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Print Edition StoriesWednesday, February 17, 2010
Tech Watch
Plixer's giant customers help spur 30% growth
By Rodney H. Brown
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For a small technology company like Sanford, Maine’s Plixer International Inc., landing giant customers such as Raytheon Co. or The Coca-Cola Co. means that CEO and president Michael Patterson can no longer just step out into his backyard and get in some rifle target practice during lunch, as he often did when the company was a startup.
Which is not to say Plixer is some backwoods operation. The 23-person company, which has since moved into an industrial park, last month rolled out version 7.5 of its network traffic analysis tool, Scrutinizer, which features the ability to analyze data streams from Cisco Systems Inc. devices that no other product can analyze, Patterson said. “Nobody else has it out there,” he said.
That type of Cisco traffic data is called NBAR, or Network Based Application Recognition, which is a type of deep-packet inspection that shows exactly what kind of application uses a particular packet of data.
To get the widest adoption of Scrutinizer, Plixer actually gives it away for free. Almost all functionality is available in the free version, but it is restricted to showing just 24 hours’ worth of activity. The paid analytics add-on costs between $2,000 to $9,000. Also, the NBAR analysis is not available in the free version, a strategy that Patterson says only makes sense given that Plixer has the corner on that market — for now.
“There are nights every single week where I don’t sleep because I am worried about someone coming along and kicking my butt,” he said.
Patterson started his technology path at former New Hampshire networking giant Cabletron Systems Inc., where, in addition to being a techie, he developed experience in sales. “My first job at Cabletron was in telemarketing,” he said.
But after climbing through the ranks in jobs that included training engineers on new Cabletron products, Patterson decided in 1998 it was time to go out on his own.
Plixer, hasn’t taken any venture capital, even though VC firms “call me weekly,” Patterson said. While he wouldn’t disclose revenue, he did say the company has been profitable since it launched.
Since the company introduced Scrutinizer in 2005, Plixer has been growing 20 percent to 30 percent per year, Patterson said. Recently Patterson brought aboard Tom Cote as director of business development to help build its partner strategy. Cote comes from a business-development role at Norwood’s Analog Devices Inc.
While Plixer is looking to boost growth through new partners, most of that growth has come from large companies, despite the fact that they aren’t the target of Plixer’s sales force.
“We target the small and medium-sized businesses, and the big ones keep buying,” Patterson said.
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