Monday, March 18, 2002

Software

Intelliden's new software ready to help set up IP networks

By Todd Neff

Intelliden has emerged from stealth mode with software the company says will help cost-focused telecommunications carriers cut the time and expense of setting up their IP networks.

The Colorado Springs company has scored $25 million in venture capital in two years. Its 35-person development team, led by former WorldCom executives, has been working quietly on software designed to automate the unwieldy and labor-intensive process of configuring IP network hardware at telecommunications carriers and large enterprises.

Despite the financial plight of the telecom sector, IP networks continue to grow briskly.

The fruits of this labor are the Intelliden R10 and R30 software packages. They were designed to streamline what Intelliden Chief Executive Officer Dale Hecht called the manual and error-prone configuration of Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks routers and switches that comprise 95 percent of the world's IP network equipment. "The existing pro-cess is very ad hoc," he said. "People are configuring products by hand."

Hecht said the company has been in trials with several major telcos for nearly a year.

Manually configuring one's VCR or DVD player to display, say, the correct date is one thing. It's quite another to customize the hardware at the nodes of IP networks, which can include hundreds or even thousands of individual routers and switches that need significant configuring to function properly.

This sort of configuration takes about 45 percent of a network engineer's time, according to Hecht.

He previously was vice president of enterprise data and management systems at WorldCom. Hecht, Glen Tindal, once responsible for WorldCom's internal network and systems architecture, and Kevin Burns, a WorldCom vice president of strategy, knew well the problems associated with large-scale network setup. In spring 2000, they decided to start a company that focused narrowly on software that would address the problem.

Tindal is now Intelliden's chief technical officer, with Burns serving as chief marketing officer. They signed John Gerdelman, former president of MCI's global network and IT divisions, as chairman and John Strassner, former Cisco Fellow and the inventor of Directory Enabled Networks, as chief strategy officer. They landed former MCI chief Gerald H. Taylor and Juniper Networks founding officer Steven Haley as board members.

These men all saw the potential in Intelliden's proposed solution to a very complex problem. "Different devices have different versions of operating systems," Hecht said. "An engineer has to know what box he's configuring and what operating system it's running."

An engineer, he said, can manage only 100 or so routers, and must configure them one at a time, often writing customized scripts in text editors reminiscent of the old MS-DOS. Service-related outlays cost four to eight times the cost of the hardware for a period of three years, Hecht said.

Hecht said Intelliden assembled a team from two different disciplines: senior network engineers and software developers. They settled in Colorado Springs because, Hecht said, they liked the climate as well as the depth of talent in both of these technical areas.

They determined that the software should automatically configure myriad network equipment through a single Web interface. It should also establish and enforce ground rules for workflow management and business rules. "Today, engineers have either total access or nothing," Hecht said. "The workflow engine will require that different sorts of changes have different approvals."

A regular network engineer might change an edge router with one level of approval. For a core router, the change might require a senior engineer plus approval by the departmental vice president.

The system also validates that changes actually happened, according to Hecht. The R30 system, built on the R10, adds interfaces to network operation support systems.

Larry Goldman, an analyst with RHK in Chicago, said Intelliden's software simplifies what is for most service providers a manual process, a problem addressed to a lesser extent by Waltham, Mass.-based GoldWire Technology's element management software. Goldman said "lower-level tools" provided by hardware manufacturers such as Cisco and Juniper are what carriers use to configure software. These, he said, were designed more for the smaller networks of enterprises than for carriers.

Colorado has emerged as somewhat of a center for telecommunications network software, with Intelliden joining companies such as Englewood's Astracon and Westminster-based Connexn Technolo-gies in developing software to boost network efficiency and lower costs. "Between Qwest/US West, cable companies and satellite companies, there is a tremendous amount of network domain expertise in Colorado, and you add to that all the software talent," said James Conboy, a partner at Denver's Wolf Ventures, an investor in Connexn.

On the demand side, Conboy said funding has been shut off to communications providers, and they must "monetize what (they) have to drive revenue and margins."

For software companies, Conboy said this means solving a big problem experienced by the majority in the industry.

In Goldman's judgment, Intelliden is on the right track. "They've done a pretty good job in aligning with what's needed, and service providers are willing to spend money on it."