/IP) developed by Tacit Networks that is interoperable with existing storage, network and hardware infrastructure. The Tacit Storage Cache attaches directly to the LAN at a remote site and connects back to a Tacit Cache Server in the data center through a gateway using a standard VPN. From the LAN user's perspective, the Storage Cache appears to be a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, providing access to shared files using standard file sharing protocols like CIFS (for Windows) and NFS (for Unix). The Tacit Cache Server is a thin appliance that sits in front of a network attached storage (NAS) system at the data center and coordinates access by multiple remote Storage Caches to the consolidated storage resources. Tacit's SC/IP protocol, which is run between the Tacit Storage Caches and the Tacit Cache Server, uses compression and file differencing to minimize the amount of data transferred over the network. The storage caching system is aimed at enterprises that need to share data in real time.
JPMorgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. led the oversubscribed round, with participation by new investor CTTV Investments LLC, the venture capital division of ChevronTexaco, and follow-on investments from all of the existing Series A backers Canaan Partners, RRE Ventures, and SAS Investors. Including the company's Series A financing in November 2002, the new round brings the total amount of financing raised to $24.2 million. http://www.tacitnetworks.com
- Tacit Networks is headed by Tim Williams, who previously co founded CrosStor Software, a leading supplier of network-attached storage-centric operating system technology that was acquired by EMC in 2000.
