What do you get when you cross a bunch of traffic-management and content delivery fiends from Cambridge (U.K.) with a like-minded set of individuals from Singapore. Answer: SwiftServe.Officially launched in December but actually formed earlier in 2012, SwiftServe offers "transparent caching" and content delivery networks (CDNs) to network service providers and content publishers."Transparent caching? What's that then?" the cry goes up. Well, according to SwiftServe's marketing director, Olivier Suard, transparent caching is "a way of caching data dynamically, but without the requesting client or the server being aware of it." In other words, the IP addresses of both are preserved.

SwiftServe has pedigree: Its co-founder and CTO Adam Twiss previously founded Velocix, which was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in 2009, and since then he has been busy at his Versio4 venture developing the technology that lies behind SwiftServe. Cheong Kong Wai, one of the other co-founders, set up Conversant, a content and policy management firm. (See New CDN Twist for Twiss and AlcaLu Buys CDN Specialist Velocix.)

Though still in its infancy, SwiftServe can name Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel), StarHub Pte. Ltd., Thailand's True Corp. plc and Singapore Airlines on its client list.And when not going after new clients, the SwiftServe posse like to relax at the movies with a bit of film neo-noir -- COO Bryan Amesbury is just one of millions who fell under the spell of The Usual Suspects, the Kevin Spacey hit with a plotline that really requires an explanatory diagram or two.— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading