Carlyle, Novak Biddle Form Web Firm

Area firms Carlyle Venture Partners and Novak Biddle Venture Partners said yesterday that they formed a new company to capitalize on the country's transition to a second-generation Internet that will vastly expand the scope of the computer network.

Herndon-based Command Information will provide services to companies and government agencies adopting Internet Protocol Version 6, the new addressing system expected to increase by perhaps a thousand-fold the number of gadgets that can be hooked up to the Internet. Though Asia has been an eager and early user of the system, which has been available for years, the United States has been slower to adopt the technology.

But Carlyle Venture and Novak Biddle are betting that spending will explode as competitive pressures mount and government pushes to move agencies onto the new system by 2008 -- a situation reminiscent of the rush to install Y2K software in the late 1990s or the rapid proliferation of Internet companies during that decade.

Going against other consulting and software companies such as International Business Machines Corp. and BearingPoint Inc., Command's initial $20 million venture capital stake is likely to grow significantly as the company ramps up operations and buys other firms in the months ahead, officials at Carlyle and Novak Biddle said. Command made its first acquisition this week: Herndon-based business software development company Digital Focus Inc., which has 75 employees, was merged into Command.

Carlyle Venture is the venture capital unit of District-based private equity giant Carlyle Group. Novak Biddle, based in Bethesda, has been among the region's most active early-stage technology investors. The funds have teamed up before, to invest in D.C. software firm Blackboard Inc. and radio-frequency-identification firm Matrics Inc.

Though Carlyle and Novak Biddle are financing the effort, Command is the brainchild of Tom Patterson, its chief executive. Patterson is the former chief e-commerce strategist for IBM and ran Deloitte & Touche's security consulting practice in Europe before starting to put together Command's business plan a year ago.

"The idea has actually been percolating for 10 years," Patterson said yesterday. "But I did not factor in how long it takes for a new standard like this to evolve."

IPV6 is a system of Internet addressing -- the numbered sequence that allows different users and devices to identify and communicate with each other over the Web -- that will expand the number of addresses from the current 4.2 billion to more than 3 trillion. Some technologists estimate it could ultimately provide more than 35 trillion addresses.

The need for more addresses is driven not only by the explosion in online usage by individuals and companies but also by the expected growth of Internet-connected devices -- from obvious ones such as cell phones and home heating and security systems to possible control over in-transit raw materials, soda machines, or soldiers on the battlefield. Proponents say the new system also will allow greater flexibility and security and enable large companies to easily connect multiple business processes over the Internet.

The amount companies will spend to convert and develop new systems, however, is difficult to determine, Patterson said.

"We're using the McDonald's hamburger number: billions and billions," he said. "But it's difficult to estimate in reality . . . and a lot of this stuff is not going to happen over night. But it will happen."