Los Altos-based Fireclick announced the closing of its Series C today, but if the company's executives are at all as predictive as its caching technology they already knew it was coming.

The round brought in an additional $13.5 million to the Internet infrastructure developer, with a little help from Cisco Systems, which participated in the round.

Developed by a small group of Stanford graduates with a penchant for statistics, Fireclick's flagship server-based software (called Blueflame) analyzes the traffic patterns of consumer-focused commerce sites in an attempt to download the "most likely" page elements to a consumer's cache, thereby speeding up the download time. In other words, the software attempts to predict where a consumer will click next, and preloads that page (hopefully) before they actually go there.

The funding, according to CEO Ram Srinivasan, will be used primarily to improve on Fireclick's physic abilities.

"The collective base of knowledge, leadership and funding affords us the ability to push the envelope in developing and delivering world-class solutions for our eBusiness customers," he says. "Fireclick is beginning the new millennium on stronger and higher ground, driven by a tremendous market opportunity for our products and service."

The Yankee Group's Neal Goldman agrees. He says that by focusing on the "last mile" and providing better ways to scale Web sites, Fireclick's products can give end-users prime end-to-end Web performance, an obvious imperative to any successful eCommerce venture.

"We've seen the content delivery market explode over the last year," says Goldman, Director of Internet Computing Strategies at the Yankee Group. "End-users want better performance, just as Web sites want better ways to scale capacity."

Previous investors Menlo Ventures and Atlas Venture also participated in the round.

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