Growing BTI Has No Plans To Leave MetroWest
The lure of Silicon Valley is strong. So one couldn't be blamed for thinking BTI Systems might be picking up stakes and moving when it announced Monday that it had raised $10 million and would open a new office in the California tech center.
But that's far from true, said Sally Bament, senior vice president of global marketing for the Ottawa-based firm, which opened a U.S. headquarters in Littleton just over a year ago.
Littleton HQ Is No Coincidence
BTI's Silicon Valley office will be focused on sales and business development, Bament said. Littleton will retain its core research and development mission.
Asked if BTI plans to stick around, Bament said: "Oh my gosh, yes."
The company moved to the region in late 2011 because of the access to a talent pool generated by the presence of companies like Cisco Systems, IBM and Juniper Networks, she said.
"Quite frankly, this is where the center of excellence is for us to hire this unique skillset," Bament said.
BTI – which is headquartered in Ottawa and has regional offices in Europe, China, Malaysia and Singapore – wants to be closer to its "web 2.0" clients in Silicon Valley, Bament said, which could help drive sales of the company's latest product.
Busy Week
In addition to raising millions in venture capital and announcing its California expansion, BTI also announced the launch of its newest product – an IT platform to help content and service providers better manage cloud traffic between data centers.
The new product, called Intelligent Cloud Connect, expands on one of BTI's existing focuses from working on systems within data centers to managing traffic bottlenecks between multiple data centers, Bament said.
She said the demand for such tools has been driven by an explosion in mobile and video traffic, the company said.
"So that when you access LinkedIn from a phone in California versus Massachusetts, you get the same quality of service wherever you are," Bament said.
The $10 million in venture capital is largely meant to drive the new product to the market and to build out BTI's research and development operations, including some new hires in Littleton, where it has 50 workers, she added.
The company has raised more than $33 million in equity funding since 2011 and has approximately 300 employees in total.
Bament said BTI has grown at a compound annual rate of 40 percent during the past six years and thinks there is more opportunity on the horizon.
"The company has a terrific momentum behind it," she said. "We're excited about going after a multiyear, multibillion-dollar market opportunity in cloud infrastructure."
WBJ Web Partners
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