Software engineers are in short supply. But an Israeli-based software company, Radlan Computer Communications Ltd., says it can help relieve the pressure -- by selling prepackaged routing and switching code.

Providing off-the-shelf routing and switching software means products get to market much faster, say Radlan officials. Rather than selling the software by itself, however, the company has partnered with chip vendors, including Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM) and Galileo Technology (Nasdaq: GALT), to package the product with chip hardware.

“There is a gap between the application and hardware,” says Andy Rappaport, general partner at August Capital, one of the investors in Radlan. “And this fills in that gap and allows vendors to build new products much faster than if they had to develop it all from scratch.”

Today, Radlan announced a $30 million second round of funding to finance its marketing expansion in the U.S.

Leading the round was August Capital with additional funding coming from Polaris Venture Capital, the largest venture capital fund in Israel, HarbourVest Partners, Formula Ventures, UBS Warburg, and other strategic investors.

In essence, the Radlan software provides the basic underlying Layer 2 and Layer 3 routing/switching technology for telecom and data communication products.

The current version of the software offers OSPF, 802.1p, and DiffServ routing schemes, as well as other switching functions like support for virtual LANs. Its next version, due to be in commercial use in the first half of 2001, will support more carrier-class protocols such as MPLS and BGP4.

-- Marguerite Reardon, senior editor, Light Reading, http://www.lightreading.com