It's Going to Be an ipVerse Universe
by Jon Hegranes
January 17, 2001 GMT
Switches didn’t always use to be soft. There are the ones your dads made you go yank off a tree before beating time, and then there are the ones that Nortel and Lucent make. Thanks to a group of innovative and contrarian entrepreneurs, however, soft switches built by ipVerse are the new buzz and they’re stealing the thunder away from typical IPO favorites.
Three years ago, ipVerse co-founders Gursharan Sidhu and Vijay Nadkarni noticed the telecom infrastructure revolution, but went a different direction. ipVerse focused in on what software could do for converged networks instead of hardware, and the result has been $42m in financing from some of the biggest VCs on the planet.
Dedicated hardware, on which most of today’s switching is done, costs upwards of 50% more than soft switching. Besides the cost savings, soft switching can handle today’s newest applications, like video, far better than hardware can.
ipVerse's main product - ControlSwitch, which acts as an operating system - easily adapts into existing networks with its open, multi-protocol call control system. It also has simple web-based tools, where SIP and XML interfaces make service providers job a pleasure because of the ease that new voice, data, etc. applications can be developed and deployed.
Great technology alone will not get typical first-round-only VCs pounding down your door during the third round. The reason ipVerse has accomplished this feat is because so many companies are already flocking towards its products. ipVerse has alliances with such goliaths as Cisco [CSCO: Nasdaq] and Sun Microsystems [SUNW: Nasdaq], as well as many other upcoming telecom giants. More importantly, however, ipVerse has paying customers, including Electric Lightwave [ELIX: Nasdaq], Teleocity [TLCT: Nasdaq], and Tuesday signed a deal with Illuminent [ILUM: Nasdaq] where ipVerse’s ControlSwitch will be used throughout Illuminent’s North American network.
We expect more and more telecoms to jump onboard the ipVerse universe basically because there isn’t much stopping companies from saving money and improving productivity. This means an IPO shouldn’t be too far down the road, but profitability will have to be within reach.
streetadvisor.com
Not heard of the soft switch before.
Jack |
