Critical Links Attracts Funding to Accelerate Worldwide Sales and Marketing of edgeBOX “Business Gateway” Solution

New Jersey, USA, October 26th, 2007 – Critical Links (www.critical-links.com), an international networking technology company, today announced it has closed its Series A round of funding, receiving $5,7 million from European venture capital funds InovCapital, Change Partners and ASK/ISQ Capital.

The new funding enables Critical Links to accelerate sales and marketing activities worldwide, in order to fuel the continued market growth of its proven edgeBOX “Office in a Box” solution. The company is expanding its direct presence in the US market and increasing its investment in sales and marketing in Europe and in key emerging markets such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa.

Since its spin-off from high-growth European software engineering services company Critical Software in early 2006, Critical Links has successfully become a global player with the edgeBOX, a converged multi-function device or business gateway targeted at SMEs and branch offices, through resellers, distributors, telecom service providers and managed services providers. The company recently secured key partnerships with manufacturers and service providers in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Critical Links has successfully become a global player with the edgeBOX, a converged multi-function device or business gateway targeted at SMBs and branch offices

“edgeBOX is currently the most comprehensive, cost-effective multi-function device or “Office-in-a-Box” that consolidates Voice, Data, and IT at a price point accessible to the booming SME market” said Mr. João Carreira, Critical Links CEO. “The rapid customer and partner network growth demands a more aggressive expansion strategy. The new funds will enable us to expand faster in our target markets and extend our offerings and services to new markets”

So called “Multi-Service Business Gateways” or “Office-in-a-Box” devices are, according to high tech market research firm In-Stat, a fast-growth market, covering an estimated 35 million SME’s worldwide, that is set to reach $2.6 billion in 2011 worldwide (Multi-Service Business Gateways: Cisco under Attack, April 2007).

“We are very pleased to announce the closing of our investment in Critical Links, a company with all the conditions to be successful in the global market” said Mr. Luis Filipe Costa, CEO of InovCapital, on behalf of the investors. “In the global economy SME’s need to take advantage of the latest ICT trends, this is a huge market that is often overlooked by systems integrators, service providers and is now successfully being addressed by the edgeBOX solution”.

So called “Multi-Service Business Gateways” are a fast-growth market, covering an estimated 35 million SMB’s worldwide, that is set to reach $2.6 billion in 2011.

As a multi-function business gateway that consolidates data, voice and IT services for small and medium sized businesses, edgeBOX effectively replaces an average of 4 to 6 devices, by providing a fully featured IP-PBX, router (wired and wireless LAN), security platform (VPN, Firewall, anti-spam/virus, etc.), and file/print/email/web servers along with full network access control. The result is a dramatically simplified deployment and management environment for all networking services, with significantly lower total cost of ownership.

edgeBOX is distributed through channel partners (VARs, Systems Integrators, Service providers and OEMs) worldwide in the UK, Spain, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa and Thailand among others. edgeBOX has been identified as a key player in the emerging “Business Gateway” market by leading analyst house InStat and won the Best Broadband Appliance award at the World Broadband Forum in Madrid. It also recently won the prestigious Techworld UK “2007 Convergence Product of the Year” award, and the “2007 TMC Labs Innovation” award.