In the telecom industry, change is not only good but mandatory for survival. The industry can shift on a dime, but Continuous Computing has built its reputation over the last decade by always staying one step ahead.
Founded in 1998, Continuous Computing is based in San Diego, has R&D facilities in China and India, and has sales, marketing, and small customer support sites located globally. The company is 100% focused on the telecom market, providing embedded technologies and solutions to the network equipment providers that service the telecom industry. It has customers in the Asia Pacific, European, and North American markets including Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung, Aeroflex, Veraz, Cisco, NEC, and Motorola.
Staying relevant
One of the main ways Continuous Computing has grown and expanded its capabilities is through acquisition. In 2003, the company acquired the Trillium protocol software business from Intel. In 2005, the company bought key assets from UP Technologies, a Chinese R&D and operations company that serviced the enterprise market. It became Continuous Computing’s beachhead into that geographic region and provided a cost-effective development and operations center.
“I don’t believe any business has the expertise to do everything, so generally we look for a company that actually has technology service capabilities we don’t and a synergistic and cultural fit with the company so our goals can be aligned quickly and market-focused,” said Mike Dagenais, president and CEO. “An acquisition typically addresses our market space but is complementary to what we do.”
In fact, Dagenais said the industry as a whole has moved away from being completely vertical. Large network equipment providers like Alcatel-Lucent no longer have the expertise or desire to do everything themselves, so what they need is best-of-breed technology components they can integrate into their products to provide a more cost-effective development solution. That creates a market opportunity for Continuous Computing. The company differentiates itself through the development of unique technologies it believes will be needed in next generation products that large equipment providers will be required to deploy in service provider networks.
“We look at market trends, and with our Trillium software technology, we address all the wireless and traditional signaling and telephony infrastructure,” said Dagenais. “We have a good idea of the services and capabilities of products required in the network so we position our capabilities to the equipment providers and let them know we can solve their problems. No matter the product or technology, software or hardware, we can actually put our technology into their product and help them get to market much faster.”
In addition to large equipment providers, smaller new entrants and innovators in the market can benefit from Continuous Computing’s expertise. For that market, the company sells an integrated platform that brings all the hardware elements and a lot of the software elements together to provide them with a prepackaged solution that the customer mates with their application, which allows them to go to trial and get to market quickly.
Reading the trends
Currently, the company is focused on what it believes are the key technologies that will be the underpinning of the market going forward, such as the wireless software technology that will be required to deliver Long Term Evolution (LTE) and wireless broadband, as well as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI).
“With the amount of traffic coming into the network from wireless applications, especially video applications, there is a demand for fast pipes that can deliver content quickly and secure pipes so data is managed well and quality of service is guaranteed,” Dagenais said. “We sell to our larger customers directly and have a series of channels we use in all of the other geographies, a dozen or so direct sales people but probably two dozen channels identifying opportunities where our key focused technologies may be appropriate.”
One thing the company knows it needs to succeed as a global company is an IT infrastructure that facilitates the sharing and storing of information and the tracking of activity. It has set up an infrastructure of servers, communications, links, processes, tools, MRP and CRM systems that allow it to track data online from anywhere.
It is also heavily focused on R&D. Typically, two-thirds of its staff is involved in R&D initiatives. It invests heavily in wireless technology and Trillium software, and on the platform side, the company is investing almost exclusively in DPI solutions and the integration of those technologies into systems it can deliver to customers.
“Staying ahead is a challenge. If you read some of the reports out there, they are saying we’ll have things like 667 exabytes of traffic by 2013,” said Dagenais, noting that this would be a realization of what the industry thought would happen in the telecom boom 10 years ago. “This time there is real data traffic that is driving the use of the network, peer-to-peer traffic is exploding, and it’s all going wireless.”
As wireless technologies continue to take hold as the primary way people communicate, there will be huge demand for wireless bandwidth. Because capital markets won’t support the same level of investment they would have 10 years ago, Continuous Computing becomes even more important as a resource its customers can use to help manage bandwidth and traffic more efficiently. That is why the company made the conscious decision a couple of years ago to focus its investments on wireless technology and DPI.
“We were trying to be at the forefront of LTE 4G technologies,” said Dagenais, noting that the strategy is paying off. “In the market right now, the only two announced LTE trials will happen in the fourth quarter of 2009 and first quarter of next year, and we are supplying some of our products to both of those trials.”
Continuous Computing’s leadership team is well aware that its industry is one of constant change. The company must re-examine its strategy, look at the customers it is attracting, and where its technology is being deployed, and continuously reassess itself. It has strategy reviews quarterly and is always open to the possibility of reinventing itself. Marketing, for instance, has changed. The social media explosion has made the company aware of the need to market itself at least partially by being content providers and publishers to be in a thought leadership position.
“We have people look at analyst reports to see what is going on and determine the technology trends. In the next two years, 80% to 90% of our growth will be based on the evolution of wireless, providing smart and secure pipes, and DPI capabilities,” Dagenais said. “That will be our growth engine going forward.”
by Eric Slack
via Continuous Computing: Always Changing – American Executive
