Press Release 2003

Bluesocket Raises $10 Million in Third Round Funding From Menlo Ventures, Current Investors 

Series C Investment Extends Company’s Lead in WLAN Security and Management for $2.8 Billion Worldwide WiFi Market 

March 31, 2003 Burlington, MA and Menlo Park, CA ---Bluesocket, Inc., (www.bluesocket.com) the fast-growing developer of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) management and security solutions, today said it has closed its third institutional round of equity financing in an oversubscribed (U.S.) $10 million round led by Menlo Ventures with current investors participating. With this additional financing, Bluesocket’s total funding to date is more than (U.S.) $32 million.

Bluesocket investors include Ascent Venture Partners, Boulder Ventures, Intel Capital, Ironside Ventures, Osborn Capital, Ridgewood Capital, St. Paul Venture Capital.

With the third round of funding, Hal Calhoun (Managing Director of Menlo Ventures) joins Bluesocket’s Board of Directors.

“Menlo evaluated over 60 companies in the WLAN market over the past two years before choosing to invest in Bluesocket,” said Hal Calhoun. “Bluesocket’s large and established customer base, well-developed reseller channel, unique technology, mature product line, and concise business and technology roadmap promises continued leadership in the market for security and management of WLANs in educational, government, healthcare and enterprise installations," said Calhoun.

"Rapid and consistent revenue growth have Bluesocket on track to reach profitability in the near future,” said Eric Janszen, CEO, Bluesocket. ”This additional funding provides an insurance policy to ensure that Bluesocket extends its leadership position and continues on track to become the first company in our space to reach profitability. Adding a world-class VC partner like Hal Calhoun to our board adds a key skill set needed to support hiring and business development plans," said Janszen.

Bluesocket also plans to use the additional funding for further development of its sales channel and partners, marketing, and forthcoming third-generation product line of Wireless Gateways.

About Bluesocket Wireless Gateways
Bluesocket’s Wireless Gateways deliver an open-systems approach to secure and manage WiFi networks and provide authentication, subnet mobility, policy and bandwidth management through unparalleled interoperability with legacy infrastructure and WLAN standards. Bluesocket is the recipient of numerous awards including Product of the Year (Mass Telecommunications Council- 2003), Best Security Product of 2002 (Networking Industry Awards), “Best Product in Show” (N+I/Sydney, 2002).

Financial and industry analysts see enterprise WLANs as a large emerging market:

"Large Fortune 500/Global 2000 enterprises are struggling with issues of budgets, manageability,
and security for 802.11 horizontal deployment, said Rajeev Chand, senior equity research analyst, wireless technologies at investment bank Rutberg & Company (San Francisco). “Recently, though, Rutberg is seeing a shift in enterprise sentiment, with CIOs securing budgets for 802.11 deployment, based at least in part to the availability of management solutions that address deployment, maintenance, security, and roaming issues. We believe success factors for private companies in the management solutions space include: relationships with reseller channels to scale revenues; preliminary customer wins to evidence market share leadership; and robustness of product to address 802.11 issues.” 

"Bluesocket has been a leader in the WLAN Security space since 2000," said Gemma Paulo, senior analyst, data and voice communications, In-Stat/MDR (Scottsdale, AZ). In its February 2003 4Q02 WLAN Market Analysis, In-Stat/MDR estimated that corporate WLAN hardware shipments rose 56% in 2002 over 2001. In December 2002, In-Stat's Paulo projected a market for enterprise WLAN revenues of $2.8 Billion in 2005.

About Bluesocket 
Bluesocket, Inc. manufactures solutions to manage and secure wireless local area networks (WLANs) in enterprises and public hotspots worldwide. Bluesocket provides hundreds of organizations including the National Security Agency, ATOS KPMG Consulting, Harvard Medical School and Best Western Hotels with elegant systems to secure, manage, and profit from their WLANs. With offices in the U.S., U.K., and Asia, Bluesocket, Inc. is a private, global corporation managed by executives from BT, Cisco, GTE, Ericsson, Intel, Nortel; other industry leaders.

About Menlo Ventures 
Menlo Ventures has spent the past 27 years helping visionary leaders turn technical innovations into world-class companies. Menlo has over $2.7 billion under management in nine venture capital funds, and currently focuses their investments in the areas of communications, software, Internet, semiconductors and computer hardware. The Menlo Ventures team is a group of investment professionals with hundreds of years of collective experience in technology, marketing, sales and general management. Their combined knowledge and expertise support emerging growth companies in achieving their maximum potential. 

For more information, http://www.bluesocket.com

Mobileinfo Comments & Advisory: Bluesocket has entered an important segment of wireless LAN market that is growing in this difficult market- providing security and management services to WLAN infrastructure. While initially, it is targeting more lucrative enterprise market, it is now turning its attention to the public hotspots. Its strategy of providing an open solution that supports all popular access points is a good one. Bluesocket solution has been employed in a number of large installations where you may have thousands of wireless LAN users.