Leading Lights Finalists 2014: Company of the Year (Private) – Part 1

News Analysis Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading 5/30/2014

BTI Systems Inc.
BTI Systems Inc. 's cloud networking solutions are based on an open, SDN-enabled platform, Intelligent Cloud Connect, converging optical, routing, and NFV-based applications. The technology, according to BTI, enables carriers, content, and service providers to increase network capacity fourfold, reduce network latency by half, and provide up to 10x performance with 50% opex and capex savings. BTI addresses operators' escalating requirements to support unprecedented traffic levels fueled by demand for OTT applications and the cloud.

BTI's compound annual growth rate is 33% from 2007 to 2013. Some 40% of revenues come from top-tier content providers, cloud infrastructure providers, and service providers including Equinix, VKontakte (the largest social network in Europe), and Rackspace.

BTI, a long-time player in the data transport networking platform market, has 270 employees. Shareholders and investors include Bain Capital Ventures, BDC, Covington Capital, and GrowthWorks. BTI has more than 380 customers worldwide. BTI announced $37 million in growth equity last year and a total of $60 million since 2011. BTI's Support and Services organization has more than doubled revenues in 2013.

Casa Systems Inc.
Casa Systems Inc. 's C100G, Light Readings Cable Product of the year for 2013, started shipping in the fourth quarter of 2013, enabling Casa to take the top spot in worldwide CCAP market share at 51%. It's deployed to carriers including TWC, Telent, LGI, and StarHub. The C100G provides ultra-high-capacity line cards for superior channel density, reliability, and scalability. It enables MSOs to deploy DOCSIS, IPTV and MPEG video on a single chassis over a single port. The Casa claims the C100G provides the industry's highest I-CCAP density with the lowest power consumption, significantly reducing OpEx.

The C100G uses Casa's Software Defined Cable (SDC) architecture, using NPUs and FPGAs to allow Casa to quickly and efficiently add significant features, such as DOCSIS 3.1, through software upgrades, improving time to market. Other hardware platforms use ASICs or off-the-shelf components, which make it impossible to add key features like DOCSIS 3.1 through software upgrades, giving the C100G a significant competitive advantages, Casa claims.

The C100G eliminates the need for separate devices such as forward combiners, QAM, CMTS, and upstream routers. This reduces network points of failure, capex, rack space usage, cooling and power needs, and the need for operational support, training, and network management.

Investors and shareholders include Summit Partners, Liberty Global, and key employees. Top three customers are Time Warner Cable, Liberty Global BV, and True Universal Convergence Company.

The company is currently profitable at an operating level, and is planning for a 100% increase in both revenue and operating income through continued new customer wins and business expansion in existing accounts. Casa also plans to increase staff numbers by about 50% this year.

That's quite a roster -- and we're only halfway done. Look out for part two shortly.

[Note: This story was corrected on June 2 with regards to the growth rate for BTI Systems, and the profitability status of Casa Systems. We apologize for the initial errors.]

The Leading Lights winners and 2014 Hall of Fame inductees will be unveiled at the Leading Lights awards dinner, to be held the evening of Tuesday, June 17 at Chicago's Adler Planetarium. (For more details, see Bumper Year for the Leading Lights Awards.)

Stick around on Wednesday for the second day of Light Reading's Big Telecom Event, taking place at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers on June 17-18. (Details and the agenda are on our show site, Big Telecom Event.)

— Mitch Wagner, , West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected]

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