Friday, October 3, 2008

Ipoque targets network space of Arbor, Starent

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Germany’s ipoque GmbH has launched its North American headquarters in Londonderry, N.H., throwing its lederhosen into the local bandwidth management ring with Arbor Networks Inc. and Starent Networks Inc.

To establish a foothold here, the 40-person startup has appointed Jim Peschek as vice president of sales for North America, and head of the local office. Peschek, a former sales executive of Burlington-based network security appliance maker Astaro Corp., expects to build the local office to five people by the end of the year.

Ipoque’s technology stems from the founders’ work at University of Leipzig, where CEO and co-founder Klaus Mochalski launched an open source project called IPP2P.org that analyzed network traffic, particularly peer-to-peer applications, and applied management bands to it. While the code was a moderate success among local universities working to keep music sharing and other applications from hogging bandwidth, executives felt there was a bigger business in it.

The company was founded in 2005 and soon landed its first major customer, a Portuguese Internet service provider, bringing in approximately $141,000. Additional ISPs and universities followed, allowing the company to grow organically, without outside funding. “The advantage we had was that we had a product before we formed the company,” said Mochalski.

While ipoque is focused primarily on the higher education and ISP markets, it faces several competitors in the industry. Locally, Lexington-based Arbor Networks, which got into the bandwidth management business by buying Merrimack, N.H.-based Ellacoya Networks earlier this year, is ipoque’s most significant competitor, said ipoque executives. Tewksbury’s Starent Networks Inc. makes products with similar functionality but with a focus on multiservice operators, and ipoque does not run into them in the marketplace, according to Peschek.