Access360, an Irvine maker of network access software, has received $41.5 million in new venture funding, including investments from Oracle Corp. and Verisign Inc.
The funding, completed last week, brings Access360’s total raised in the past year to $69 million.
New York-based Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc. and San Francisco’s Pivotal Asset Management led the latest round of funding. Oracle and security software maker Verisign provided undisclosed amounts. Woodside-based Cross-point Venture Partners, which has an Irvine office and led an $18 mil-lion round of funding in April for Access360, also took part.
The 3-year-old company plans to spend the money on software development and to build its sales, marketing and service operations, according to Yuri Pikover, Access360’s chief executive.
“We are planning to expand rapidly,” he said. “Most of our money is being spent on headcount expansion.”
In the past year, Access360 has grown from 40 employees to 250. By the end of the first quarter, the company expects to have around 300 people, Pikover said. Access360 counts offices in Europe and Asia and recently opened sites in Australia, Seattle and Falls Church, Va., outside Washington, D.C.
By February, Access360 plans to relocate to a 65,000-square-foot building being renovated in the Irvine Spectrum. The move stands to triple Access360’s space from its current Spectrum facility.
The company is talking with investment bankers about a possible initial public offering in 2001, Pikover said.
“Assuming the markets co-operate, we’ll be going public early next year,” he said.
Russian-born Pikover was a co-founder and executive vice president of Calabasas networking gear manufacturer Xylan Corp., which France’s Alcatel bought for about $2 billion last year.
Access360 makes software for managing access to internal data systems. Customers include BP Amoco PLC, Sony Electronics Inc. and E*TRADE Group Inc. The company’s closest rival is a unit of Houston-based BMC Software Inc., which has operations in Costa Mesa.
Access360 sees its biggest growth coming from the movement of company databases and applications to data centers and application service providers, which host software for corporate clients, Pikover said.
“To date, we have been focusing on helping companies gain access-control for internal employees,” he said. “Where we are moving to is what’s called a virtual enterprise arena, where companies outsource as many non-essential functions as possible.”
The funding for Access360 comes as venture capital firms are tightening their purse strings amid a rash of dot-com failures and a tough market for technology stocks.
“We are in a fortunate position,” Pikover said. “We have a great management team and we all have very strong track records. We were able to select the right venture and corporate partners, not the other way around.”
Last month, the company boosted its management ranks with the addition of Chief Financial Officer Mark S. St. Clare, who spent 15 years at Costa Mesa-based software maker FileNET Corp. and most recently worked at Irvine-based Nexgenix Inc. n
