Metaswitch

Metaswitch Networks

Type	Private[1]
Industry	Telecommunications[2]
Founded	United Kingdom (1981)[3][4]
Founder	Ian S. Ferguson[3][4]
Headquarters	London, UK
Number of locations	8+ (2010)[5]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Martin Lund, CEO Graeme MacArthur, EVP Martin Taylor, CTO Tom Cronan, CFO John Lazar, Chairman
Products	Software solutions for service providers, network protocol stacks for equipment manufacturers[2]
Revenue	US$156 million (2011)[6]
Number of employees	700 as of October 2011[7]
Website	www.metaswitch.com

Coordinates: 51°39′10″N 0°5′16″W / 51.65278°N 0.08778°W

Metaswitch Networks (commonly Metaswitch) is a private UK-based company that designs, develops, manufactures, and markets telecommunications software to communication service providers, equipment manufacturers and large enterprises.

The Company

Metaswitch head office in Enfield, UK

Corporate history

Metaswitch (formerly Data Connection Ltd) was founded in 1981 by seven former IBM employees led by Ian Ferguson, who remains on the board of directors.^[3][4][8] The company's earliest business areas included IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and retail point of sale systems. In the 1990s, the company began developing network protocol software.^[3]

In 2000, the company launched the Metaswitch brand, which provided softswitches and network management systems designed to enable telephone service providers to migrate to Voice over IP (VoIP) networks while still supporting legacy telephone technologies.^[3] By 2008, the Metaswitch division was responsible for 78% of the company’s revenue.^[9]

In April 2009, the company announced intentions to consolidate all of its products and business operations under the Metaswitch brand, with two business units: the Carrier Systems Division and Network Protocol Division.^[10] In October 2009, the company rebranded itself as Metaswitch Networks, to reflect the growing focus on the products and services that it sells to telephone service providers.^[11]

In August 2011, the company formally changed its name from Data Connection Ltd to Metaswitch Networks Ltd.^[12]

Customers

Metaswitch claims more than 1,000 network operator and network equipment manufacturer customers, including Tier 1 service providers, cable operators, and independent operating companies (IOCs).^[13][14][15] Notable customers include AT&T, British Telecom (BT), Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Charter Communications, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, EarthLink, FairPoint, Frontier, Inmarsat, Mediacom, Sprint Nextel, TDS, Telefónica, Telekom Austria Group, Tiscali and Windstream.^[16]

Locations

Metaswitch has main offices in London, UK;^[5] San Francisco, California;^[17] Reston, Virginia; Richardson, Texas; Mexico City and Singapore.^[18]

Acquisitions

In March 2010, the firm acquired AppTrigger Inc, a provider of Service Broker solutions in Richardson, TX.^[19] In April 2011, it acquired Colibria AS, a provider of Rich Communication Suite (RCS) software in Oslo, Norway.^[20]

Ownership and investors

In 1987, Metaswitch established the Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) to hold shares of the company on behalf of the employees, which enabled company-wide profit sharing.^[21][22]

In January 2008 Francisco Partners, a private equity firm, and Sequoia Capital, a venture capitalist firm, invested an undisclosed sum in Metaswitch.^[23][24]

Products

Metaswitch designs, sells and supports IP multimedia communications software for network operators of all sizes and types. Its products include session border controllers, telephony application servers, media gateways, desktop and mobile unified communications (UC) software clients and tools to help operators manage and analyze their networks.^[25]

Voice and VoIP applications

Metaswitch provides a range of telephony application server and switching products for service providers who are building voice networks using IP, modernizing legacy voice networks or deploying new voice applications.^[26]

• The MetaSphere MTAS platform provides voice and video applications, including unified messaging and dynamic call control.^[27][28]
• The Universal Media Gateway supports TDM media over legacy access and trunk network connections.^[29][30]
• The Integrated Softswitch supports media and call control functions. It is intended for service providers who want to replace their telephony switches or provide VoIP services.^[31][32]
• The MetaSphere Media Resource Server provides support for recorded announcements and other media functions in VoIP networks.^[33]

SIP infrastructure

Metaswitch’s SIP infrastructure components are designed to enable telephone service providers to migrate to IP networks.^[34]

• Perimeta is a highly-scalable session border controller (SBC) with distributed signaling and media functions.^{[35][36][37][38]}
• Its SIP Session Router provides SIP management features that are designed to make core SIP routing simpler and more resilient.^[39][40][41]

4th generation communications

The firm's 4G communications products are designed to enable end users to control their communications services across multiple devices.^[42]

• The CommPortal suite of cross-platform user interfaces allows residential and enterprise customers to access communications services on PCs, TVs and mobile handsets. CommPortal includes web portals, widgets, desktop and mobile applications, and a softphone.^[43][44][45]

Past products

• The Colibria product suite enables mobile service providers to deploy a standards-compliant Rich Communications Suite (RCS) or RCS-e infrastructure.^[46][47]
• Thrutu, launched in March 2011, is a cloud based smartphone application that allows users to share media, location and other information during a regular phone conversation.^{[48][49][50][51][52]} Thrutu is available on Android, iOS and BlackBerry. Thrutu was named Android App of the Week on Reg Hardware and was included in a list of the week’s best Android apps on Gizmodo.^[53][54]

Management systems

The firm's Network Management System provides integrated provisioning, operations and troubleshooting capabilities that work with all Metaswitch products.^[55][56]

• MetaView Web is a web-based interface for subscriber management.^[57][58]
• MetaView Explorer is a Java-based client application for subscriber and network management.^[59]
• MetaView Service Assurance Server is a diagnostics platform that helps service provider technicians to diagnose configuration, network and interoperability problems.^[60][61]
• MetaView Voice Quality Monitoring is a network-based system for monitoring the quality of calls in a VoIP network, to enable service providers to diagnose quality issues and remedy them.^[62][63]
• MetaView SIP Provisioning Server is a centralized platform for deploying, registering and configuring SIP phones in a service provider network.^[64][65]

Software Defined Networking

Metaswitch develops and licenses portable protocol stacks for system manufacturers of VoIP, IP Routing, MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS), Generalized MPLS (GMPLS), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and Systems Network Architecture (SNA) equipment.^[66][67] This extensive background in networking protocols has helped the company develop software-defined networking solutions for network operators and enterprises running large data centers.^[68] In 2014, Metaswitch introduced Project Calico to the open source community.^[69] Project Calico helps data center operators overcome the current virtual network limitations that prevent data centers from scaling up to and beyond thousands of servers running millions of virtual machines.^[70]

Support services

The firm provides a range of support services.

• Its professional services include project management, network migration, and customized branding.^[71][72]
• It provides training courses in locations across the USA to teach service providers how to provision, manage and maintain Metaswitch products and solutions. They offer additional courses on VoIP and TDM network technologies.^[73]
• Its MarketVisions provides a package of training and resources to help service providers to market and sell their services to business and residential customers.^[74][75][76]
• Its Communities website for Metaswitch customers provides access to support forums, resources, and partnership and developer programs.^[77][78]

Events

Metaswitch Forum

Metaswitch holds an annual event for its customers and partners called the “Forum”.

• Forum 2014 was held in New Orleans, LA, from May 12–15, 2014.
• In 2013, Metaswitch ran a global seminar program called "MetaLive".
• Forum 2012 was held in Orlando, FL, in October.
• Forum 2011 was held in Las Vegas, NV, in October.^[79]
• Forum 2010 was held in Orlando, FL, in September.^[80] It was due to be held in Nashville, TN, in May, but was postponed and relocated because of flooding.^[81]
• Forum 2009 was held in Las Vegas, NV, in April.^[82]
• Forum 2008 was held in New Orleans, LA, in April^[83]
• Forum 2007 was held in Orlando, FL, in April^[84]

Awards and recognitions

• Technology innovation and export sales
  • The company has earned four Queen's Awards for Enterprise for outstanding achievement in technology innovation and United Kingdom exports.^[85][86]
• Human resources awards
  • 2004–2011 Placed in the top 14 of mid-sized company category of The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For. The highest rank was #3 in 2004.^[87]
  • 2005 Ranked #3 in the 50 Best Workplaces in the UK by the Financial Times.^[88]
  • 2005 One of the 100 Best Workplaces in the European Union by the Financial Times.^[89]
• Product / company awards
  • 2010 Internet Telephony SIP Trunking Solution Product of the Year Award
  • 2009 Supercomm Best Strategic Support Award^[90]
  • 2008 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award; TMC^[91][92]
  • 2008 Top 15 VoIP Companies – Metaswitch; Fierce VoIP^[91][93]
  • 2008 Excellence Award – Metaswitch; Internet Telephony^[91][94]
  • 2008, 2006 Top 100 Vendor – Metaswitch; Broadband Properties Magazine^[91][95][96]
  • 2008 Diamond Award – Metaswitch; Broadband Gear Report^[91]
  • 2008 VON Innovator Award – Metaswitch; VON Magazine^[91][97]
  • 2007, 2006, 2004 Frost & Sullivan Award – MetaSwitch; Frost & Sullivan^{[91][98][99][100]}
  • 2003 Pulver Top 100 – Metaswitch; pulver.com^[91][101]
  • 2000-2005 Product of the Year – Metaswitch; Internet Telephony^{[91][102][103][104][105][106][107]}

References

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External links

• Official Website