Some firms are in the fortunate position of not having to chase venture capital at all. The capital comes to them, rather than the other way around.

Enterprise software vendor Aurema Pty Ltd, which is headquartered in Sydney but has an office in Silicon Valley as well, is one such favoured contender. Aurema's lucrative technologies have already been successfully licensed to major server technology vendors such as Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Siemens, SGI, Cray and others.

The Intel64 approach came last year after an address to the Allen & Buckeridge 2000 technology conference in August by Aurema CEO Richard Osborne.

"We really were in the fortunate position that because of the company's track record and reputation, we were lucky enough to have a range of companies very actively interested in investing in us during the course of 2000," Osborne said.

"But the primary Intel contact occurred when I was speaking at that conference last year and Intel Capital expressed considerable interest in Aurema after hearing what I had to say about the company. They came up to me and wanted to meet us further and talk further."

The talks resulted in a major undisclosed cash injection for Aurema from the Intel 64 fund. Osborne would not be drawn on the value, or the size of the stake taken by Intel in Aurema. However, the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that the value of the deal is believed to be at the higher end of Intel's target investment range of between $2 million and $10 million.

"I can't comment on exact numbers, but it's a significant minority stake," Osborne said.

He also confirmed that the 58 percent stake of the majority shareholder, Allen & Buckeridge, which took the stake in 1998 after a $6.7 million investment, has "changed somewhat as a result of Intel's investment".

The Intel 64 fund targets investees which build on its Itanium IA-64 architecture chip technology. The system is being increasingly recognised globally as the chip platform favoured by the largest server computers.

As part of the Intel 64 deal, Aurema has agreed to a worldwide marketing deal for its core ARMtech technology, which enables mainframe servers to allocate resources according to a predetermined schedule. Osborne said Aurema will work with Intel to ensure that the resource management functionality provided by Aurema's ARMTech technology is available on IA-64 platforms.

New Version of ARMtech Planned

The Aurema investment was made partly to fund the company's commitment to develop an optimised version of the ARMTech resource management technology.

"We are working on a version of the technology that will be optimised for the IA64 program. We'd hope to have that on the market in the latter part of this year," Osborne said.

Intel will be a collaboration partner. "We see them as extremely helpful, but we will have many partners via whom we will market or OEM ARMTech."

Resource management is an important enabling technology for server consolidation, application service providers (ASPs) and internet service providers, especially those hosting multiple web sites on single servers.

ARMTech is a modular technology designed to integrate with an operating system to provide efficient resource consumption monitoring and effective resource allocation. ARMTech allows system administrators the means to distribute system resources according to a preset "policy". The policy determines what resource entitlement a program (or "process") will receive, when that resource is in demand.

Osborne said the technology is becoming critical to all server-based operating system environments, especially large-scale server consolidation, which is becoming pervasive in a climate of new pressure upon economic efficiency.

Osborne also said the Intel 64 cash injection will be used to further develop Aurema's core research and technology, enhanced investment in marketing infrastructure and enhanced globalisation of the company.

"We're already a global company, but we wish to develop the company further," Osborne said. "It's a general investment allocation process for those types of purposes, it's not earmarked for something in particular, although it's certainly the case that investment in Intel's IA64 technology will be a core part of it."

Aurema has about 50 staff in total and has doubled staffing levels since 1998.

Osborne, who took over as CEO in 1998 after the Allen & Buckeridge cash infusion, renamed the company Aurema in 1999 (previously it was Softway, set up in 1986). The company's languishing fortunes turned around after rationalisation, a narrower focus on core business and a lucrative licensing deal of its old technology to Sun Microsystems. BRW magazine has reported that the Sun Microsystems deal alone has delivered more than $33 million to Aurema. The result has been a windfall for Allen & Buckeridge and another significant shareholder, Chris Maltby, who still owns a significant stake.

Nice Returns Paid to Investors

"Our company paid a substantial dividend to investors in August 2000, which is extremely rare for a company of our size," Osborne said. "We're very proud of our recent earnings and cash generating capacity. We really as a private company don't discuss our market capitalisation, but I can tell you that the valuation of the company has grown very significantly in the last two to three years. We're pleased with our progress to date."

The ARMtech technology has patents pending in the US and Australia.

"It's really just to protect our intellectual property, to protect what we think are some extremely valuable and powerful technologies in the field of resource management," he said.

"The technology we've developed is very active and is part of the world of the server marketplace today. We think it's certainly a technology whose time has come and whose market is growing very rapidly."