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US Angels Back Foursticks Network Performance

Announcement posted by Foursticks 14 Nov 2002

An ace international management team has helped Australian network performance specialist Foursticks secure US angel funding, while other start-ups struggle to attract venture capital.

The two-year-old company, founded on private equity and a Federal R&D Start grant project, has developed Foursticks NP, software that guarantees the performance of business critical applications on networks by allowing urgent data to be prioritised.

Foursticks has trawled the globe to attract a management team and advisory board with an extraordinary track record in telecommunications, venture capital and the marketing of global products.

These include expatriate South Australian Alan Noble, a Silicon Valley veteran who discovered Foursticks at the World Congress on Information Technology, held in Adelaide early this year.

Foursticks was a winner of the national Secrets of Australian IT search, enabling CEO David Bohn to present to an international audience of executives and investors at the worlds premier technology conference.

I was immediately impressed by Daves vision of a global company based in Australia, Mr Noble says.

But what motivated me was the Foursticks NP product, which does for networks what traffic lights and lanes do on highways, prioritising access to emergency vehicles.

The evolution of enterprise computing over the last decade began with the rush to connect staff to each other and the world; then enterprises began to deploy resource hungry applications for improved productivity across networks. Ironically, this has led to the optimisation of network performance becoming a crucial issue, in particular at a time when skilled network management personnel are at a premium.

The productivity lost due to network performance problems is costing companies millions of dollars, Mr Noble says. Computer systems are more powerful yet systems are slowing down. Telecommunications spend is out of sync with ROI.

Mr Noble has not only taken the central role of chief technology officer at Foursticks, but has brought together a consortium of US investors to back the rapidly growing venture.

I had to prove the technology to myself first, then it was easy to sell the idea to others, he says.

Mr Noble has extensive experience in running technology companies, as well as capital raising. Educated in Adelaide and California, he left a Silicon Valley software engineering job to found his own company, NetMind, in the nearby coastal town of Santa Cruz. He was head of engineering when the company was acquired four years later in a $US 400 million trade sale to Pumatech, NASDAQs top performing stock in 1999.

I love the energy of building a start-up business and I was keen to find a region where the economy is on a growth curve, Mr Noble says. Australia is the quiet achiever in IT Im happy to be able to put something back and to have a role in building wealth in my home country.

Media Contact details: To arrange an interview with Foursticks CTO Alan Noble, or to request photographs, please call 08 8338 5500.

About Foursticks
Foursticks is a global leader in the fast-growing sector of Business Technology Optimisation. The companys flagship product, Foursticks NP, guarantees Network Performance and prioritises business critical applications on existing networks.

Founded in Adelaide, South Australia, in 2000, Foursticks was awarded an R&D Start Grant for the development of its core technology. The company was selected from a field of 100 in the Austrade Euro high-tech tour competition in October 2001, and won the Secrets of Australian IT and Deloitte Rising Star awards in 2002.

Foursticks NP improves the performance of networks and cuts communication costs by scheduling, slicing and interleaving information according to business requirements.

The product provides network visibility, including real-time monitoring, fault analysis, and service level agreement verification to enterprise customers that include Bridgestone, Santos, and BRL Hardy. Foursticks opened a Singapore sales office in October 2002.

www.foursticks.com