Friday, June 13, 2008

Tatara takes in $6.5M in new funds

By Efrain Viscarolosaga

Acton-based femtocell technology developer Tatara Systems Inc. has added $6.5 million in funding to its coffers as a follow-on to the company’s $8 million round one year ago.

The funding brings the company’s total to $36.5 million since its inception in 2001. Investors in the new round include Waltham-based North Bridge Venture Partners and Lexington-based Highland Capital Partners, both previous investors in the company.

While founded as a maker of security technologies for mobile broadband and wireless local area networks, Tatara shifted gears last year to focus on the growing fixed-mobile convergence market, specifically home wireless base stations, or femtocells.

The company had been generating revenue in the security industry, said vice president of marketing and business development Steve Collins, but elements of the technology had applications in the fixed mobile convergence space (including femtocells), an industry that Infonetics Research predicts will grow tenfold between 2007 and 2011 to almost $80 billion.

“We built the company (on wireless broadband security) but through it we got a look at femtocells and found a new direction,” said Collins.

To that end, the company has also undergone a change in the executive team. At the time of the last round of funding in 2007, former CEO Steve Nicolle, who had served in the corner office since 2003, stepped down and was replaced by board member E.Y. Snowden, former CEO of Boston Communications Group. Collins joined the company in the lead business development role at the same time. 

This past March, the 40-person company also added a new CTO in former Ubiquity Software Inc. executive Doug Tucker.

In late March, Tatara unveiled new partnerships with Texas-based femtocell maker AirWalk Communications Inc. and California home networking equipment maker Netgear Inc. While the Netgear partnership will focus on developing femtocell equipment, the AirWalk deal will focus on other areas of fixed-mobile convergence, including using Tatara’s technology in CDMA macro sites, which can help smaller carriers expand wireless coverage in rural areas.