Appian Communications, a Boxborough, Mass., startup developing infrastructure to help telecom carriers add cash-generating services to broadband networks, has signed a distribution deal with Sumitomo Corp. of Japan it says will be worth millions of dollars. The reseller deal with Sumitomo, a trading company with more than 750 subsidiaries, will allow Appian to break into the Japanese and East Asian telecom markets quickly and with broad distribution power.
Japan is in the process of building a nationwide fiber-optic network.
Sumitomo and one of its venture capital subsidiaries, Presidio Venture Partners, have also made an undisclosed investment in Appian. The platform is in beta tests with more than a half-dozen broadband carriers, and Appian expects to put it on the market before the end of the year. The Sumitomo deal is its first outside the United States.