SLATTERY'S MEGAPORT TO LIST ON ASX

THERE'S soon to be a new software company on Brisbane's ASX block, with Megaport today lodging a prospectus with ASIC to raise $25 million and applying to list on the ASX.

The software-based elastic connectivity provider was founded in 2013 by leading technology entrepreneur and its current executive chairman, Bevan Slattery, with the aim of becoming a global leader in the fast-growing elastic interconnection services market.

Megaport's Offer is fully underwritten by Morgans Corporate Limited and will see the company commence trading on the ASX around mid-December this year.

There are a total of 20 million shares under offer at a price of $1.25 per share.

Slattery says Megaport cuts out the middleman, so companies no longer need to purchase long term, fixed bandwidth circuits between data centres and their cloud providers.

"Megaport has developed a platform that uses Software Defined Networking (SDN) to enable our customers to provision secure, dedicated, and highly scalable circuits otherwise known as 'elastic interconnects' between their network and other networks connected to the Megaport Fabric," says Slattery.

"With Megaport, customers can provision elastic interconnects for as long as a year and as short as one day, as slow as one megabit per second or as fast as 100 gigabits per second."

The company began operations in January 2014 and now operates in 34 data centres across six markets in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong. It now has over 200 active customers and has partnered with some of the world's major cloud service providers, network operators and content providers.

Megaport CEO Denver Maddux (pictured) says the IPO would deepen the company's platform in existing markets and aid expansion into new key markets within North America, Europe and Asia.

An IPO intends to take this number up to 45 data centres in areas including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto, London, Dublin, Amsterdam and Stockholm.

Maddux believes the company is at 'the centre of a revolution'.

"This is a tremendously exciting time for Megaport as I believe we are at the centre of a revolution brought about by the rise of software defined networking and cloud computing," he says.

Founder Bevan Slattery is also the founder of listed company NEXTDC (ASX: NXT) and PIPE Networks, which was sold to TPG for $420 million in 2010.

He most recently founded Superloop Limited (ASX: SLC), which listed on the ASX earlier this year following a successful IPO that raised $17.5 million.