Hammerhead Systems announced $30 million in new funding today, bringing the four-year-old equipment vendor's total funding to $80 million.

Though all of the company's existing vendors participated in the C-series round, it was led by new investor Silver Creek Ventures and joined by another new investor, Apex Venture Partners.

Hammerhead will use the new funds to expand sales, marketing and customer support as well as accelerate product development and scale manufacturing.

"We're looking to do a lot of hiring--engineering, operations, support, sales," a company spokesman said, adding that the company is looking to increase its 80-person workforce by more than 25%.

In 2004, Hammerhead introduced what it called a "layer 2.5 aggregation" platform, the HSX 6000 switch, to help carriers migrate to Ethernet services. Last year the company added support for IPTV applications to the platform.

In June 2005, a reseller agreement Hammerhead had established with Fujitsu Network Communications a year earlier expanded to become an original equipment manufacturer partnership. Fujitsu now sells the HSX 6000 as its own Flashwave 6400 Layer 2.5 aggregation switch.