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Founded in 2004, Reva has now raised $20 million in funding. Prior to the new Series B, Reva was backed solely by Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners, which both participated in the new Series B round, Schuster said. RFID technology has created a lot of buzz over the years as a way for businesses to keep track of inventory and supplies. A slew of venture-backed companies have been taking a stab at the market, the most notable being Alien Technology Corp., which is backed by some $243 million in funding from investors including New Enterprise Associates and Sevin Rosen Funds. Alien filed for, then withdrew, an IPO registration earlier this year. Schuster said most RFID companies so far have been software-based efforts to track disparate chips that often don't work well in large deployments. "Most of the companies have been glorified consulting companies ... no one was solving the network problems," Schuster said. By contrast, Schuster said, Reva has focused on the network level. The company develops an appliance that sits in an enterprise's network and connects data coming in via readers to relevant applications. While Schuster declined to comment on Reva's financial health, he said current customers include German retailer Metro AG and Hewlett Packard Co. Reva's teaming with Cisco may not be surprising. "We fit very closely into their [network-based] approach, nobody else does that," Schuster said. But having a major software company like SAP also backing the company is a major boost, he said. "SAP standing behind this will make our task a lot easier," Schuster said. As a result of the funding, Bob Tinker of Cisco Systems has joined Reva's board as an observer, as has SAP Ventures Investment Partner Jennifer Scholze. "We took a look at a lot of [RFID] companies out there," Scholze said, adding that Reva's approach "is different enough, and worked well enough that this is going to be a better play at getting an RFID implementation started." SAP Ventures has also funded RFID application developer T3Ci, alongside Bessemer Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. Scholze said that SAP was undeterred by Alien Technology's IPO falter. "That's a different enough case," she said, "the ocean is very big, and there is a ton of money that is going to be spent on [RFID] in coming years." Reva's technology has been compliant with SAP's Auto-ID infrastructure for one year now, Schuster said. SAP, the largest enterprise software vendor in the world, and Cisco, the networking goliath, have combined forces in the past, most recently with a marketing agreement related to selling IT management and regulatory compliance products. Both companies have also been active in promoting RFID.