This article was published on May 29, 2013

Deutsche Telekom’s VC arm leads $13.6m investment into ‘game-changing’ cloudpaging startup Numecent


Deutsche Telekom’s VC arm leads $13.6m investment into ‘game-changing’ cloudpaging startup Numecent

Numecent, a startup that has been developing “friction-free digital software delivery” via its proprietary cloudpaging technology, has announced it has closed a substantial $13.6m funding round led by T-Venture – the VC arm of Deutsche Telekom. This takes it total funding to date to more than $30m.

We first covered Numecent back in March 2012 just as it launched out of stealth. The company’s much-hyped cloudpaging technology has been touted as the successor to streaming, though it was shrouded in mystery up until its unveiling last year. Before today, it had raised a $10m Series-A funding round from unnamed investors, in addition to $7.5m in seed funding.

In a nutshell, cloudpaging promises to reduce the digital delivery time of any native software and non-linear content by between twenty and one hundred times, by ‘virtualizing’ the content.

Huh?

This virtualizing means that the process divides the asset into small fragments called ‘pages’ on the server-side which are then fetched ‘on demand’ over HTTP/HTTPS by a Virtual Memory Management unit (MMU) on the client. It then begins executing inside a sandbox without installation.

In practical terms, this means that users don’t have to wait for, say, a 10GB download and can start consuming the content in as little as 100Mb and never have to confront installation or network resource issues. This bodes well for cloud-gaming.

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The company’s primary customers are Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Enterprises and, of course telcos. With Deutsche Telekom leading the latest investment round through its T-Venture off-shoot, this lends further credence to Numecent’s model.

“Numecent has a potentially game-changing new technology with a huge ‘wow’ factor,” explains Dr. Aleksandar Mitrovic, Senior Vice President for Technology and Platforms at Deutsche Telekom’s Product & Innovation division.

“We are delighted to support them with this investment through our T-Venture subsidiary. As Telcos around the world evolve to become Cloud services providers for consumers, SMBs and enterprises alike, disruptive technologies such as Numecent’s cloudpaging will offer unique differentiation opportunities and compelling benefits for our users.”

In terms of how Numecent will use this latest cash injection, the company says it plans to make cloudpaging “pervasive and woven into the fabric of ISV, Teclo and MSP clouds.” In real terms, the money will be used to expand sales, marketing and engineering, as make cloudpaging available on Linux, Android and other mobile platforms.

“The way users interact with and use native applications has hardly changed since downloads and software installations were inflicted on users decades ago,” says Osman Kent, co-founder and CEO of Numecent.

“We believe cloudpaging is poised to change that for the better as the industry embraces friction-free and on-demand delivery models.”

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.