Recipe for growth
FierceTelecom: Certainly, MetaSwitch is not a small company, but it's also not as big as the behemoth large vendors you mentioned earlier. Do you think your size gives you the right agility to respond to the ever-evolving customer trends?
DeNuccio: It takes a few things to succeed with that kind of profile. It takes a strong financial foundation so you can still get a tier one carrier to buy products from you when they are new. You need a strong financial foundation first or you can't really play in the game, but you also need that agility and a formula to build a system of this complexity that's going to work and scale. You need multiple things to feel that this is a real opportunity to be in that position. It takes the financial foundation, the formula (which includes engineering expertise) and that agility to get it done so you can insert it into that window of opportunity fast enough to capture it from the big guys.
If you look at the mobile Internet today, the most important IP product is the SAE gateway. Ninety five percent plus marketshare of the System Architecture Evolution (SAE) gateway is either Redback or Starent. Both bought by those three vendors I mentioned before: Starent by Cisco and Redback by Ericsson. It's the most important IP product in the mobile Internet today. That technology came from startups, or at least nimble players like us.
FierceTelecom: So it's safe to say that wireless will be one of your big growth areas?
DeNuccio: We need to look at it from many different angles, but clearly the company before me was already driving from an application space with Unified Communications and messaging. I think we're well on our way there to having a position that we can exploit.
FierceTelecom: Along with providing network infrastructure, MetaSwitch has over the years added professional services to the mix. How much of a role will professional services play in the ongoing transformation of MetaSwitch?
DeNuccio: I think that another unique thing we have is a broad customer base in the tier 2-3 space. That gives us a unique position to supply a broader range of products and services than you would need for a global marketplace. That really falls under the strategy that means we're making sure we can be the critical supplier to that tier of customers and keep ownership of that position that we have in the market. We're looking at that differently than we might look at the globe, but really understanding how we position ourselves to capitalize on the unique channel and installation foundation we have with those guys. It comes down to that vs. a global opportunity in professional services.
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