SAN JOSE - Avenda Systems, Inc. today announced it has completed a $5 million Series B round of funding from leading venture capital firm OVP Venture Partners. The funding will be used to further product development and to grow the sales and marketing organization.

Avenda Systems was founded in 2006 to address the emerging demand for comprehensive network policy management solutions that are a quantum improvement over the solutions currently on the market. By leveraging the capabilities of the network infrastructure, Avenda's products provide the necessary converged policy framework that simultaneously preserves customers' existing infrastructure investments and enables the capabilities of new infrastructure investments as these are deployed in the enterprise.

Avenda Systems is led by Krishna Prabhakar who has over 18 years of experience in the systems and networking industry, including founding two successful start-ups prior to Avenda.

Mark Ashida, Managing Director with OVP Venture Partners and former General Manager of Windows Enterprise Networking at Microsoft Corp., will join the Avenda board of directors. Mr. Ashida has served in executive positions in several companies, launched three companies himself, and currently sits on several boards. At Microsoft, he drove the development of Network Access Protection (NAP) which is shipping in Windows Server 2008.

"We are very excited to invest in Avenda and its advanced policy management solution," said Mr. Ashida. "It became clear to me at Microsoft that the enterprises were demanding more fine grained resource and admissions control which could combine identity management with resource access control. Those demands require a more sophisticated rules engine such as eTIPS to allow more tunable decisions and tight integration with network vendors. Avenda has shown through working closely with Microsoft and Cisco the ability to work with the industry leaders to bring to market an easy-to-use yet sophisticated policy management solution."

"We're delighted to partner with OVP," said Mr. Prabhakar. "Mark has an outstanding background in our product space, and we welcome his participation and contribution on our board of directors."

About Avenda Systems, Inc.

Avenda Systems, Inc. is a provider of identity and policy management systems. The California-based Corporation has its development centers in Santa Clara, California, and Bangalore, India. For additional information please visit www.avendasys.com

About OVP Venture Partners

For 25 years, OVP Venture Partners has led the drive into new, high-growth technology markets in the Pacific Northwest. OVP's record of 52 liquidity events -- including 22 IPOs -- leads the region. OVP has over $750 million in capital under management and is currently investing its seventh fund. The firm concentrates on opportunities at the intersection of technology's next big waves and the foundational strengths native to the region. OVP has offices in Seattle, WA and Portland, OR and focuses on investments in communications, software, digital media, cleantech, security, semiconductors, digital biology, and nanotechnology.