Utility Telecom Group Expands in the Central Valley

Central Valley Fund Provides Financing

Stockton, California – August 4, 2017 – Utility Telecom has recently completed its acquisition of Black Cloud Networks (BCN), a Stockton, CA-based provider of VoIP business telephone systems.

The acquisition of the telecommunications service provider fits into Utility Telecom’s offerings of Hosted PBX service, business internet service, and enhanced voice services for businesses throughout California and Nevada.

“This expansion of our existing presence in the Central Valley makes Utility an even stronger communications partner for business customers seeking telephone and high-bandwidth network solutions with unmatched reliability,” said Jason Mills, CEO, and founder of Utility Telecom Group.

“Our acquisition of Black Cloud Networks is an investment to strengthen our infrastructure and better serve the needs of customers with our network expertise,” Mills said. “BCNs commitment to exceeding customer expectations is the foundation to long-term customer relationships, which is what Utility Telecom is all about. We are pleased to have Black Cloud as part of the Utility Telecom family.”

According to José Blanco, a partner at the Central Valley Fund, “Jason and his team continue to build Utility Telecom into a first-class regional player. Having bootstrapped the Company over 20 years ago and providing local phone service, to becoming a leading full-service telecom service provider in Central California”. Blanco continued, “Telecom services for small businesses are very fragmented and rapidly evolving as customers are looking for more bandwidth and responsive service offerings. The Utility team is well poised to capitalize on these opportunities”.

About Utility Telecom Group

Founded in Stockton, California in 1996, Utility Telecom is one of the largest regional providers of networking, communications, and technology solutions in the California Central Valley and broader California and Nevada. The company provides critical data networking and unified communications to over 5,000 business customers in California and Nevada, including enterprise, government, and wholesale customers. The utility has implemented many fully redundant networks, supplying its customers with lightning-fast Internet speeds over Fiber, ADSL, Ethernet over Copper, and classic T1 service, linking their regional Points-of-Presence with the public Internet peering points.

Utility Telecom is committed to providing businesses with the connections and bandwidth they need to be up and running with the most cutting-edge technology and great customer service. For more information, please visit http://www.uyt.co.

About Central Valley Fund (CVF)

The Central Valley Fund was established in 2005 to finance later-stage growth and buyout opportunities of small businesses through mezzanine debt and preferred equity investments with over $325 million in committed capital. The fund has offices in California – Davis, Fresno, and San Diego – and the Pacific Northwest in Portland, OR – to attend to small businesses seeking capital. It is focused on making investments in California’s Central Valley and throughout the Western United States. For more information, please visit www.cvfcapitalpartners.com

For more information, please contact CVF:

José Blanco

Managing Partner

CVF Capital Partners, Inc.

Tel: 530-757-7004 ext. 227

Email: jblanco@cvdcapitalpartners.com

Jim Allred

Associate

CVF Capital Partners, Inc.

Tel: 530-757-7004 ext. 222

Email: jallred@cvfcapitalpartners.com

Waterman granted over $100,000 from California Employment Training Panel

From the Foothills Sun-Gazette

http://www.thesungazette.com/article/business/2017/06/21/waterman-granted-over-100000-from-california-employment-training-panel/

Exeter — Finding the right person for the right job in an organization is only half of the battle. The other half is training them. On a tight budget, companies find it strenuous to not only keep up with day-to-day tasks but training someone on their job throws a wrench in the whole thing. Even worse, when an employee is not trained appropriately they make mistakes along the way that are not necessarily their fault. And while that may be the case for a lot of businesses in the area, one business is being granted a break.

The State of California’s Employment Training Panel (ETP) has granted Waterman Industries $117,000 to enhance and enrich the skills of its local workforce.

The ETP was created in 1982 and is funded through an employer-paid payroll tax called the Employment Training Tax. The ETP’s financial support to California businesses helps in strengthening workplace knowledge, productivity, and competitiveness by empowering its workers and creating a healthy labor economy.

The ETP’s allocation of funds to Waterman Industries will allow the company to further reinforce its continuous improvement initiatives already underway. “We want to invest in our employees to enhance their abilities and their proficiency with the latest manufacturing best practices,” said Marcus Shiveley, president/CFO of Waterman Industries. “As a California-based company with global competitors, we’re committed to holding ourselves to the highest of standards in quality, timely delivery, and service.”

The company currently employs over 150 at its engineering and manufacturing center in Exeter. All of the company’s employees will participate in the benefits of the training program.

About Waterman Industries

Waterman Industries is a recognized leader in water control products for water treatment, wastewater, agriculture, rural water delivery, hydro-power, and flood control management. Waterman is a leading provider of water control gates, valves, automated controls, and accessories to these markets and key customers such as government agencies (water districts, utilities, flood control districts) and agricultural water users (growers, cooperatives).

The company was founded by W.A. Waterman in 1912. In 1953, the company began production of large and complex cast iron sluice gates, fabricated slide gates and radial gates in Exeter, California. In 2015,

the company was acquired by The Central Valley Fund, a private equity firm that invests in promising mid-market firms and positions them for rapid growth. For more information on Waterman Industries visit www.WatermanUSA.com

LightRiver Software, Acquires Unique Computer Services to Drive Multi-Vendor Transport Network Management

CVF invests alongside Plexus Capital into portfolio company, LightRiver Technologies, to fund the acquisition of Unique Computer Services

CONCORD, CA – June 6, 2017 – LightRiver Software, Inc., along with sister Company, LightRiver Technologies, Inc., the leader in Factory Built Network® design and commissioning of multi-vendor packet-optical networks, announces today that it has acquired Unique Computer Services, Inc., a pioneer and industry leader in the development and support of multi-vendor, transport network systems software, with hundreds of thousands of nodes under management.

Unique’s industry-leading product, netFLEX®, enables transport network operators of all sizes to efficiently provision and manage anything from a few to several hundred thousand network elements, with FCAPS support across a broad range of legacy and next-generation vendors and devices. Added to LightRiver’s Transport Lab, Network Factory preferred access to leading equipment vendors, and ongoing investment in Tier 1 Software Defined Networking integration, this combination will expedite the benefits operators can gain from next-generation transport technologies and network orchestration, with Webscale 2.0 elasticity. Additionally, the combination leverages aggregated resources to provide a single entity for the design, delivery, and management of complex, constantly evolving software controlled transport networks.

Carrier Grade Network Operators need to continuously improve the flexibility, capability, and stability of their networks while reducing operating costs and service delays. The netFLEX® system provides an L0/L1/L2 Transport Network Controller, either on-premises or in a hosted cloud model, for multi-vendor management across a wide range of technology domains – WDM, OTN, SONET, TDM, Ethernet; a wide range of leading vendors, including Adva, Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent), Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, Fujitsu, Infinera, and others, and can act as a single platform for Transport Domain Management and Services provisioning and SDN Multi-Domain Service Orchestration enablement.

“LightRiver is the leader in integrating optical solutions for mission-critical transport network operators of every type, so this is a perfect fit,” says Michael Leddy / Co-Founder and President at Unique. “The closer marriage of vendor-neutral, hardware and software integration will provide clear and immediate benefits to clients and vendors alike.”

“LightRiver and Unique are committed to serving our customers’ needs,” adds Glenn Johansen, LightRiver CEO. “Simplifying and accelerating migration to next-generation packet-optical networks, with the added power, flexibility, and efficiency that software automation will drive for legacy, current, and next-generation transport technologies must be our mission.”

Ed McNulty, Managing Partner at CVF Capital Partners added, “We are pleased to be able to support Light River in this strategic acquisition, as the company continues to drive a best in class solution for its customers”.

Combining multiple functions from multiple vendors into a single, integrated, hardware/software ecosystem provides network operators with a return on investment driven by the speed of delivery, improved network operations without vendor lock-in, and provides transport vendors a knowledgeable and friendly partner enabling nearer-term packet-optical migration and SDN instantiation, with access to domain management friendly to legacy network elements, with open interfaces and programmable API’s for the future.

The LightRiver Companies

The LightRiver Companies comprise the premier integration solution for next-generation, multi-vendor, Factory Built Networks® and netFLEX®, vendor-neutral, Transport Domain Orchestration Software solutions. LightRiver is an expert in Packet Optical, DWDM/ROADM, MPLS, and Carrier Ethernet systems and designs, engineers, commissions, manages and supports next-generation, software-controlled, transport networks for mission-critical clients that require the highest capacity, reliability, resiliency, and manageability that today’s optical communications technology can deliver. LightRiver delivers unique value with turnkey hardware and software solutions, carrier-grade quality, and unparalleled customer care in multi-technology networking. For more information, please visit www.lightriver.com.

About Unique Computer Services, Inc.

Unique is a pioneer and industry-leading provider of multi-vendor multi-technology telecommunications management software. Unique’s products enable companies of all sizes to efficiently manage up to several hundred thousand network elements, across a broad range of vendors. Unique provides all development for its products as well as the services needed to deploy and maintain them. Visit www.unique-inc.com for more information.