Juniper Networks to acquire Wellington Financial Fund III portfolio co BTI Systems

A nice bit of news hit the Boston Business Journal earlier today:

California tech firm Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) said Tuesday that it will acquire Littleton-based cloud networking firm BTI Systems.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of this year.

Juniper Networks has a market capitalization of about $10 billion.

BTI Systems aims to solve that problem for content providers (companies with heavily-used cloud applications) and service providers (telecom firms that run the networks used by those applications). The company’s software-defined networking technology aims to let those customers handle massive traffic growth — while also reducing costs and complexity.

Since BTI Systems began focusing on cloud services in 2010, BTI has raised about $60 million from investors such as Bain Capital Ventures, BDC, Covington and GrowthWorks. A funding round late last year was oversubscribed at $27 million.

In a blog post on Juniper’s website, Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president of Juniper Networks, said the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held BTI Systems.

“We expect the acquisition will allow Juniper to accelerate the delivery of open and automated packet optical transport solutions that integrate with our NorthStar Controller and include network management features that enable end-to-end provisioning of new services,” he wrote in the blog post.

Juniper said it’s not disclosing the terms of agreement until the transaction closes.

Of course, the Canadian VC community knows BTI Systems as an Ottawa story. That the U.S. media have a different sense of the situation is just one more example of the life and times of a successful Canadian tech firm: you have to be many things to many people.

Our $5.5 million financing closed in May 2008, and came out of our $150 million Fund III. At the time, I believe BDC Venture Capital, GrowthWorks, Kodiak, Loch and VenGrowth Partners were leading the charge. EDC’s Venture arm and Bain Venture Capital came on board soon thereafter, and in a very meaningful way in each case. Fujitsu and Lucent Venture Partners rounded out things out as the supporting cast.

There has been lots of water under the bridge since then, and Juniper was always a natural fit. And that’s a compliment.

Congrats to everyone involved.

MRM