Zeus Technology Secures £3 Million Third Round Funding

Cambridge,UK, 8th March 2005 - Zeus Technology, an acknowledged leader in Internet infrastructure solutions today announced that it had raised three million pounds in funding.  Advised by First Capital, funding has been secured through Scottish Equity Partners and Cazenove Private Equity and will be used to drive sales of its industry leading Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager (ZXTM) solution.

Launched in April 2004, ZXTM enables companies to securely manage and optimise traffic around both web-based applications and websites, ensuring the highest levels of security, resilience and performance for web based applications and delivering swift and seamless interaction between web-enabled application services. 

Market analysts have estimated that the total market for application acceleration equipment was approximately $1 billion in 2004, with the fast-growing application delivery controller segment (where Zeus is active) reaching $220 million.

"Zeus is at an important point in its lifecycle and this current round of funding will help the company solidify its position within the fast-growing application management market and provide us with the backing to expand," explained Paul Brennan, chairman, Zeus Technology.  "We've developed a fantastic family of products around ZXTM and established technology leadership within our core markets.  The next obvious step is to build upon our current success and expand our sales and marketing to secure significant market share and we are delighted to be working with investors who have proved to be a great source of practical support in areas such as OEM relationships and recruiting key staff."

Zeus's intelligent traffic management solutions are used by market leading organisations such as eBay, E*Trade, Cable and Wireless, NEC, BT and Verisign. Additionally Zeus has technology and reseller agreements with some of the world's largest technology companies such as HP, IBM, Sun, Intel and AMD. The company's management team boasts over a century of in-depth commercial and industry specific experience from market leading organisations including Cisco, Symbian and Logica.

"Zeus is a company with a great deal of potential," said Russ Cummings, a director in Scottish Equity Partners' Information Technology Group. "Our experience in this sector and our connections gave us a unique insight to the business and means we can also be proactive about supporting the company in areas such as developing channels to market and its OEM strategy."

"Cazenove Private Equity has been an investor in Zeus for several years and we are very pleased with the company's progress," explained Tod Bensen, Chief Executive, Cazenove Private Equity.  "This latest round of funding represents an important step in Zeus' development and the company is poised to enter a period of rapid growth on the back of the ZXTM product line."

Since the company was formed in Cambridge in 1994, Zeus has established itself as the leading provider of Internet infrastructure solutions for the digital economy. The company's portfolio of products all help lower running costs whilst improving web site performance - from the smallest start-ups to the largest corporations. 
About Zeus Technology
Zeus Technology is a leader in the development of application traffic management solutions for the Internet. With ten years' experience in developing application-level software, including the multi-award-winning Zeus Web Server, Zeus Load Balancer and Zeus Mass Hosting Application, Zeus is now delivering the next generation in Layer 4 to Layer 7 traffic management solutions with its flagship product, Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager. Zeus understands the challenges faced by hosting providers, content providers and e-businesses in deploying business critical web-based applications. Through a successful combination of support and consultancy services and products that lead the industry in performance, scalability, reliability and security, Zeus provides application infrastructure solutions to over 800 customers, powering over 1 million sites across the world.
For more information visit http://www.zeus.com/.
 
Zeus, Zeus Mass Hosting Application, Zeus Load Balancer, Zeus Web Server, Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager, TrafficScript, TrafficCluster, RuleBuilder and Universally Serving the Net are trademarks of Zeus Technology Ltd. All other brands and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

About Scottish Equity Partners

Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) is one of the largest independent private equity groups in the UK, and is currently investing from a venture capital fund in excess of £100 million, which is backed by leading UK and European institutional investors.
Typically, we invest between £500,000 and £5 million in early stage and growing companies, principally in the information technology, healthcare & life sciences and energy related technology sectors.

With offices in Glasgow and London, SEP is one of the most active venture capital investors in the UK and has a strong investment track record. We also have an excellent track record of identifying companies with high potential at an early stage and working with them to realise that potential as they face the challenges of building a successful business.

Recent high profile successes include bluetooth specialist CSR, which floated last year with a market capitalisation at launch of approximately £240 million. Current SEP investments in the IT sector include financial services software company Searchspace, mobile DUE software company SurfKitchen, embedded semiconductor software developer Radioscape and fabless semiconductor company Cambridge Semiconductor.

About Cazenove Private Equity

Cazenove Private Equity (CPE) manages a £234m venture capital fund raised from a combination of leading European institutional investors and Cazenove itself.  CPE operates as a division of Cazenove Capital Management Limited, with the sole objective of producing superior returns for its investors. The Fund is partially invested in over 20 companies in the UK and Western Europe and is actively making new investments. CPE comprises nine investment professionals who work closely with our portfolio companies.

We look to invest in the brightest prospects in the UK and European technology, media and telecoms sectors.  The companies we back will operate in proven or high-growth markets and will be driven by exceptional management teams with the vision and ambition to dominate their chosen sectors.  Our average investment size is £3-10m.  We typically fund companies that have market ready products and demonstrable customer traction.

Recent high profile successes include KVS, an email archiving software business, which we funded over four years before it was acquired by Veritas last year for $225m.  In addition to Zeus current CPE software investments include content filtering company Clearswift, wireless messaging infrastructure provider Empower, and application security provider Portwise.

About FirstCapital

FirstCapital is a technology corporate finance advisory firm based in London, specializing in venture capital fund raising and mergers and acquisitions advice to high growth technology companies.

Our team is experienced in executing a wide variety of deals from start-ups to multinationals and in both UK and international cross border transactions. We provide pro-active, informed, full service deal management, including assistance with strategy and planning, finding and approaching investors or M&A targets, valuations and hands-on transaction execution. 

We work in partnership with our clients to achieve their goals, offering impartial advice and support based on our knowledge of the market and of each client's individual requirements, and sharing alongside them in the risks and the rewards of success.