(Source: Irish Times)
By IAN CAMPBELL
TELECOMS : Hoping to hit a sweet spot in the communications
industry, Intune Networks has launched a product to help networks to
cope better
IF INTUNE NETWORKS hits its targets, the company could triple its
workforce in two years and go all the way to an initial public
offering in four, according to chief executive Tim Fritzley. A major
milestone on this ambitious road map took place in Dublin this week
when the company launched its Verisma product line at the TM Forum
conference, bringing Intune's technology to the marketplace after 10
years of research and development.
Scooping The Irish TimesInnovation of the Year 2011 award, Intune
has been identified as a rising star for pioneering technology that
enables network carriers to combat capacity issues and cope with
growing volumes of data traffic.
The company employed another 10 people this year taking the total
to 153, bucking economic trends because it hits a sweet spot in the
communications industry. Intune solves problems that arise from the
relentless growth of network traffic, on the consumer side with the
explosion in web-based video services and in business with the rise
of cloud computing.
"In their wildest dreams, carriers didn't envisage what the cloud
and web services would become," said Fritzley. "All of a sudden,
network predictability has gone out the window and they are
struggling with network and traffic planning."
At the core of the Verisma products is optical packet switch and
transport technology, facilitating what the industry calls "liquid
bandwidth" with a virtual network infrastructure that avoids
bottlenecks by making data traffic management more dynamic.
Since 1999, when founders John Dunne and Tom Farrell started to
develop the technology in a lab at University College Dublin,
demands on network capacity have grown dramatically, fuelled by the
rise of streaming video and the emergence of smartphones and tablets
that soak up rich media content over mobile as well as fixed
networks.
Even since Fritzley joined as chief executive in 2006, the
emergence of cloud computing has made its technology even more
relevant for service providers. Brought in to give the company some
commercial muscle, the former vice president of Microsoft TV is an
American who knows how to play up the value as well as the technical
benefits of Intune's technology.
His effortless sales patter touches every pain point that network
carriers suffer. "On the initial purchase cost, we are 30 to 60 per
cent cheaper than alternatives, and, year-on-year, we're close to 60
to 80 per cent cheaper on operational costs.