Avaki (Formerly Applied Meta) Raises $6M From Polaris; New Middleware Platform Takes Enterprises to "the Edge".

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 4, 2001

Avaki Corporation, formerly Applied MetaComputing, Inc., announced that it has closed $6 Million in its first venture capital funding, led by Polaris Venture Partners.

The funding enables Avaki to commercialize 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.

"Grimshaw and his development team have projected fundamental trends in distributed computing and Internetworking and are now prepared to deliver a robust and secure distributed, pervasive, peer-oriented, "grid" computing middleware platform just in the nick of time. I am extremely excited to be a part of something I believe will make a big difference in the way enterprise computing will be organized in the future," said Dr. Metcalfe, who has been on the Internet since 1970, invented Ethernet in 1973, founded 3Com Corporation in 1979, and most recently was CEO of InfoWorld Publishing Company.

"With its proven technology and skilled leadership, we feel that Avaki is poised to be the leader in a marketplace that has huge potential, and we look forward to Avaki becoming another star in the Polaris portfolio," said Hirshland.

"I look forward to working with Avaki and helping them grow into the market leader we believe they will be," added Dave Barrett, who prior to joining Polaris was a 21- year veteran software executive at Lotus/IBM, Rational and Calico during their periods of greatest growth.

Avaki is committed to working in the distributed computing arena with open standards and industry collaborations. Testament to this commitment are the number of industry projects and organizations that Avaki has been asked to be a part of from inception, including the Peer-to-Peer Working Group originally formed by Intel, The Global Grid Forum and Sun Microsystem's recently-announced Project JXTA.

Editor's Note: David Fish will on a panel at this year's Java One conference, June 4-8 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The panel, P2P Innovation With Project JXTA, will be on Tuesday, June 6, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon in The Palace Gold Ballroom at the Sheraton Palace Hotel. For interview opportunities at Java One, please contact Kathleen Bagley at [phone] or [e-mail].

About Avaki

Avaki, a privately-held company backed by Polaris Venture Partners, is focused on commercializing distributed computing technology that enables enterprises to harness the full potential of their increasingly complex, networked computing resources. Avaki has developed a middleware platform that provides a complete set of capabilities spanning distributed, pervasive and peer-oriented computing. It provides a scalable, secure framework that allows enterprises to effectively manage distributed systems - including networked servers, desktops, clusters and handheld devices - across geographically-dispersed locations, accomplishing tasks that would not otherwise be possible. Avaki is located in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, please visit www.avaki.com or email [e-mail].

About Polaris Venture Partners

With more than $1.1 billion under management, Polaris Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm with investments across information and medical technology. Polaris takes an active lead role in its portfolio companies and practices life cycle investing. The Polaris team is committed to helping entrepreneurs grow strong businesses by offering early-stage operational and investment expertise as well as providing critical support services. The company services more than 60 Polaris-backed companies including Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), Allaire Corporation (NASDAQ: ALLR), deCODE Genetics (NASDAQ: DCGN), and Paradigm Genetics (NASDAQ: PDGM). The company has offices in Boston, Austin, Seattle and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.polarisventures.com.