Blue Reef gets $1m for US assault

Stan Beer
Thursday, 22 September 2005 11:00

Business IT - Security

Early stage advisory company, BSI has assisted in raising capital for network security developer Blue Reef to fund a $1m project covering Blue Reef’s entry into the US market.

Blue Reef’s Sonar technology, deployed at more than 200 sites across Australia, is claimed to be the market’s first enabler of secure collaboration and commerce over open networks.

The platform is target at open networks: such as those of educational institutions needing to foster open learning environments, as well as government departments and enterprises wanting close interactions with trading partners.

Blue Reef is being introduced to the tough US market via a University of California (UCLA) program that allocates – to a select group of international technology companies – groups of MBA executives who spend six months developing, for each company, a tailored market entry strategy.

At the conclusion of the UCLA program in December, Blue Reef’s offering and proposed market strategy will be presented to prospective partners and venture capitalists, to springboard Blue Reef’s US business development. The cost of participating in the project, plus initial setup costs in the US, will reach around $1m.

Blue Reef CEO, Robert Smyth commented, “We have long seen the United States as the ultimate market for Blue Reef. In the educational sector alone – where demand for our technology is strong – the US market is more than twenty times Australia’s size.

“This, with our growing success in enterprise markets and the assistance of the UCLA Global Access Program that speeds our market entry, gives Blue Reef a strong start that we believe will translate into commercial success in the US market,” he said.

Ivan Kaye, Director of BSI added, “BSI, through our incubator fund Australian Distributed Incubator (ADI) was an early investor of Blue Reef and we are proud to have contributed to their commercial success to date.

“We are equally confident of Blue Reef’s capacity to succeed in the US, and we are very much looking forward to deepening our relationship with Blue Reef at this exciting juncture in their development,” he concluded.

ADI’s investment and further capital from M-Group, venture capitalists specialising in companies seeking international growth, injected $250,000 into Blue Reef to fund its initial US market entry. Blue Reef’s capital raising process and US Entry Programme has also been supported by the Victorian Government’s VicStart program and the Federal Government’s COMET (Commercialisation of Emerging Technologies Program).